Several thousand times…
…Bringing other people in by ambulance when I wan an EMT…
For myself: once, when I was three. I was out in our backyard, playing with friends, and turned to look at something at just the wrong time - my ear caught on a little bit of decoration that was sticking out of the wrought iron patio furniture, and I needed stitches. I still have a little notch out of that ear.
I’ve taken my husband to the ER twice in the last three years - once when he broke his hand, and once when he sliced his finger open while getting dinner ready.
Only once - high fever and a nasty case of pneumonia.
For me, twice. Once in 7th grade. I’d fallen and hurt my wrist, but it turned out to be nothing. Once when I was on a work-related trip out of town - my heart was racing and I felt really weird - turns out I had super-high blood pressure, and I went on meds as soon as I got home. That was 12 years ago, I think.
For my husband - twice. Once when he took skydiving lessons (ended up with 4 screws in his right leg) and once when he had an infected gallbladder (surgically removed.)
Just once, I think. In 2nd grade, I had my finger stuck in the hinge side of a door at school as it closed. pretty ugly.
Joe
Before age 18:
- Stitches on the back of my head
- Arm injury
- Broken arm
- Not broken arm
- Broken leg
- Not broken finger (wouldn’t have gone, but boss told me to for worker’s comp purposes)
- Back injury plus some stitches in my chin - only ambulance ride
Possibly other sprained ankles and knee injuries. My most serious injury aside from the broken arm - a torn up knee - did not involve an ER trip.
After 18:
- Shingles in my eye. Need care RIGHT NOW on a Saturday. I figured it was shingles, but hubby was convinced I’d need a CT scan or something and I was in no position to argue, so we went to the ER. Spent maybe 40 minutes there, left with some extremely helpful prescriptions, and spent the rest of the weekend asleep.
My 8yo son takes after me: three trips for broken bones, one for stitches.
Not in chronological order, but as I am remembering them…
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Too young to remember, dehydration as an infant.
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Slammed my thumb in a car door. Went the next morning to the ER to have it drained. I would have gone to the doctor, but this was Saturday morning and it hurt so bad I couldn’t wait for Monday. Some of my male friends have drained their own using hot needles or drill bits, but I just couldn’t do it.
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Rabies vaccine. Bit by a stray, couldn’t catch stray, I already had the pre-exposure series, but protocol required a booster. Doc’s office didn’t carry the vaccine, so they sent me to the ER for it.
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Bad reaction to Benadryl. How did I know it would make me delusional, I had never taken it before? I knew what was going on, it just took me a little while (8 hrs) to figure out that I should go to the ER and they would make it all better. A shot of ativan put me out and I woke up feeling normal. Felt like an idiot, but the doc said they see stuff like that sometimes.
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Asthma attack. Nothing would help, went in for breathing treatment.
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Bit by a cat, again. This time I didn’t need the rabies shot, it wasn’t a stray. Damn cat managed to sink its tooth right into the median nerve on my right wrist. Ouch. Never felt such pain in my life. Current protocol for cat bites is IV antibiotics, so I was stick there for 24 hours. They thought the numbness in my fingers was a result of swelling, not nerve injury, but it quickly became apparent that the nerve was injured. Had surgery to repair nerve, but things are still not 100% and probably never will be.
I consider myself average as far as the # of visits go.
5: Fell off basement steps, landing on my head
19: Panic attack
28: Severe abdominal pain (told them it was my appendix; the bastards sent me home)
28: Next morning: ruptured appendix (rushed into surgery; almost died)
42: Numbness, growing from extremities.
63: Sliced open hand with cat food lid (9 stitches)
65: Bad infection on leg.
Twice - once for concussion, once for severe facial swelling and fear of anaphylaxis. Both were when I was 16-17.
I was born very, very careful, so even as a baby and child (when I ran loose with no adult supervision most of the time) I rarely got hurt. The concussion was because some dumb-ass pushed me from a height onto my head. And while I used to get sick (and swell up) quite a bit, I was never that sick, and I never run high fevers.
My bosses son’s are only 4 and 2 1/2, and they have each been the ER 10 times or more each already (the younger one is even more sickly and accident-prone than the older!).
My freind who inspired to OP survived her first visit, as well as her first overnight stay, and is resting comfortably at home with three stitches in her nose. She said her bathroom looked like a murder scene.
Zero so far. Will probably happen at some point. I maybe should have gone a couple years ago when I sprained my thumb: it went completely over backwards and there was a snapping sound. The joint swelled up and it spread across the palm of my hand. I figured it wasn’t broken because I could move it, so I didn’t do anything. It took a week before I could grip anything and about 6 months before I had most of my range of motion back (it never fully returned). Should probably have at least gone to a doctor.
My parents had to take my brother to the ER once at age 7 for an asthma attack, but since he’s turned 18 I swear he’s in there 3-4 times a year for various stupid accidents. Bicycle jousting? C’mon, man.
Discounting childhood, I think 5 times.
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Industrial accident. I was opening up a large steam fired tuna oven and was supposed to use a long bar to hit it with if it got stuck. Well I just pushed it up by hand and got 2nd degree steam scalding burns under the tender parts of both arms.
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Took my 650 Yamaha to the store only a mile away in the summer time so I didn’t wear any gloves or other protection. Hit a spot of pea gravel and the bike went down. I was going so slow that I could have just dropped the bike and stepped away but I wanted to save the scratches on the bike so I tried to keep it up and instead ground my knuckles into the pavement and gravel. Nasty!
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Another industrial accident. I was cooking a digest tank full of chicken parts to make pet food flavors. You added phosphoric acid to adjust the pH and Papain to separate the meat from the bone. Papain is a meat tenderizer made from papayas and I opened a little envelope of the dry powder and it went "poof’ right into my eyes. Meat tenderizer in the eyes is not a good thing, ate all the slime off my eyeballs and I had to put some vaseline type stuff in them for a couple days.
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This year, woke up in bed spinning like I was drunk, sat up and started to puke. Tried to walk and could hardly stand. And half my face was numb. CT scan, MIR, and it wasn’t a stroke it was labyrinthitis, or inner ear infection. Weirdest thing I have ever had.
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Day before bow hunting season I was shooting a target and the arrow went all the way through, so I thought I would unscrew the broadhead. You really should use a tool to do this but I used my fingers and put a nice gash in my thumb that would not stop bleeding, so I had to have stitches.
Hmmm…that I can recall…
1.) Split lip by a phone ( playing under a table and got a tangled in the cord, as I poken my head out I pulled it down off the edge - I can still vividly remember seeing it as a black mass crashing down on my face ) when I was in pre-school. Got a few stitches. The scar is only barely perceptible today. Obviously that was back when phones were capable of being used as deadly blunt instruments ;).
2.) Opened up my palm on the bottom of a broken bottle that I fell on while playing in kindergarten. That scar is a little more visible, though now smallish faint.
3.) Ran full tilt through a sliding glass door wearing nothing but my underwear in maybe 3rd grade - laid open my chest and knee, plus a hundred tiny cuts. LOTS o’ stitches.
4.) Broken wrist playing touch football in 8th grade ( I got tripped while at a full sprint ).
5.) Nonspecific duodenitis around age 30 - first ER diagnosis was a perforated appendix. Waited a few days before finally going in and as a result ended up hospitalized for a few days on an IV drip and forbidden to ingest anything, liquid or solid.
6-8.) Kidney stones. First time around ~33 or 34 I think and I had no idea what it was ( it was the worst episode as well - according to a couple of my doctors I seem more stoic than average about pain, but it was bad enough to make me vomit ). The others because I had no pain meds around the house. The last time I actually passed the stone in the ER bathroom, much to the fascinated delight of the on-duty nurse and the ER physician ;).
ETA: Oh, yeah and #9 would be a persistent upper respiratory infection with a cough that got bad enough that I started bringing up blood and figured better safe than sorry, just in case it was coming from the lungs. Mid-30’s maybe.
Twice – both for my husband’s panic attacks. All my surgeries have been pre-planned and in network. What can I say? I’m a Type A.
[ul]
[li]Broken leg after gymnastics accident when I was 12[/li][li]Accidental almost-OD on cough syrup when I was 17. Note to all: Do not just sit a bottle of cough syrup by your bed when you’re sick. I’d wake up coughing and take a swig. Repeat, repeat, repeat. My mother came in to wake me up for school and she could barely wake me. Less than 100 pounds+ cough syrup = trip to emergency department[/li][li]Blood alcohol poisoning at 20. 100 proof Rumplemintz + less than 100 pounds = stomach pumped at emergency department[/li][li]Broken ribs, broken cheekbone, broken nose, 46 stitches and other fun stuff which resulted in a week long inpatient stay.[/li][li]Car accident a couple of years ago - broken wrist, broken clavicle, two broken ribs, and a concussion[/li][/ul]
Did she remember to make a drawing of the flux capacitor after she woke up?
I’ve been to the ER a couple times, but that was back when I had undiagnosed anxiety. However once when I broke a bone in my hand I didn’t see the doctor for a week. I was a lot younger when all that happened.
About 4 times, but the only one worth reporting was a few years ago, for an animal bite on my hand, after it bit me it died right away. Although its teeth sank pretty far in, interestingly, it hardly hurt at all (why is that?) Anyway, this was shortly after 9/11, it was late at night, and every building on post was surrounded by MPs armed to the teeth. I had to park some distance away and walk up to these armed guys with my bloody hand; it was kind of a funny/weird scene.
I got really pissed off later after waiting 5+ hours and was almost about to say screw it and leave when they called me in. Yep, animal body had to have rabies test.
[quote=“Sleeps_With_Butterflies, post:76, topic:564831”]
[ul]
[li]Broken leg after gymnastics accident when I was 12[/li][li]Broken ribs, broken cheekbone, broken nose, 46 stitches and other fun stuff which resulted in a week long inpatient stay.[/li][li]Car accident a couple of years ago - broken wrist, broken clavicle, two broken ribs, and a concussion.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Damn! That’s a lot of breaks. Any of it linger? To this day the wrist I broke ( not too seriously ) 30 years ago seems still very slightly weaker than the other one - if I’m doing something like lugging around heavy furniture it gets tired and sore just a little quicker.
Luckily, no. That could change as I get older, I’m sure. Every once in a while I get a twinge in my ribs but so far so good!
At age 3, my brother beaned me in the head with a rock. I don’t know if the stitches were at the ER or not.
At 30, a doctor prescribed me some antibiotics for a sore throat. That caused a truly epic rash from my knees to my elbows, so my new girlfriend took me to the ER. After a few hours, we saw a doctor; he looked at me for two seconds and said “You have mono.” New girlfriend was unrepentant. Now she’s my wife.