Wear your PPE folks. It's not what you want to look like or what you want to be doing. Five days ago I had a scary accident while working on the cabin. This is a chemical burn on my eye. A chemical burn is damaged tissue caused by hazardous substances such as gasoline, paint, paint thinner, strong acids, and even minor chemicals which can cause minor chemical burns. Luckily for me right now I can see this lens with both of my eyes. I am so grateful for that. And for that reason we are making this video to use our influence to share with our audience not only my story and everything we've learned but the importance of PPE. Staying safe while you're working. I know there are so many people who watch our videos and who are already DIYers or who are inspired to do things themselves and this is something we haven't really quite talked about and I do want to take ownership in the fact that it's something that we haven't been diligent about either. And so it's time to talk about it. After many years of DIY renovations and construction not only on our van where we began but this cabin over the last few years just the other day after weeks of not weeks, 12 days felt like weeks. 12 days of doing the beams. I was in the spare bedroom doing a very small area on the ceiling in mygar cement and I'm going to explain what mygar cement is to you so you have a better idea. It is a very fine coating of cement combined with fine aggregates mixed with water-based liquid polymers and powdered resin polymers. So it is a mixture of chemicals and we also added paint to give it a color. So I was using that material above my head. I had applied it, came down off the ladder and as I was coming down I looked up and splat. I got mygar cement in my eye. I was shrieking, screaming. Like it was more of a shriek. I was absolutely terrified because as soon as it hit my eye it immediately started burning and I was trying to figure out how to get myself to the bathroom. If I'm smiling and laughing that's my way of dealing with things. I'm not actually laughing or smiling about any of this. It was very serious. Trying to figure out how to get it out of my eye. Of course I wanted to wash it away but it wasn't just like a paint or anything like that. It was granules in my eye along with paint. So the cement paint mixture and a jasmine was helping me at that point to try and get it out as much as we could and I was splashing my eye. We were able to rinse it and the burning sensation started to dull and I sat down, took some time, continued to rinse my eye and then I carried on with my day. A few hours later I was looking at my eye and it had gotten much much more red. The burn was really starting to settle in and although I was like slightly irritated I wasn't in any extreme pain at this point. The most pain I had experienced was when the pain initially hit my eye. When the cement initially hit my eye. I think part of the reason why I didn't initially think it was a big deal is because I could still see. However the redness and the little bit of discomfort I was having was starting to scare me and so after that research I did drive myself to the hospital. Luckily for me when I got there the emergency room was empty and I got right in and got treated. 10 hours had already passed since this accident had happened. The first thing they did was put in eye drops. It was a numbing sort of eye drop. I think it was to clean the eye and then they put in die. The die was able to illuminate the damaged tissue under blue light so we were right away within seconds able to see the tissue that was damaged. I was able to get a photo. The doctor was nice and I have to get a photo for us and that freaked me right out. Seeing that confirmed I had damaged the tissue on my eye and being so so close to millimeters to my pupil and my iris and my field division. This could have gone very differently. So we did a couple of eye exams and eye tests and once confirmed that the damaged tissue was out of my field division thankfully they were able to attach something to my eye for 30 minutes to flush my eyeball. I was then sent home with a prescription for an antibiotic ointment a cream to apply to my eye for seven days. We're putting the antibiotic ointment in my eye because of my chemical burn. Not funny? Not funny. Serious matter? That's why I'm serious after I left. It's a coping mechanism everyone. All right here we go. I'll do it for you. It's a ride, yeah. Nice. How are you feeling? In general? Well I guess we can have a mental health check in too but like more so you're eye. The eyes. The eye is healing like it's uncomfortable. It's feels very strange. Like it feels like a bruise but or like you know it's not pain. It's just like it feels like if you bruise your arm but on the eye. It's what I'm describing it or like scratched it. The ointment is weird because it sometimes gets kind of sticky and then that feels weird. Putting lotion on your eye is kind of weird but it's fine sometimes. You're seeing my eye five days later and it is healing pretty well. Thankfully I'm so grateful that it went this way. I can't imagine had it gone differently. What I would be saying to you right now. Pretty scary to think about. Because had the micr cement fallen just millimeters to the left in my field of vision I could have had permanent eye damage, blindness or who knows what maybe needed intense surgery or intense rest who knows. Where are your PPE folks? It's not what you want to look like or what you want to be doing. Over the years I would say we've used our PPE personal protective equipment things such as gloves glasses hard hats anything to protect yourself from the potential hazard. Or roofing harness very sporadically. I think there were times it was more important and then to be times we'd fall off and what I want you to do by making this video is to not only hold us accountable by telling all of you is to make sure that it's consistent and we do the best we can to learn how to wear the PPE properly. Make sure it fits and we're doing things as safely as we can. We've noticed over the years in the comments a lot of people expressing their concern and I appreciate that so much. I've even just been looking at the comments recently noticing them coming in a lot more over the last few weeks through our loft and beam renovation. So as time goes on we are going to do our best to stay safe and show you how we're doing that. If you have any tips yourselves what you do if you've ever had an experience like this feel free to share in the comments. I think the more we talk about it and acknowledge it and share our experiences the more importance it will gather. I know some people choose not to wear it at all. Some people are always wearing their PPE and then there's us in the middle with the sporadicness. Regardless I think there's a lot of reasons why people choose not to wear it. It can be hot. It can be uncomfortable. It can be heavy. So you know I just got these really sweet goggles. They're coming in. I got my Amazon and they are full face goggles which I'm very excited about. Obviously for different applications you would use them. Like if I was standing it's probably really great to have your eyes entirely covered right. There's nowhere that dust can get in. Same with a respirator. I've always worn these little masks. I think a respirator would be really great for sanding because it's such fine particles. Anyways I think the more I think the more we dive into it and we learn what works for us what's the most comfortable we'll share that with you eventually. I know it's also as simple as tying your hair back not wearing loose clothing, not wearing jewelry, having a first aid kit on hand. Thank you all for encouraging us to be safer. I hope that we can encourage everyone else out there who may slack like us to work safer. Pick it up, put it on and stay safe. I just truly don't think it's worth it. I feel an immense amount of gratefulness to be able to talk to you about this and be able to see out of both of my eyes clearly. I feel healthy and I'm so grateful for that. So the ointment is helping a lot. It's healing well. Thank goodness. I also know that a lot of people will pass up this message as NBD. No big deal. But until it happens to you it's kind of one of those things that you don't really care about and you just brush it off. I certainly was that person that cared some of the time like I said and I don't know how to make you care more if you're that person. But I hope that you read through the comments and you read from other people's experiences and from mine. Even if I just plant a little seed somewhere in your head that makes you think about it, you know, a little bit more. I'd be happy with that. Thank you all for watching each week. I hope this message goes as far as it can. Share it with a friend. Share it with your family. Anyone who you know that could possibly need a little bit of a reminder. Love it back.