A Sidney woman is urging caution after a trip to take out the trash left her with cuts, a concussion, a chipped tooth and speech and mobility issues.
It was dark and drizzly when Tricia Baylis walked outside to her apartment’s dumpster to throw out a tray full of cat litter last December. She’d done it more times than she could count – lift the lid, empty the litter box, then head back inside. But that night, things didn’t go as planned.
Trash lay on the ground in front of the bin, so the 70-year-old opted to access it from the end, where she lifted the lid, then propped it open with the dumpster's metal strut. At the same time, one of her neighbours drove up in her car and proceeded to use the dumpster.
Baylis found her cat litter tray was too heavy to empty inside with one hand, so she leaned over the bin's lip. That’s when the strut slipped out of place, cracking against the back of her head. Fractions of a second later, the lid fell on her neck. Then everything went black.
When Baylis regained consciousness, she knew she was hurt.
“The first thing I felt was I was swallowing blood, and then I could feel blood running down my face,” she said.
She managed to lift the lid to free her head. Shocked, Baylis stood outside for a few minutes before making her way back to her apartment, where she phoned a friend to take her to the hospital.
She said her memory of the event is foggy, and isn't sure her neighbour had witnessed the event.
"I just know that all of a sudden, the bar slammed down on my head. And I remember seeing headlights and then she was gone."
After a trip to the hospital, which involved CAT scans of her head and neck, Baylis was left with a moderate concussion, blurry vision, a lacerated crown, a broken tooth and short-term memory issues.
Four months later, her injuries persist. Though she no longer has blurry vision, Baylis can’t hold onto things with her right hand, has trouble balancing, experiences frequent headaches and difficulties communicating and has foot drop.
“When you walk, you expect your leg to rise where you subconsciously command it – it doesn't,” she said. “There’s this halting speech and ... I'm having more trouble expressing it and getting it out as fast as my brain is thinking, but it's better than it was.”
Injuries aren’t the extent of Baylis’ problems.
When the accident happened, she had nine days left on a fixed-term contract at the office where she worked and was hopeful her employer would renew it. When they didn't, she tried to collect Employment Insurance but was short on hours to qualify. Now, she’s living off of her pension and goes to a nearby food bank.
In hopes that others aren't injured when taking out their trash, Baylis has cautioned people against leaning inside dumpsters.
“When they're lifted and dumped, there's a lot of bashing that goes on, and they're going to be damaged over time,” she said. “I stress to building managers to maintain their garbage sites ... because these companies will replace these dumpsters if requested.”
