(This might count as a poll, and I nearly put it in IMHO, but it’s really more of a mundane and pointless anecdote that ends with a call for other mundane and pointless anecdotes. So I figured MPSIMS was its proper home. :))
I sleep on my side and/or stomach, usually with an arm under my head (under the pillow). Every now and then I wind up with my face resting on my bare hand, and my fingers are curled shut. And when that happens, sometimes I will go to move my fingers and wind up scratching my face. A handful of times I have woken up to find a spot of blood on the pillowcase (which can be quite disconcerting, let me tell you!), and when I look in the mirror there are shallow gouges where I scratched myself. Sometimes I don’t notice the scratches until I get in the shower (ouch!).
It happened again Sunday morning. I have three small but distinct scratches, now with scabs and everything, just next to my right eye. Luckily, I had just trimmed my nails!
Does anyone else ever hurt themselves while sleeping, or just before falling asleep/waking up (not counting sleepwalking)?
My mother once scratched through the top 10 or 13 (I can’t remember which) layers of her right cornea in her sleep. Apparently such a wound is both painful on its own and makes one EXTREMELY light sensitive. Who would have guessed?
Doesn’t that story just put warm fuzzies in your heart about potential future injuries?
I’ve been a sleepwalker my whole life. One time my wife heard a loud noise, and when she went to wake me to investigate, I was the cause of the noise. Turns out I fell backwards and bashed my head…and upon a trip to the chiropractor a week later, I had a terrible case of whip lash, from the fall.
I rip my nose ring out all the time. It’s a stud though, so it doesn’t do much damage and I usually just wake up and put it back in. I used to punch walls in my sleep, and I know I’ve fallen out of bed a few times, smacking my face on the corner of the night stand in the process. I haven’t done that since I was pregnant, nearly 3 years ago.
Worst I’ve ever done was wake up with a kinked muscle somewhere from sleeping on it weird.
Unless you count the time I got up to go pee, and realized after I was done that I was facing the wrong way. I hadn’t lifted the lid on the toilet, but on the laundry hamper.
I have slept in weird positions and woken up injured because of that. For some reason one night I slept with both arms over my head and managed to overextend something, causing me nearly unbearable pain for a couple of days.
And my husband has been injured in my sleep, too :o I don’t know if I was having a dream or what, but I woke up to find my fist balled up and about 1 millimeter from his nose. Thank heavens I woke when I did, and managed to pull my punch at the last second, but even so, momentum was not on our side, and I whacked him a good one and bloodied his nose. Poor fella was sound asleep until that second.
When I was a little girl, say 5 or 6, Mom would wake me up in the morning and find blood all over the wall behind my head. I would pick my nose, start a nosebleed and wipe the nastiness all over the wall. All while soundly asleep. Don’t know how many times that happened, but I bed Mom started checking on me in the wee hours during that time.
I like to sleep really close to the wall. So, sometimes, if my leg(s) and/or arm(s) jerk suddenly in my sleep, it would hit the wall and I would wake up trying not to yell. And I always forget not to sleep so close to the wall.
Only to one’s dignity.
I manage to wake up in strangely contorted positions with some regularity. And even though I know I should not sleep on my right shoulder I seem to naturally roll that direction in my sleep. I wake up sore and sometimes stay sore all day.
I once broke my pinky finger by slamming it into the headboard as I flailed in the midst of a bad nightmare. The thing that was odd was that I didn’t wake up right away, and when I did, I was groggy enough that I didn’t immediately recognize what was wrong, even as I looked at my finger which was bent at an angle incompatible with function.
I never hurt myself, but more than once, my husband has tried to hurt himself. I was woken by the extra-loud snoring sounds he started to make while smothering himself with both arms. Another time he was apparently trying to twist his own head off. Also, a couple off times a year, he sits straight up in bed yelling about bread products, then falls back on the pillow asleep. “HONEY-THE OTHER MUFFIN !” or “AUH WAFFLES!” . The screaming for carbs may be unrelated to the evil-hand issues.
I bit my own lip in my sleep a couple of weeks ago – I got myself both on my lip and just below it. All I knew was I was mostly asleep and then OUCH! My first thought was that something had stung me, but once I was actually awake and stuff it became obvious that wasn’t it.
It was kinda freaky, really. Asleep, then PAAAAIN. My bottom lip was sore for several days!
The only actual injury I’ve gotten is lying funny and having sore muscles, but I have a near-miss story.
Once (fairly recently) I was having a nightmare about being chased. As I was waking up, I was still trying to run from whoever or whatever was chasing me. I ended up launching myself out of the bed onto the floor. I woke up as I was doing this, and not really able to stop it- it was weird. I didn’t hit my head on anything, but I could have.
I do the sleeping in odd positions and waking up in pain a lot. For a while I was throwing one or both arms over my head and waking up with them so asleep that it was like they were dead. There’s nothing like having both your arms go dead and not being able to move them. And talk about pain when the circulation comes back it’s murder.
I have also woken up a few times to find blood vessels in my eyes have burst, all I can figure is that I must have poked myself in the eye while I was sleeping.
I have also inflicted injury on my boyfriend, apparently I have punched and kicked him a few times in my sleep.
I don’t hurt myself, but I hurt other people. I’m a very violent sleeper. As a child I use to kick in my sleep. I’ve given my mother many bruises.
My favorite story is from when my husband and I were dating. We had been living with each other for a little while. He already knew how I was went I slept. One night I got really hot and threw the covers off of the bed. It landed on his side. A few minutes later I was cold and wanted the covers back. So mostly asleep I started feeling around for them. I leaned over him trying to grab the blanket. He made the mistake of moving slightly. I bit him on his side… really hard. The next morning he told me what I did. I thought he was just messing with me, but I had left a nice sized bite mark that I knew he couldn’t have done.
Two stories of sleep injury, both from my Navy days aboard a Destroyer. Have you ever had a dream that made you sit bolt upright as you awoke? This is not a good idea if there is a (slightly) padded steel beam about 2 feet above you. I didn’t lose consciousness, but galaxies exploded for awhile (there may have been some bluebirds, too).
Another incident, suffered in the same top bunk, involved one of the small (15") metal fans fastened to the bulkhead between the bunks. They had a fairly open guard and one night in a dead sleep, I roller over and stuffed my hand directly into the fan blade. Until that moment, I did not know it was possible to stop a spinning metal fan blade with your bare hand. :eek:
A couple years ago, I apparently rolled over in my sleep and off the bed - I woke up just as I teetered over the edge. Trying to catch myself I thrust my hand down, right into the garbage can where it smashed a burned out light bulb, cutting my hand open. This had no effect on my momentum, and I ended up twisting my leg (which hurt for a day or so).
My bf does the scratching thing that you mentioned Misnomer. He regularly wakes up with big scratches on his back, but he doesn’t remember scratching himself. (I didn’t do it! Honest!) I guess it’s more common that we thought.
I have three small but distinct scratches, now with scabs and everything, just next to my right eye. Luckily, I had just trimmed my nails!