Anyone else have a 'This is gonna hurt' moment?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was thinking just this evening of a moment in which time just seemed to slow down for me, just long enough for me to think how badly things were going to turn out when it sped back up again.
I was on a tour in Israel out at some caves by the sea, and a rock dislodged from the cliff-face, high above us. It smashed down into the back of my head.
Everything just seemed to slow, and I tumbled down the nearby stairs. I remember thinking, as I rushed towards the rocks below, “Oh, this is gonna hurt.” I remember that distinctly. I also remember thinking, “I better yell something so people know I’ve fallen.” Amusingly (in hindsight) I tried to yell “Oh shit!” but all that I managed was “Oh-” before I impacted with the ground.

Just wondering if anyone else has had the time-slows-down-because-something-amazingly-painful-is-about-to-happen (TSDBSAPIATH) experience?

2

Ooh! Yeah! It was night-time, and I was running, and leaped over a barbed wire fence. (Young and stupid…) My heel caught in the top strand, and I sort of flipped over, backward, face up.

For a long, magical moment, I watched the stars turn, slowly, like the precession of the equinox. Time stretched. It was dreamlike…

Then, SLAM, on my back on the ground, knocked the wind out of me, gasped like a beached fish, and hated life for the next five minutes.

But…the beauty…the haunting aethereal beauty…

(I even wrote a poem about it, “Precession,” from which I will graciously spare y’all.)

3

Oh yes. I was once showing off on my son’s little scooter, shooting down the sidewalk of our very steep street and streaking into our cul-de-sac at high speed. I was a fully grown adult who had no business doing such things. On one run (my last one) the tiny front wheel hit a pebble and the scooter stopped dead and threw me head first down the hill. I sailed through the air long enough to think “this is really gonna hurt” and I actually had time to get my body twisted sideways so I landed on my left side rather than my face and palms. It tore the shoulder out of my favorite WOW radio T-shirt, and also tore all the hide off my left shoulder, arm and leg. And ground tiny bits of gravel into the wounds. Heh heh. Good times.

4

What is it with the time slowing down thing? It’s happened to me, and I hear it from numerous people who go through moments of peril.

5

Nope, but I’ve had some of the smack/“oh, shit!!!” type of moments. You know, the type when you feel your bone breaking or your tendon ripping and in the same fraction of a second, you realize with extreme clarity of mind you’re in for a painful trip to the ER and a long(ish) recovery

6

I sometimes have a similar experience after I hurt myself, but before my brain has a chance to fully register it. I’ll look down at the wound, think “boy, that doesn’t feel anywhere near as bad as it looks” and then realize with horror that its just because adrenaline or whatever is keeping me from really feeling it and that in a minute or so, I’m going to have to spend the next few hours wishing I was unconscious.

7

I broke my toe, and hobbled to the local bonesetter’s in excruciating pain.

My doc was a man of few words. After examining the images taken on his Truman-era x-ray machine, he said, “I’m going to move your toe back into its correct position. It will take me several seconds, and it will hurt more than it did when you broke it.”

I said, “Okay. I am going to scream louder than any patient you have ever had in here.”

Doc: “Fair enough.”

He bent, I screamed awhile, he stopped.

“Is that it? All done?” I asked, relieved.

“Not yet.”

This time, I just went ahead and began screaming in anticipation. Heh.

8

I’ve had my share of time distortion incidents, but two incipient-pain-distortion ones come to mind.

The first was in college, coming down the stairs in the school’s old Engineering building. Each tread had a strip of rough material on its edge to improve traction. A fine idea…except the stairs were old, and the strips were coming loose. I heard it when the guy behind me snagged a toe on the edge of the one on the upper steps. I had enough time to notice that there was no shuffle of regained footing, and realize that meant he was pitching headlong down the stairs toward me. Plenty of time…and nowhere to go on the narrow staircase. He slammed into me, and we went tumbling down the rest of the way to the concrete floor below, where I landed on my face, and he somehow managed to land with an elbow in one of my kidneys. (That was the first time I ever pissed blood, an experience I could have happily lived my whole life without.)

The second one that springs to mind was actually an aversion–a “this is gonna hurt” moment that actually didn’t end in pain. In fact, it ended up at least looking like a Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Circumstances had arisen that led to me fighting about twelve people at once with boffer swords. (They were only supposed to show up six at a time, but there was a mishap with the basselope and a doppelganger.) I was holding my own, mostly by retreating a lot and using the rough terrain–which I had had most of the day to familiarize myself with–to keep them from all coming at me at once. Eventually they cornered me, though. I had my back to a sharp drop of about nine feet, tangles of brush hemming me in on the sides, and a tight arc of enemies in front of me. I was toast, which was as it should be, since I was the Villain.

Then it happened. I stepped back with one foot to brace myself for the rush…only my cloak had gotten snagged on a branch that kept it from moving back with my leg, and my foot came down on it. I was already staggering a bit with fatigue, and that was enough to cost me my balance; before I knew it, I was tumbling back over the edge. Time stretched as I contemplated the coming impact with the hard, hard earth…and then I was vertical, and miraculously upright. My tumble had left me in just the right position to land on my feet. My legs flexed automatically, absorbing the impact, and I found myself standing, looking up at an arc of wondering faces. I held up one hand to indicate that I was unhurt. They took a safer route down, and I was eventually properly defeated by the Forces of Good.

(At the wrap-up party, I kept my mouth shut about it and let the others talk, so I found out what they thought they saw: the cornered villain, who had been confounding them with unlikely feats of simulated acrobatics all along, suddenly flung himself over the brink with a swirl of his cloak, landed with uncanny grace below, and raised one sword in a mocking challenge. Apparently, cloaks automatically make everything at least 20% cooler.)

9

Anyone thats been hit in the nuts has experienced this.

10

Any time I fall off a horse - more so as I get older, this is really going to hurt!! So, I bought myself a body protector, and in due course I had my horse spook badly (leapt in the air, span around and fled the scene) I did that cartoon thing where I was hanging in mid-air for a split second thinking aw fuuuuuu when I realised I had a back protector on, and smiled to myself thinking “take that gravity!!”

I landed on my leg, specifically my thigh.

And yes it did fecking hurt, like hell for about 2 weeks.

:frowning:

11

I’ve posted about it elsewhere on the Dope, but the TSDBSAPIATH Effect happened to me when I managed to throw myself down the stairs to land en pointe on my right big toe.

I violated the Number One Rule of Those Who Live Alone: never, ever put stuff on the stairs that you could trip and fall over, thereby breaking some important part of your body and leaving you unable to move or get help and rendering yourself emergency cat food until sometime in the future when friends and family realize they haven’t heard from you in days.

Tripped over an extension cord about six stairs up, went airborne and came down on the toe with all my weight. It seemed to take forever to land and during the six weeks it took to land, I just KNEW something was going to get broken. I was right. I shattered the toe in a double spiral fracture. OW OW OW. I instantly knew it was broken, but better that than my neck or back.

The surgeon knocked me out, wrestled the toe back together under a fluroscope and pinned it. Six weeks in a wheelchair/crutches. Good times.

12

One time I was cutting through some cardboard with a box cutter with my thumb directly in the way of my line of cutting. I clearly thought to myself “This is a terrible idea” a seemingly endless split-second before I sliced the back of my thumb. Then a split-second later I clearly thought to myself “Oh dear; I bet this is going to bleed a lot”. It did.

13

RadioLab did a cool episode exploring this phenomenon. It is the first segment.

14

Yup. Got hit by a semi, and in the split second before it happened, I spent a long, surprisingly calm moment thinking something like, “Well, I’m going to be hit. This is definitely going to hurt, and I might die.” And it did, and I didn’t.

15

Another horse related one. I guess it was about 1980 or so; I was working my horse doing flying lead changes on a serpentine, and he was feeling froggy. In the middle of one of the half circles, he bucked, came down with his front feet crossed, and proceeded to do a sommersault.

I went off over his head, doing one of my own, and landed on my back, looking up to see some 1000 lbs of equine coming down on top of me. I distinctly remember thinking, “This is really gona hurt.” and closed my eyes.

He twisted his body HARD and landed just to my right side, missing me entirely. My only injury was 2 huge, black bruises on my inner thighs from hitting the pommel of my western saddle, and he bit his tongue pretty badly.

We were really lucky.

16

I hit a patch of ice in the Adirondacks on the top of a curvy pass and as my car was spinning around with me trying to control it I was thinking “I’m probably headed down the mountainside” but I was preoccupied* too much with the controls to worry about the consequences. Thankfully my car curved around with the road and I did not fall down. Had I been going faster than 15 mph I might not be alive today.

*I was going to say “struggled with the controls” but my gut told me to not turn into the spin as that would put me directly over the mountainside, and I definitely didn’t want to fight the spin as that would make it worse, so I basically just tried to guide the car slightly whenever it seemed it was susceptible to being controlled.

17

On Valentine’s Day, I was re-hanging curtain rods after painting. I stepped backwards off my step stool, directly onto another smaller stool. I felt my legs fly up into the air, and I remember thinking about how back it was going to hurt landing on that stupid stool now underneath me. It did hurt, very much so. I was pretty sure I had broken my ass/lower back, but all was simply very bruised.

Then, I had to sit through a lecture about doing Stupid Things Whilst Pregnant from my OB the very next day. That was also painful.

18

Last year I broke my nose while skiing. I was going down a not particularly hard run when I felt my left ski loosen and come off. I was still wearing the right ski and for a fraction of a second I thought I could control my speed and eventually stop without incident but the right ski caught an edge and it came off. I was left with momentum carrying me forward and it felt as if I flew through the air until I landed face first in the snow. While flying through the air, I knew I was in for a world of hurt. Time did seem to stand still for the fraction of a second after I lost the ski and before I hit the ground and I knew there was no way I wasn’t going to come out of it without getting hurt.

19

Yep, in fact this is a two for one. You know those giant hamster tubes the kids crawl around in at chuck-e-cheeses? Well out local one was shutting down and I thought it would be a fine idea to use one that had a large porthole as a fish tank. Having managed to lug the thing home, I was getting ready to work on it and somehow managed to drop it. As it fell, I was able to think" Oh shit. There goes my toes. This is going to suck." True enough it landed right on my big toenail which immediately turned purple. Now swearing and it pain, I looked at my discolored toe and thought to myself that if I don’t do something, and do it fast, I’m going to lose the nail. This was an unacceptable outcome in my book. Frantically I looked around for anything that I could heat up to burn through the nail like they do in the ER, but to no avail. Then my eye lit on my toolkit which I had laid out for the project… Ah-ha. There was a nice shiny drill bit. A new problem now presented itself: I hadn’t got out the drill yet. As the pressure on my toenail was rapidly increasing, Time slowed down to near stillness as I just twisted it by hand through the top of my nail. It seemed to take* Hours*. Suddenly though, I was through and a tiny geyser of blood shot up with nearly enough force to hit me in the face. Somehow time returned to normal and I found this to be absurdly amusing. I bandaged up my toe, threw that damn chucky cheese tube out, and sat pouting and eating icecream until Nashiitashii got home.

20

Yes. I laid a motorcycle down once and had exactly that thought as I saw the pavement coming up in slow motion. It turns out that I was wrong about how much it would hurt. It actually hurt a lot more than that.