In November 2018, my wife and I had saved up for a power recliner because I required medical mobility equipment due to a hit and run. I could walk small distances. I also had a yet undiagnosed insulinoma (it's now removed), so I was bigger than the average bear. I found a Franklin Corporation electric power recliner, the Franklin Goliath Manhandler 9429. It looked great. It had been used only a week before its owner, a former disabled veteran, passed away. This woman said they chose this chair because it was for a big guy. Made in America. I was born in Australia and am now a US citizen. Generations of my family have fought and died on the side of our American brothers.

I had my own company. I specialized in SEO and web design. I taught myself, and to start with, specialized in small businesses, giving them the services they could not afford. In 2019 I had a good number of clients and was working for a construction company in Dallas. My company was on the eve of major growth. Then came the night of Feb 26th. I worked late, it was 3am. I closed my laptop, moved my little computer table, and was ready to go to bed. My legs were up, and I hit the power button to lower my legs. The foam failed and folded in on itself, making a pocket. My testicles fell inside and were trapped. This is a pinch point that the company had made impossible to prevent using $4 worth of material. The switch that they knew was a major problem — Franklin's switches from a company in China — the switch failed. I stopped pushing the button, but it kept on crushing both of my testicles, rupturing them both. My Franklin power recliner castrated me, leaving me impotent.

The pain was like nothing I have ever known. The pain ripped through my body. I felt sick, I was screaming. My wife came in. She helped the chair release me, but the chair switch failed. I had to climb over the side of the chair and pull my ruptured testicles. At the time I thought it was like a major sort of testicle injury, but it would soon get better. I lay in bed, not getting up other than going to the bathroom. I did not eat and hardly drank, because it was a horror to get up, and urination was white hot pain. It got worse, and the internal bleeding blew my testicles to the size of a cantaloupe. With help I got to our van. With a sheet around me, I stayed flat on the floor of our minivan to get to the hospital. They gave me morphine and the highest dose of hydrocodone. They could not give me any more, but they had to do an ultrasound. They had to put a wand in and push on my ruptured testicles. I was biting my own hand to stop from screaming, unsuccessfully. I do not know how long it was, but it felt like a long time. The doctor came in and told me there was nothing they could ever do for me, that I would be sterile and most likely impotent, which I am.

When I got home, my scrotum kept on growing till my scrotum burst and everything was pushed out of my body with force. That was just the start of a lifelong injury due to internal nerve pain that the doctors can never fix. I have a constant ache. If I stand, sit down, go to the bathroom, the pain is and will be the same forever.