Man’s arm amputated following workplace accident in Ilderton, Ont.

Sarah Morphew is counting her blessings after a concrete slab fell on her husband while he was at work Wednesday morning.

“The surgeons said if it had been an inch over, he would’ve been dead,” she said.

Geoff Morphew, 38, was working in quality control at Coldstream Concrete in Ilderton when the concrete culvert fell on his right arm.

Surgeons told her that the weight of the nearly 23,000 kilogram slab saved her husband’s life by cauterizing the veins.

“They said he would’ve bled out in probably 60 seconds if the pressure hadn’t been able to… It was like a Ziploc bag. It was a blessing in disguise I guess that it happened that way, or else he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital,” she said.

Geoff was taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. His arm had to be amputated.

He’s recovering in hospital and has another surgery tomorrow, but in the meantime, he’s trying to come to terms with his new reality.

“He still hasn’t really grasped that his arm is gone, he’s having a lot of phantom pain, and he just doesn’t really understand that it’s not there I think. He kind of has moments of understanding. He’s in a hard place,” she said.

“It’s just devastating for everyone. I think his main focus is the kids. He’s scared about what the kids are going to think. Our littlest guy is three and his concern is that he’s going to be scared of him.”

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While the family takes time to deal with the accident, a friend launched a GoFundMe campaign to help them on their road to recovery.

“One of the girls that I’ve known for a long time went ahead and took it upon herself to create the page. To take a little bit of a load off from us and from Geoff too. He’s a provider, he’s a dad, he’s a husband, he has always done that, and for him to not be able to work, it’s devastating for him,” Morphew said.

The Ministry of Labour investigation is ongoing.