Thread to Make People Wince My Recounting Your Best Injuries

Posted by: matthewr on 22 April 2004

When I was about 12 I slipped while getting out of bed with, i have say, uncharacteristic alacrity. I'm not quite sure how I got myself in this particular configuration but I fell, more or less, on my face and my leg came down such that my foot was parrallel to the bed.

Most of my foot missed managed to miss the bed but my little toe caught the edge of the base just about full on. I looked down to see my little toe sticking out literally at a right angle to my foot.

I called my Dad. He had a look at it than to sit down and called my Mum who drove me to hospital. The Doc looked at my toe and said "Hmm, that's interesting, I wonder..." and snapped it back straight before I could say "If you touch it I'll kill you".

To this day the little toe on my right foot does not splay correctly and I lost the ability to curl the ball with the outside of my foot.

So what's the most painful thing you ever done to yourself?

Matthew
Posted on: 25 April 2004 by Steveandkate
Ok, so I collected my brand new Yamaha 600 from the showroom, and 2 days later was going from one job to the next, and offered one of my guys a lift - he walked, and managed to witness me getting knocked off big time - a car, with an off duty and very pissed policeman turned across in front of me, causing me to fly through the air, hitting 5 other cars before I landed (I punctured a tyre with my baseball boot covered shoe, and ripped of a wing with some part of my body..)
As it was the friday before christmas, I had christmas bonus money, in cash, in my pocket for the 6 guys who worked for me, so the first thing I asked when approached by an old lady was "can you feel to see if there is a big bulge in my front trouser pocket"
The next thing was the copper yelling at me blaming me for hitting his car, and then my workmate collecting the bits of bone fron my shattered shin and handing them to me...
Anyway, to cut the story short, I spent the next 2 years in and out of hospital, on crutches or in a wheelchair, with external fixation (a scaffold-like contraption holding my leg together) and carrying a spanner, in case it came loose - I could adjust the length of my leg by several inches. After 9 operation, it finally healed. I also met my now wife who nursed me whilst in hospital. Our second date was the day after I was discharged for the second time - I took her on a valentines weekend trip to Tunisia. At the airport, waiting for the bags, I sat on an unused carousel as my leg was sore. Yup, they turned that one on, and I was sent screaming round towards those rubber flaps that eat unclaimed bag (rescued at the last moment by guess who - my surgeon, who happened to be in Tunisia airport - small world ?
I lost 4 inches of bone fron both shin bones, a couple of ribs and some very bruised personal bits - my bike, 2 days old, was valued at £19 for scrap - the chain was ok, as was an indicator lens. The tank had a life-size impression of my afore-mentioned parts, and I do have another bike, plus a slight limp and much stiffness (no,in the ankle, fool)
I also wear better protection.
Another time, I was bombing along at 70mph with my visor open, when a pidgeon flew across my path, and into my helmet/face. Bang. Head knocked back big-time, exploded bits of vermin in my mouth, nose, eyes, and I had to try to stop in the fast lane. Its beak had pierced my eye-lid, missing my eye by a whisker. I got to the hospital (the same one as last time) to be laughed at by the doctors ("never heard of anythin like that mate"), and then asked was the date significant - it was 5 years to the day since my last smash. Spooky or what !
Posted on: 26 April 2004 by Tim Oldridge
I have to date been lucky with injuries – nothing more than a broken toe and the odd cut etc. However, frankly I've always been happy to leave such things to my brother who when younger was a real specialist in such things. I may have forgotten some things, but here are the highlights (i.e. I've excluded those injuries that didn't involve a stay in hospital and appendix operations etc):

>Age 3: fell off a climbing frame and broke a leg. I think this was considered a blessing in disguise as he had previously had a disease or something that had left one leg a bit shorter than the other. The break evened things up a bit.

>Age 4: knocked himself out for a few hours turning over his tricycle

>Age 8: falling off a 15 foot cliff onto a beach and paralysing himself from the waist down for 48 hours. I seem to remember my parents being just a tad worried at the time. There was a suggestion that he'd been pushed by a little girl.

>Age 4 to 10: lots of stitches

>Age12: whilst visiting a friend, being put in charge of the home-brew stall at a village fete and drinking himself into a coma (two nights in hospital)

>Age 12: once out of hospital on the same visit, testing a soon to be motorised go-cart down a hill by standing behind the driver. When the inevitable happened, his ankle/leg fell across the rear axle sprocket/cog thing and was pretty badly messed up. I think he knocked himself out again. Weeks in hospital and then in a wheelchair. I remember that this forced the cancellation of our summer holiday

>Age15: running into a tree at school and knocking himself out for an hour or two.

>Age 16: being knocked off his moped by a drunk driver (later caught), bouncing off a tree and suffering a broken leg, arm and maybe a rib or two. Presumably unconsciousness was involved at some stage too. Most of the back of one calf still has no feeling.

>Age 19: putting a gardening fork through his foot (right through and out of the sole of the boot).

What I've never worked out is whether he is very unlucky to have suffered so many accidents or very lucky to have come out in more or less one piece.

FWIW, the go-cart incident and the fork through the foot are the ones that make me wince most thinking about.

Timo
Posted on: 26 April 2004 by domfjbrown
He he he - the only bone I've ever broken was my left little toe! A common theme eh?

I woke up after a drunken night out, to find out I'd kicked out in my sleep and splayed my little toe out 90 degrees. It had gone back in my sleep, but was as big as the big toe, and the area between the little and next-bigger toe was deep red with wheals (sp?) and bruising.

I saw the quack a couple of days later when the swelling wouldn't go down, to be told it was indeed broken. This was about 18 months ago and the damn thing's aching like mad at the mo.

In 1981, when I was 6, I managed to run FULL TILT (sideways!!) into a climbing frame in our school playground that I KNEW was there. Nice loud CRUNCH and blood, white and yellow stuff (looked just like cracking an egg and having a nosebleed!) - rushed to A&E to find out I'd cracked my head open. I wasn't KO'd. It was cool...

When I moved into my first gaff in Reading, after leaving Uni, I smashed my head into the outer door by misjudging it. Blood everywhere, but I couldn't be arsed to get the head checked out. Just ONE WEEK later, me and a mate were playfighting and the a-hole nutted me full on in the face, to split the same area of forehead open. This was much more serious as it bled for about an hour, but we were out on the drink later that night and there was no way I was going to A&E and ruining my night. Consequence - a nice large scar (which has faded a lot, but is still there).

In 1986, I was using a racing bike in the same damn school playground, when I had to brake suddenly. I hit the wrong brake, DIDN'T go over the handlebars - but that only seemed good for a nanosecond. My bits landed on the crossbar at very high speed, and I fell over sideways with the bike on me. Coughing and spluttering and trying to talk (but sounding like Jimmy Somerville!!!) I crawled into the main day room (it was a blind boarding school). Everyone started wetting themselves laughing. I got trundled up to surgery, but there wasn't much they could do... The next day, the WHOLE of my middle bits from lower spine to above where my pubes'd be (if I had any, which I didn't since I was barely 11!) was black, and it remained black for a fortnight. Thank god it happened pre-puberty, but one ball is 50% bigger than the other and about 90 degrees twisted from the other. Maybe this explains why I'm so lazy about trying to pull women Wink

Not so gory but very messy - I was running for a train at Basingstoke; I'd just come out of Sainsburys with very little time, so I pelted it. I hit the "ramp" in the pavement on the way to the station at full tilt, and my rucsack made me overbalance - heinously. I left the ground, landed on my hip and used it for a brake for 5 feet. Now, because I'm VERY thin, I was basically grinding bone against concrete - nice 3 inch-ish total removal of a few layers of skin (thank GOD I was in jeans rather than work clothes!) and it took aeons to heal - although it didn't hurt too much. I have a rather painful scar now though, as it's just at belt height, so belts rub on it all the time.

Due to being 6ft3, fast moving, and half blind, I've had numerous hard knocks on both my head and most of my body, but I've never been KO'd. The amount of times I've belted myself VERY HARD on the head when standing up on trains is crazy; bloody Merseyrail are the worst offenders for non-adult-sized passanger trains (I think they were built for Tudor people or something - even the Underground isn't that bad!).

__________________________
Don't wanna be cremated or buried in a grave
Just dump me in a plastic bag and leave me on the pavement
A tribute to your modern world, your great society
I'm just another victim of your highrise fantasy!
Posted on: 27 April 2004 by stevie d
Hi All

Whilst playing football during PE at school I went in for a tackle with another lad, he completly missed the ball but the studs in his heel caught my knee cap, dislocating it. Fortunately/ unfortunately dependeing on how you look at it, I then landed on it, knocking it back into place. I then went to the local A&E in a teachers car on the back seat.

Secondly whilst messing around in a former job I ran down some stairs in the stock room clipping my head on a concrete beam. I thought I was OK and kept quiet so I did not look like a twat. It was not until blood started pooring out of my head that I had to give the game away. Oooops!

Cheers
Stevie
Posted on: 27 April 2004 by Mekon
Not gory, but the most interesting one for me was bouncing on my head after messing up a landing on my MTB. I lost six months (or so) memory, which meant I was confused as to where I lived and what job I had, and couldn't remember alot of people I had recently met. Not very traumatic, apart from remembering I had broken up with a girl I had been seeing, and strangely similar to getting messed up on hallucinogens. I think most of it had come back within a month, but then it's hard to know what you've forgotten.
Posted on: 27 April 2004 by matthewr
Does this explain why you have't given me that £20 back I lent you?
Posted on: 27 April 2004 by BLT
After 12 years of competing in rallying I have suffered the following horrifying injuries;

1. I knackered my back trying to push my car up a hill when it wouldn't start.

2. Last year I rolled my car end over end at 85mph through some trees. I then pricked my finger on some gorse bushes while climbing out of the car.

3. I ran into the back of a stationary car at around 30mph and ended up with a slightly stiff neck for a couple of days.

Given that almost everybody seems to have suffered worse injuries from riding pushbikes and playing football, I'm a bit miffed that I have to pay an extra premium on my life insurance because I indulge in a "dangerous" sport.

My most painful injury ever was when I managed to push a shard of glass around 1.5cm up behind my finger nail, it didn't look like much but the pain was unbelievable.

Some of my friends have suffered some pretty horrific injuries; at school a mate managed to feed his right hand through a mincer when he worked in a butcher's shop. Also, my co-driver used to compete in Moto-cross - his worst injury was when he broke his cocyx. It had to be operated on, and then the wound couldn't be stitched up - it was left open and stuffed with wadding.
Posted on: 29 April 2004 by BLT
Bloody hell! That's no skin off your nose!!!