Dads and their injuries.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was sitting at the kitchen counter, watching the white trash duke it out on various talk shows, when my dad runs in from the garage with one hand covered in blood. He babbles something about the car battery as he’s washing it off in the sink, then says “I feel faint” and kneels down on the floor for about a minute. All the time I’m saying “Hey dude, are you all right?”

He goes down to the living room and sits on the couch for a couple of minutes. Then he comes back up and says “Man, that was weird. I must have broke a nerve or something, my thumb’s all numb, and I thought I was going to throw up and faint for a minute.” He holds out his hand, and I can see this deep gash right under his thumbnail, and the nail’s turning all shades of purple. Not the pretty ones either. “Yeah, I’ll probably lose the nail. Even weirder is how I did it. I was holding the car battery, and I crushed my hand in between the battery and the side of the car.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a doctor or something?” I say.
“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

He grabs another paper towel, a couple of band-aids and goes back to work. :rolleyes:

2

I did something similar just last week. I was putting a new transmission in my old pick-up truck, and just about had it in place when the damn thing slipped off the alignment pins on the engine block. It fell right on my thumb, pinning it against the crossmember of the frame. The knuckle was trapped, and I couldn’t pull out. After about a minute of excruciating pain, the numbness cleared my head a bit, and I was able to reach a floor jack with my foot, and raise the tranny up enough to get my hand out. Which is good, 'cos plan B involved my pocketknife. Damn thing still hurts like hell, but the truck’s running great.

3

My dad was doing something in the basement with a saw. Story I heard was that his hand got across a spinning blade. My mother is worse than I am about blood, but our neighbor at the time was an emergency room nurse. She got Dad bandaged and bundled off to the ER. Luckily, he didn’t lose any fingers or any dexterity.

My father-in-law blew off the tip of his thumb messing with a small cannon, but he did it before he became a dad, so it might not count.

My brother-in-law, father of my niece and nephew, had been out drinking and took a dare to lift a manhole cover. His grip slipped and he crushed 3 fingers between the cover and the edge of the hole. Fortunately, he didn’t lose his fingers, tho he suffered verbal abuse from all of us for a while.

4

My dad’s best was when he had the bright idea of giving the basement a really good cleaning with a nice mixture of ammonia and bleach. He was pretty woozy when I happened to go downstairs…

Viewing it from the other side, I was showing my son how to do a spinning sidekick on my heavy bag. Being stupid, I wasn’t paying enough attention - wasn’t respecting the bag and the way it was swinging. Did one, then spun the other way to do another.

It sounded like a rifle shot. My son was like, “What was THAT? Do it again!” I was figuring, “It’s probably just a sprain.” So as my wife is leaving to go out that evening, I’m casually leaning against the wall. On her way out she casually mentions that the carpets really need to be vacuumed. So I proceed to vacuum the whole house on a frigging shattered ankle.

Didn’t get too much sympathy for that one. My son still talks about it occasionally. CRACK!

5

HA! My dad could beat up ALL of y’all’s dads.

My dad is THE original tough guy. He’s a maintenance manager for a manufacturer of rubber gaskets. The punch press for something-or-other went down one day, and he was showing his assistant how to diagnose the problem. After warning his assistant to NEVER put his hand in the punch press, guess what he did? That’s right - put his hand in the punch press. And smashed three fingers to pulp.

He called my mom from the emergency room (he had to be dragged there under great duress). The conversation went thusly:

Mom: “Hello?”
Dad: “Hi, honey. Listen…you’re gonna have to start calling me ‘Lefty’.”
Mom: “DID YOU CUT YOUR HAND OFF?”
Dad: “No, I just…broke it a little.”

The doctors had to cobble together what they could of his finger bones, and they set pretty crooked. He broke the ring finger on his left hand before, and took the cast off early himself with a handsaw, so that finger set all wrong too. Before the punch press incident, if anyone asked how many of something there were, he’d hold up his hands and respond, “9 1/2” - now, it’s been reduced to about 8 1/4.

Oh, my dad. I love him to bits and pieces.

6

My Depression-era Dad, like most of his generation, is made of tougher stuff than mere mortals. Here’s the injuries I know of:

  1. Broke arm after being rolled down a hill in a tire by some older kids.

  2. Right eye destroyed by a homemade arrow in a game of Cowboys-n-Indians. Has worn ceramic eye ever since.

  3. While drilling a dynamite hole in a coal mine, drill caught on rock and began turning, trapping his head between the drill handle and the ceiling of the room.

  4. While working on a pipeline, broke both legs just below the knee when he was caught between two pipes being swung around by a crane.

  5. Later on same job, was struck in head by a swinging pipe. He went back to work until someone noticed that his baseball cap was sitting at a funny angle. His skull was fractured, and the swelling was so bad they had to cut his cap off with a knife.

  6. More recently, he noticed some moles on the side of his head that started to change shape. Realizing that this is one of the Seven Warning Signs, he decided that instead of going to the doctor, he would BURN THEM OFF WITH A CIGARETTE. Needless to say, they grew back, and he ended up having them surgically removed. Just a little basal cell carcinoma.

7

My Dad was trimming the bushes with an electric trimmer, and somehow managed to slice off the meaty part of his thumb.

My FIL is notorious for this type of thing. It’s impossible for him to fix things without hurting himself in the process.

8

My dad’s had a number of injuries. Probably the most memorable was the time the chainsaw slipped while he was cutting wood and sliced into his leg. Of course, this happened while he was out in the hills all by himself, so he had to drive himself back to town for stitches.

The latest was one of the last times I was home. I’d just come back from the movies, and Dad comes into the house squeezing a blood-covered rag over one hand. Since I still have my shoes on and all, I hustle him to my truck and drive him to the local clinic. What happened was, he’d managed to grab one of the guide rails for the garage door, and the exposed edge of the steel sliced him deeply and cleanly, without his even feeling it until he saw the blood. Those clean, smooth cuts really need to be stitched, because they’ll re-open in a flash.

The people in that clinic seemed pretty familiar with my dad, too. No telling what he’s done while I’m away from home.

9

A couple of weeks ago my dad was doing yard work. He had dumped a load of leaves in the ditch in the back of the yard. He was about to walk up the hill and slipped on the leaves. He fell in backwards about 12 or 15 feet down into the ditch while falling with all his weight on the right side of his back. He managed to get up and find a way out of the ditch eventually. He was covered with mud, leaves, and water. My mom took him to the emergency room and he had broken a rib. His back was also bruised and swollen. He was unable to lift anything over 20 lbs. for about four weeks…which is absolutely “wonderful” timing since I need help moving my heavy stuff back home!

10

my old man had burnt his hand really badly before i was born, and had a series of skin grafts. his hand always looked like a map of europe. it was kinda freaky, but no bid deal.

now, im a dad and tear myself up all the time working on stuff. i constructed my garage and destroyed my right shoulder and elbow in the process. just repetitive stress something or another. right arm is mostly numb pretty often.

good thing i’m married and my masterbation days are behind me! :wink:

11

It’s funny. I can’t remember my dad ever getting injured. That’s probably because he was the most meticulous, careful, exacting person I’ve ever met. Used to drive me crazy.

Me, on the other hand… Well, I’ve already related how I make my son laugh with my real-life slapstick demonstrations. Kicking the corner of the baseboard, barefooted, while chasing him around the house comes to mind…

12

I think Hyperelastic’s dad wins.

I can’t recall a time when my father really hurt himself in such a fantastic way, but I could talk about the insane hours he worked at the business he and my mom owned together before they broke up.

As father of three sons now, I have my most ridiculous injuries behind me. Like the time I nearly cut my finger off with a hatchet in Boy Scouts. Or the time I shoved my hand into a running snowblower. All when I was a kid.

Well, there was one just a couple of years ago…

I was practicing with my sword too late at night, a katana with a 26" blade, and in the process of bringing it around in a reverse grip, I lost control for a split second and stabbed myself in the ass.

Ever had a piece of steel stuck in you? It’s unpleasant. I hoped it wasn’t too bad, but when I found that I could stick my finger in this brand new ass-hole past the first knuckle of my index finger, I figured I better get to the ER.

Mrs. Yondan, the angel, didn’t even laugh.

I gotta tell you, I learned some neat lessons that night:

[list=a]
[li]It’s a humbling experience to try and explain an injury like this to complete strangers at 11:30 at night.[/li][li]No matter how much attention, care and fondling you give them, swords don’t give a shit who they cut.[/li][li]Never, ever practice weapons when you are too tired to think straight.[/li][li]If you have a really deep cut in your butt cheek, you can sit on it in such a way as to keep the wound closed, and not bleed all over your car seat.[/li][li]Emergency room folks are very, very understanding, and no matter how outrageous your story is, they have better ones about people who are even bigger damn fools than yourself.[/li][/list=a]

13

Yondan - reminds me of another one a couple of years ago. I was kindly being the dummy for a friend of mine who was giving a lunchtime women’s self defense seminar. I was wearing an open-top boxer’s headgear. At one point, he took me down, and then laid an elbow to the top of my skull. SOB didn’t control the shot, and the top of my head split open. The women were impressed. I case you haven’t experienced it, scalp wounds bleed impressively.

Couldn’t get the thing to stop oozing, and I had to get back to work, and had theater tix for the evening. After trying to type one-handed (using the other hand to hold my scalp together) I broke down and had to call my wife and tell her I might need stitches (a gross understatement). Got home, and she said even if I was an idiot, I wasn’t going to queer our theater plans. I had waited this long, I could wait a little longer. So she slapped a couple of butterflies on me and we were off to the show.

Fast forward, and I’m in the ER around midnight. The folk first asked if I was going to press charges, and then expressed disbelief that I had allowed this guy to hit me in the head.

Then the choice was stitches or staples. The doc recommended staples, so I went along. Figured it would involve some high-tech gadgetry. Instead, they used what appeared to be a modified pocket pal. One person on either side pushed the edges of the gash together, while the doctor bore down to drive staples into my skull. You know how you really have to lean on it to get a staple through 30 sheets or so?

After 9 or so staples, I finally asked, “Uh, don’t you guys have any painkilling shot or spray you could use while you do that?” And using their best bedside manner they asked, “Oh - would you have liked some?” No, numbnuts. I’d far prefer that you simply drive staples into a gaping wound without any painkiller! Sheesh! Well, they only had a few more to go, and figured if I was dumb enough to volunteer to get hit in the head, my skull was thick enough to not need painkillers.

The doc says to get the staples removed, I can either come back to the ER, or go to my HMO if they have a “staple remover.” Again, I make the mistake of imagining some advances in medical technology. You know that grabby claw thing you have on your desk? That’s basically what they used. And you know who it is when you are trying to pull staples out of at thick stack of paper and one end gets stuck? So you have to twist and yank on it? Now imagine someone doing that repeatedly to a recently healed cut that responds by beginning to ooze again.

And for some reason my wife was not fully supportive of my interests in martial arts!

14

My dad set his head on fire with a barbecue pit.

I was cleaning the kitchen one day back in high school, while my parents did yard work outside. Mom and Dad suddenly burst in the back door. Mom had her arm around Dad’s shoulder, so I figured he had hurt his foot or his ankle in the yard.
Me: What happened?
Mom: He set his head on fire!
Me (trying not to laugh): How did that happen?

It’s apparently what can happen when you use a welding torch to light the barbecue pit, close the lid and then open it again. Fortunately, Dad merely lost his eyebrows and a bit of hair. He even went on to grill the steaks that night and let me take a snapshot of him posing with the torch for posterity.

15

This reminded me of another story.

It started on a Saturday afternoon when Dad asked my sister to throw an old chair out. Well, she had plans, and she promptly left without doing it. By this time, Dad had had a few beers and this irritated him mightily. So he decided to throw the chair out of a window on our second-story enclosed porch. In his stocking feet. On a linoleum floor. I stood behind him and watched as he swung the chair out the window and hung on as he followed it down. Mainly I remember the sight of his white-socked feet streaking over the window sill. He didn’t scream or yell or anything. So I walked (yep, walked - I was oddly calm) over to the window to see him sprawled in the strawberry plants. He looked up and said, “I’m okay.”

I went to the kitchen to tell my mother. She looked at me dubiously and said, “He told you to say that.” I said, “No, Mom, he really fell out the window. Go look!” She sighed and went to look out the window. We got there in time to see Dad limping to the back porch and my sister, who had seen the whole thing, at the back gate, saying, “Who do you think you are, Dad, Superman?”

16

This ain’t so much an injury story, as it is an endearing, historical narrative involving my dad making an uncharacteristic mistake. He grew up in England during World War 2, with food rations and bombings and drowned U-Boaters washing up on the shore. He and his brother used to trap pheasant and rabbits, and fish for skate to supplement their diets. When the war ended, the American soldiers paraded through his little village on big trucks and horses, tossing out candy and tinned food to everyone. My dad–in his early teens–grabbed a packet out of the air. He ripped it open, saw beef-jerky-like substances inside, shoved a handful in his mouth and swallowed. It was not any meat product he ate, however, it was chewing tobacco. He spent the next few hours sick out of his mind, but I think it makes a pretty cool tale. :smiley:

17

My father nearly freakin’ killed himself three weeks ago after falling two storeys from a ladder onto concrete.

The window installers were coming in on Saturday, but my father, being a helpful DIY kinda guy, decided to help them out a bit. So on Friday, against my mother’s wishes, he decided to take the windows out. This isn’t the first time he’s done this, and he’s an uncoordinated kind of guy. Anyhow, dad eventually promises not to take it the windows and mom goes to the store to fetch some groceries. Dad decides, Mom’s gone. Time to go up the ladder..

Well, as he’s pulling out one of the windows, he neglects to notice he forgot to remove a screw. The screw suddenly gives and pop, 53, goes free-falling a good 25 feet onto the concrete below.

Grave pain ensues. Luckily, my brother had been around and heard his cries for help. A 911 call and a few minutes later, the ambulance arrives…just as mom is returning with the groceries.

Dad says something like “I should’ve listened to you. Now I think I’m gonna die” to mom.

He’s okay now. Resulting injuries? Shattered shin. Shattered shoulder. He’s got some metal rods in his foot; the ball of his shoulder has been replaced by metal, as well. I guess I’ll call him Robodad from now on. They couldn’t find all the pieces of his ankle, either (though the bone didn’t go through the skin.)

Got the pictures today of his injuries. His legs look like slabs of stapled beef with screws protruding out of it.

Well, at least he discovered the pleasures of morphine for about a week or so…

I’ve never heard him in so much pain…actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in pain before this.

But he’s okay, though he can’t walk for 6 months now.

18

My father nearly freakin’ killed himself three weeks ago after falling two storeys from a ladder onto concrete.

The window installers were coming in on Saturday, but my father, being a helpful DIY kinda guy, decided to help them out a bit. So on Friday, against my mother’s wishes, he decided to take the windows out. This isn’t the first time he’s done this, and he’s not an uncoordinated kind of guy. Anyhow, dad eventually promises not to take it the windows and mom goes to the store to fetch some groceries. Dad decides, Mom’s gone. Time to go up the ladder..

Well, as he’s pulling out one of the windows, he neglects to notice he forgot to remove a screw. The screw suddenly gives and pop, 53, goes free-falling a good 25 feet onto the concrete below.

Grave pain ensues. Luckily, my brother had been around and heard his cries for help. A 911 call and a few minutes later, the ambulance arrives…just as mom is returning with the groceries.

Dad says something like “I should’ve listened to you. Now I think I’m gonna die” to mom.

He’s okay now. Resulting injuries? Shattered shin. Shattered shoulder. He’s got some metal rods in his foot; the ball of his shoulder has been replaced by metal, as well. I guess I’ll call him Robodad from now on. They couldn’t find all the pieces of his ankle, either (though the bone didn’t go through the skin.)

Got the pictures today of his injuries. His legs look like slabs of stapled beef with screws protruding out of it.

Well, at least he discovered the pleasures of morphine for about a week or so…

I’ve never heard him in so much pain…actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in pain before this.

But he’s okay, though he can’t walk for 6 months now.

19

CRAP! double post. Arrrrrrrrr!
You eagle-eyed readers will note an important correction in post two. The line should read “he’s not an uncoordinated kinda guy.”

20

Great thread.

I remember, when I was a kid, sitting in the driveway watching my dad work under the car. A Celica, as I remember. Anyway, I’m just kind of hanging out, not really paying attention, occasionally glancing over at my dad’s legs sticking out from under the car.

“AAAAAAAAAAAA!”

I jumped a mile. My dad’s legs are now kicking furiously, and I can hear metallic thumps where bits of him are slamming up on the underside of the car. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had somehow managed to cut a fuel line and was now dousing his face with gasoline.

“What? What?” I yell, jumping up.

“Wahgh – water!” he yells back as he writhes and wriggles to get himself out from under the car.

Remember, I don’t know what’s wrong. So I dash inside, get a cup, fill it with water, and bring it back out. I find my dad lurching to his feet next to the car, his face wet and smelling of gas, his eyes squinched shut and beginning to swell. I catch one of his waving hands and press the cup into it. Instantly he dashes it against his face.

Brief, motionless pause.

With an odd calmness that speaks volumes about what he’s repressing, he says, “Is that all?”

I then ran for the hose.

He comes by it naturally, I should add. His own father was working in the garage one time and somehow managed to nearly sever all four fingers of one hand on the table saw. This was before the days of microsurgery, so basically they just stuck 'em back on, put pins in 'em, and hoped for the best. They more or less healed, but he could never really bend them after that.

Oh, and a trivia note:

In the third Indiana Jones movie, Harrison Ford used a staple gun to attach his fedora to his head so it wouldn’t keep blowing off while they filmed the tank chase.