Bad choices are not relegated to ones involving drugs and alcohol

It is surprising what a person will miss.

Dean Krawec is a double amputee who lost the majority of his right arm and his left leg, including half of his pelvis, after a work place accident more than 20 years ago, but what he misses most may surpise most.

“I really miss my left butt cheek,” he said, during a presentation in front of more than 100 Grade 9 students from Barrhead Composite High School (BCHS), Neerlandia Public Christian School and Swan Hills School. “You don’t realize how much your butt cheeks really do.”

One of the things having a symmetrical posterior allows is weight distribution. As an amputee who spends most of his time confined to a wheel chair, and since he only has one cheek as he put it all his weight is continuously one side. The loss of symmetry also means it is much more difficult to balance and as a result it complicates every day tasks such as getting dressed and going to the bathroom.

This is just one of the realizations Krawec told the students about, as part of Barrhead Cares’ P.A.R.T.Y. program at BCHS on Monday, May 19. The initiative seeks to teach students that the decisions they make now can impact them for their entire lives. A large portion of the program focuses on alcohol and drugs and the dire consequences that can follow.

“I may not be able to understand the mental anguish that would occur by making bad choices regarding alcohol and drugs and then drinking and driving. However, I am in my present situation because of poor choices I made in my life and on the worksite,” Krawec said.

Krawec said he was like many young people who grew up in Athabasca, alcohol was a part of life and was something he actively used, on many occasions to excess.

“During the time I attended high school in Athabasca, four guys were killed in alcohol-related accidents and even though I knew all of them, I still thought it couldn’t happen to me,” he said, adding he continued to drink when he left Athabasca to attend university in Edmonton.

In fact, it increased due to the large assortment of liquor stores and bars in the city. At the time Krawec lived in Athabasca there was only one of each.

Initially, Krawec limited his partying to the weekends, but eventually it increased by the time he entered his second semester saying he would often skip classes to “quench his thirst.”

By the end of his second year, he decided to drop out of school and go into the workforce, finding work in the construction and the oil patch. Krawec said three years later he was living the life he had always dreamed of. As an oil patch construction worker he was making a good living, with a lot of time off to go drinking with his friends. He had even bought a house, but on Aug. 7, at the age of 23, things were about to change.

On that day he was injured while working on a pipeline worksite, when the sideboom he was on began to roll away. In trying to stop it, his left leg got caught in the treads, and when he tried to free himself, he got his right arm caught as well.

“This is where I made my bad choice. I was rushing and trying to do too many things at once and it is a choice that will affect me for the rest of my life,” he said.

After emergency workers and his fellow workers managed to free him, he was rushed to the hospital in Blairmore, five miles from the worksite.

“They talk about the golden hour — the amount of time a critically injured person has to get to a hospital and receive proper medical attention to survive,” Krawec said, adding by the time his coworkers and emergency personnel freed him from the sideboom about 45 minutes had elapsed. “If the hospital wasn’t so close I don’t think I would be alive today.”

The hospital in Blairmore was able to stabilize his condition well enough so he could be transported by STARS Air Ambulance to Foothills Hospital in Calgary for more emergency treatment. Eventually when Krawec was strong enough, he was moved to a hospital specializing in burn victims and then a rehabilitation facility. All totaled, Krawec spent over nine months in medical facilities.

“My whole ordeal in the hospital and the rehab facilities are filled with horrible moments and great ones as I learned how to do everyday tasks again,” he said. “But you need to know all of this was avoidable if I had made the right choice. Choices have consequences and the results are real, terrifying and life altering.”