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Updated 47 minutes ago
Chris Akin hosts his own Internet radio show and owns two businesses.
Akin, 48, who co-owns Pinball PA in Hopewell, Beaver County, says keeping busy is all that he knows. At least it is now.
In fact, at one point in his life, Akin, who grew up in Streetsboro, Ohio, was more than content working as a furnace operator at a small steel mill near Cleveland. All that changed on a fateful morning in December 1994 when a furnace explosion left him with burns over 69 percent of his body. Doctors expected Akin to die.
“None of these things (I'm currently doing) would have happened if I worked in a steel mill for 25 years,” Akin says. “I would never want to go through that (experience) again, but if anything, it taught me how to live.”
Akin documented his experience with recovery in “Call Me Chris,” a book he wrote and self-published in May.
The idea to write a book about his ordeal came to him when his mother was visiting him in the hospital after the accident.
“She said she wanted to help, but didn't know what to do,” Akin says. “She said she wished there was a book in the waiting room she could read, and maybe it was the morphine talking, but I said, ‘I'm going to write this book.' ”
Kathi Akin, 68, of Kent, Ohio, says her son's book has done a lot for her.
“I read over it every once in a while,” she says. “It reminds you to be thankful because it was such a long struggle to get him back to whole.”
According to Akin's website, the book was written merely as hand therapy after the accident, but then it was put away for more than 20 years. After the success of his first published book — “Little Victories,” about the shock jock's emotional struggle after his divorce — friends and family encouraged him to “put out that burn book you wrote.”
It was a hard subject to revisit. The explosion had covered Akin in molten metal, and threw him 30 feet back into the mast of a parked tow motor. A pipe Akin was using to unclog a hole in the furnace hit him across the face and ripped it open. His back was in immense pain, but he told himself he had to get up and find help.
Kathi Akin says nothing could prepare her for seeing him in person.
“It was so hard to get used to,” she says. “It was so devastating you can't even breathe. It was the most horrible thing to think, ‘This is my child and I can't recognize him.' ”
Kathi Akin says she only recognized her son when she saw his distinctively wide feet, which were not burned.
The explosion left Akin in a coma for 21 days. Doctors told the family to prepare funeral arrangements. Akin's mother knew her son had other plans.
“I had said right from the beginning that Chris is a really competitive person,” Kathi Akin says. “I said, ‘If he gets out of this coma, he'll compete with anyone to get better.' He's just got that spirit that if someone can do it in 69 days, he can do it in 60 days.”
Akin opened his eyes to see that his entire body was wrapped in bandages. He was alive, but he had a long recovery ahead.
“As soon as I woke up my only thought was, ‘What do I have to do to get back to normal?' ” he says.
From breathing through a respirator to debriding, the painful process of removing dead, burned skin from the body, Akin went through the ringer, but he fought on. Akin recalled one moment where he looked at his hand and could see the bone.
“If you've ever burned your hand on a stove,” he says. “Multiply that real sharp burn you feel a few seconds after pulling your hand away by a thousand for 18 to 19 months.”
Doctors told Akin that they would have to cut off his right arm and fingers, but nothing stopped Akin from doing whatever he could to get back to normal. This work ethic paid off, as Akin managed to save his limbs and ligaments. His only lingering problem is a damaged ear drum caused by molten metal that lodged in his ear canal.
Skin grafts require him to limit exercise and his time in the sun, but he says that's a small price to pay.
“The only thing (the accident) cost me was a few years of time,” he says.
Akin credits his recovery to his “miracle worker,” Dr. Richard Fratianne, and the staff at the Comprehensive Burn Care Center of MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.
Akin says that he was back to normal and healthy by 1998, four years removed from the accident. His recovery taught him a lot about himself, but most importantly, motivated him to work to fulfill his dreams.
He would go on to host his own radio show, “The Metal Show,” on two different radio stations in Cleveland for more than a decade, and he continues his broadcasting work online with “The Classic Metal Show,” broadcasting live from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays at theclassicmetalshow.com.
He also started Akin IT Services LLC, which just entered its eleventh year. And in 2015, he and Ed Beeler opened Pinball PA and Pennsylvania Coin-Operated Gaming Hall of Fame, which boasts more than 400 classic pinball machines, and is open daily in Hopewell.
“(Working hard) is the only thing that I know,” Akin says. “I work harder than anyone I know because I learned it in 1995 when I had to work harder than anyone.”
“Call Me Chris” is Akin's third published work. Akin's other book, “Cause and Effect: Metallica,” tells stories about the release of the band's self-titled “Black” album.
“The accident taught me to be busy and to appreciate every day,” Akin says. “If I die tomorrow, it's with an empty bucket list.”
Phil Poupore is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.
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