No accident, but I’ve done the “shine a flashlight through your palm” trick to see the bones in my hand.
So…I’ve never seen my bones, really, up close and personal, but I have seen one of the bones in my mom’s left index finger. She was in a car accident. Worst f**cking day of my life (and my mom’s, too, really).
I think I did, about 2 months ago. I was trying to lift one of those mini refrigerators onto the top shelf of my closet for storage, and it slipped and landed on my knee cap. There was a sharp piece of metal on the bottom, that sliced into my knee. There is very little flesh on top of the knee cap. When I looked at it, I just saw white fat and blood, but it was pretty deep, and thinking back now, I am sure the metal was stopped by the bone. But I almost passed out looking at it, much to my embarrassment. It took about 20 minutes before I really got it together again.
I used to work as a vet tech, and assisted with surgeries, etc, and was never bothered by any sort of gruesomeness. But I nearly passed out when I got a little cut on my knee. What a wimp.
I’m thinkin’ this is what the term “Eye of the beholder” was coined for.
I fell off a cliff when I was 10 and got to see a leg bone all the ways from a remote Johnson City creekbed to the downtown Austin hospital, July, back of an unairconditioned stationwagon.
I’ve seen one particular bone in my hand twice. If it happens again I’m going to scribble some graffeti on it.
Bones in left forearm - they had an argument with a falling rock. I was shocky and had also been struck a glancing blow on the head so it’s all a tad hazy. Essentially everyone was fussing about my head yadda yadda when they finally decided my insistant “My arm really hurts” might have some cause, jacket was pulled off, arm exposed … a moment of stunned silence then intakes of breath, at least one “Shit!” and someone sheilded my eyes. Looked a mess of scarlet and white IIRC.
I saw the bones in my right arm one time. Hope never to do it again, either; I’m not squeamish, but I don’t like pain, and it fricken’ hurt!
Turns out that the way I acquired the injury was a series of mistakes, any of which, had I avoided, could have kept me from doing myself an injury.
The first mistake was sneaking into the (locked) swimming pool area of the apartment complex I was visiting friends at after school.
The second mistake was dropping my handy-dandy shaved nail file and watching it bounce into the drain, where I couldn’t reach it. Why was that a mistake? Because, without it, I could no longer pick the lock that kept the pool area closed off. The door was one of those spring-loaded wrought-iron gates that automatically latched and needed a key to open, regardless of which side you were on.
The third mistake was not arguing with the landlord, who was a crotchety bastard, when he caught me in the pool area. He asked how I’d got in there; I panicked and told him I’d climbed the fence (I didn’t want to get my friends in trouble). He said, “Well, you can get out the same way. Right now!”
So I tried. That was mistake #4. I’m not a very good climber, and finally, after much difficulty, while the jerk watched from inside the (locked) clubhouse that formed one wall of the pool area, I managed to get to the top. I swung my legs over, eyed the 10’ drop, gulped, and jumped.
I would’ve been fine, I think, except that the top of the wrought-iron fence caught my pants as I pushed off and spun me around. I ended up hitting the ground on my arms, with my hand flexed back and elbows rigid. The bones in my right forearm snapped (classic compound greenstick fracture). When the world stopped spinning, I realized that I hurt very much bad and that there was this funny-looking white bit sticking out of my arm.
Mistake #5 was that I told everyone I’d been climbing a tree and fell, rather than admit I’d been sneaking into the pool area. Granted, I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but the landlord shouldn’t have forced me to climb the fence to get out, either.
But if the skunks aim was bad he could have slept in the shelter, right?
just curious
Teeth aren’t bones, anyway, and, IIRC, evolved ultimately from scales on our fishlike ancestors.
Well, if the skunk’s aim had been bad, Brad could’ve slept in the shelter.
Important lesson here: Six feet is not a safe distance from which to annoy a skunk.
Sliced open my hand once when cutting an avocado. I could see the palm and a bit of the index finger. The thing I remember most clearly - even more than the pain - is being amazed at how *white * the bones were. As a kid I went hiking a lot and came across the occasional animal carcass. All the bones in my experience had been gray and weathered. In the body they’re, well, bone white.
I see.
We don’t have skunks in the UK but I’ve often wondered …how bad is the smell and what does it smell like?
Burning tyres, rotting fish, boiled cabbage???
or a combo of the lot.
chowder, the smell is a strong musky smell, sort of like cat spray but not nearly as heavy and a lot more acrid. In a way it smells like musk cologne, but in a really, really bad way.
Less than a month ago I saw inside my knee. I had to be awake to bend and straighten my knee during surgery. When the doc had his camera and tool in my knee I could see the tv screen out of the corner of my eye. I’d seen the photos of inside my knee from the last 4 surgeries but the camera was in my knee right then! I thought it was very cool… but I was also a bit goofy and out of it from whatever the anesthesiologist gave me.
When I was about 11 I gashed my shin on a piece of metal. It was pretty deep and right on the shin bone. The wound was white for a few minutes, then started gushing blood.
I saw an old friend’s bone once. On a class trip to CO we were hiking up the mountains and she slipped on some loose rocks. Right below her knee landed on a sharp rock. It made a nasty deep jagged cut down to the bone. Ick! She eventually recovered but had to have several surgeries to remove rocks from her knee!
Most of these happened as a kid. I scraped my shin, exposing the bone. That hurt like hell. I fell and took a chunk out of my knee, saw white at the bottom of the pit. I cut through the top of my finger with a knife, luckily missing the tendon, but I got to see the end of the bone.
Several years ago, I had to have surgery for some pretty badly broken wrists. When they went in to take the pins out, they had to lay open some of the skin again. I could see in their glasses the reflection of what was going on and so of course could see my bones. They had little fabric drapes so that I wasn’t supposed to be able to see. I actually think it would have been cool to watch. BTW, even with local anesthetic you can feel the vibrations and some pain when they yank what are essentially nails out of your bones. Not very comfortable.