…that I hadn’t unscrewed the correct fuse! The Woman and I were replacing a failing florescent light fixture last night, and I damned near killed my fool self! I grabbed the wire to pull it through the little punch out hole in the fixture and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttttttttttttttttttttttttt. I think my skeleton lit up and became visible through my skin. I’ve got an entry burn on my palm and two exit burns on the side of my knee where it was touching the dishwasher. That was some serious fucking electicity!
I’ve got no one to fucking blame but myself, though. I unscrewed the wrong fuse, I reached out and grabbed the bare wires like they were sweet, sweet candy. You know what? I’m just not fucking qualified to own a house.
If it were breakers, I’d have guessed it to be a product of Federal Pacific - pretty much the only maker of breakers to lose its UL listing.
But seriously, get one of those doohingles QED linked to for future work, or pull the main fuse. I’ve been buzzed, nipped, tingled, bit and full-on shocked many times, but never so badly as to get entry AND exit burns. You are seriously lucky to be alive.
I have changed entire fixtures, with live power. There is a trick. Work with one hand only. Keep the other hand well away, preferrably in your pocket so it can’t get you in trouble. Do not lean against metal (washers and driers etc are grounded, and provide the return path). If you have to stand on something, stand on an insulator, such as wood. That way even if you do get “bit”, it will hurt a lot less. What happened to you was, where there was no other path for the electricity, you became the path. Your body closed the circuit.
Definately get your ass in to see the doc. I lost a good friend of 22 to a heart attack 3 days after she electrocuted herself like that. PLEASE go see the doctor!!
I’ve been told to only work with my right hand, so that the shortest path through me to the ground doesn’t go through my heart. Seems like a good idea.
This is a myth. If there is a path ground present, either arm has an equally likely chance of conducting current through the heart. You should work with whichever hand you are most comfortable.
I hope vibrotronica is being seen by a doctor right now.
Until he gets back, let’s share our own shocking stories.
When I was a kid, my parents had this crappy old push lawnmower with a broken throttle. The only way to shut it off was to pull the spark plug wire loose. I always did it with a stick or something, but once I didn’t have anything handy, so I used my fingers. I’ll never forget how each revolution of the engine brought a powerful jolt of electricity until the engine ran down.
Also when I was a kid, I was assigned the job of cleaning an old bird’s nest out of an outdoor light sconce. The bulb had been gone for years and we had forgotten that the light had a wall switch, which was still on. I pulled the nest out and then, stupidly, used a damp rag to wipe away the rest of the debris. Gave me a nice long buzz.
Later, when I was an adult, I was splicing a power cord into an outdoor wall outlet. I had to solder the wires together, but unfortunately, the only source of electricity within reach was the very outlet I was splicing the power cord into. So of course, I had to leave it on. Everything went great until the solder bridged the space between the wiring and the soldering gun, completing a 120-volt short circuit. There was a loud pop and some smoke. Although I was uninjured, a big scorch mark was left on the wall and the end of the (very heavy-gauge) copper wire was melted.
Why were you soldering on mains? They invented the wire nut for a reason, and it has a nice nonconductive shell.
Anyway, my history of unintentional lepton flux has been fairly normal. I stuck a screwdriver in an outlet when I was very little, it’s my earliest memory. I never did it again.
Later in life I found that the many-hundred-volt capacitors that power the flash of a camera will make both arms tingly for a long time. I haven’t done that again, but I expect I will at some point.
For a year or so I worked a job that involved a lot of conveyor belts, which functioned far too well as Van de Graff generators. I would go home at night with my fingers covered in little black spots where the “static” arcs burned my skin.
I once walked through a small stone tunnel that connected a hydroelectric dam to the auto manufacturing plant that it was making electricity for. All the power cables ran along the wall, probably 640 volt 3-phase or something equally unpleasant. Only luck kept me from killing myself, because I would have been fried if I’d bumped against them, or tripped and grabbed one.
PLEASE go see the doctor!!