Do you remember back in the 1970s when Old Dutch potato chips came in a big box with two indestructable bags of chips in them? The plastic was cleverly tear-resistant, and would respond to 150lbs of shear by turning opaque but intact.
I approached this problem with a meat fork, simultaneously opening the bag and lodging the cussed thing in my head.
I still have the scars, and am very glad to have kept both of my eyes.
An X-ray tech friend of mine showed me an X-ray and challenged me to guess what was wrong with the patient. It was an X-ray of a shoulder and arm – or partial arm, anyway. The guy had gotten drunk and decided to go joy riding in his pickup. He also thought it would be a good idea to drive really close to a telephone pole and slap it as he was speeding by.
It tore his arm off from about halfway down the humerus.
Malleus, Incus, Stapes!, that’s a story! (Skin grafts, whoa)
Great photos, too.
runner pat, I think at least a few of the details are in the username.
My cousin used to be an x-ray technician for an ER. She said you’d be amazed how many people (mostly men) come in with objects up their asses, so far in that they couldn’t be easily retrieved. And every one of them claimed they accidentally sat on the object. Like a flashlight that was still on.
Wasn’t this an episode of Friends?
I was at a surprise party for a friend. She drove up while we scrambled to hide but reached the door before we were ready. The friend closest to the door slammed it shut as she started to open it. The birthday girl lost the tip of her finger and the party mood was somewhat dampened as we all spend the next several hours stting around debating whether to eat the food while we waited for the guest of honor to return from the ER.
I… I… I think I just fainted…
Were you scratching your head at the moment?
I know I’ve posted this somewhere around here before, but…I had a pair of beautiful snow-white Roman geese, the female of which had been sitting on a clutch of eggs for a month or so. I was doubtful that they were going to hatch at all, so I was going to smoothly snatch an egg or two to candle (see if they were viable). My fault entirely, and she took exception to me rootling around under her butt. She clamped on my left wrist with her bill and proceeded to beat holy hell out of my wrist and arm with her wings. My arm swelled up, turned purple, and I was convinced she had broken it. We ended up at the ER, where I explained over and over that I had been flogged by a goose. Flogged. Hit by wings. No, it was my goose. In my barn. Flogged. Yes, by a goose. Her name is Cleopatra. People just kept popping out of the woodwork, dragged by some nurse, and they’d say, “Tell them what happened to you!” I probably would have gotten out of there two hours sooner if I’d just said, “I tripped and fell.”
These stories make my root chakra pucker.
Fresh off the presses:
Chief Complaint: Fever
My Coworker: So, how high is your child’s fever?
Patient’s parent: About 350 degrees.
Coworker: …
Apparently, lacking a thermometer, the parent put one hand on the child’s forehead and the other in an oven. Decided they felt about the same and came to the conclusion their child was running a 350 degree fever. So, of course, they came to the ER.
If you want gruesome stories - I have to say the most graphic thing I’ve ever seen was a 2yo run over by a riding lawnmower. They ended up amputating below the knee. Now, that was an experience to haunt your dreams. Poor little kid flailing around with his mangled leg hanging off. They did sedate him as soon as they could, but the first few minutes of the trauma were utterly terrible.
There was the time my father ran his hand through a table saw. No fingers lost.
Then the time he stuck his hand in a snow blower.
The times he cut his hands and beat up his hands and all that made him a familiar patient with the local hospital.
Then came the day I tried to pry something up with a steak knife and it slipped right into the middle finger of my left hand. I cut my tendon and nerve. All the nurses had to hear the story again and again. The surgery managed to last under two hours though and I had a lovely visit with the anesthesiologist.
After about 30 minutes in the recovery room, my father stopped by to visit and commiserate with me about hand injuries. The surgeon popped into the room to check on me and stopped dead at the sight of my father.
“She’s your daughter?” he asked. “that explains everything.”
Must have had an inkling it was coming down, and reacted, putting my hand up to ward off the blow. Don’t rightly recall. Probably saved me ANOTHER even worse head injury.
My wife worked some ER shifts when she was doing her residency. Once a guy showed up with a severe urinary tract infection. On examination it was found that he had stuck the plastic barrel of a ballpoint pen up his wingwang and it went in so far it could not be retrieved. It was partly sticking into his bladder.
“Million to one, doc!!”
Until someone comes along with their story about being attacked by a shark riding on an elephant, and they have photo evidence to back it up, you win. 
Oh good. You found them all. Just kidding, but in all seriousness, my primary first aid box has some ziplock bags just in case there’s ever a loose digit that needs to be re-attached. So much nicer to be able to put a finger in a bag than to have to stick it in your pocket on the way to the hospital.
When I was two weeks shy of turning 6, I was taken to the ER because I fell off a rocking horse.
Of course, the rocking horse was on the top bunk of a bunk bed. And, I fell head first.
About 5 years later, I was taken to the ER because I had sliced my wrist and was bleeding profusely. They made me talk to the psych people because they didn’t believe I was washing dishes and a glass broke.
And just a few months ago, I cut the pad of my left little finger off. The scissors were in my left hand. No one, at work, the hospital, or at home, could figure out how I did it, so I had to demonstrate for various different people that it is possible to cut off a fingertip with scissors held in the same hand. Honestly, with my track record, I’m amazed all these people were willing to give me a pair of scissors just to demonstrate.
Oh yeah, I just remembered that when I was a Junior in high school, I dislocated my shoulder while yawning.
Thanksgiving day in one of my early high school years. We went to my grandmother’s house, as usual, for Turkey Day dinner. Mom had this super sharp (and I mean super sharp) knife that she used to cut the turkey. No electric nonsense for her. She forgot it in the car, so she sent me out to get it. I carefully picked it up, and then, because I was a touch afraid of this knife, I dropped it into the muddy gravel in the backyard driveway area.
Not wanting to get in trouble, I picked up the knife and rather absently wiped it on my left palm. When I got into the kitchen, my mom’s first words were, “where’s all that blood coming from?” Yep, the blade was so sharp it sliced right through the top layer of skin without me feeling it. No depth to the cut, but about a half inch long and an inch wide of paper thin flapping palm skin. Amazingly, no scar.
I think I’ve posted this before, but…
Thirty years ago, I was an EMT working for a private ambulance company. We were waiting to do a patient pickup from a local hospital to transport to a nursing home when an HFD ambulance rolls up and they run a guy in who is on the gurney screaming like a tortured banshee.
A while later, I was talking with one of the HFD medics and got the inside scoop. Seems the patient was in his 50s, had a few too many, picked up some chickie in a bar and tried to bump uglies with her. But he couldn’t get it up. So, in his drunken wisdom, he decided to help himself out by inserting a fever thermometer up his urethra. Penis then ensued, along with broken glass and mercury.
Gaakk. Thirty years later, I can still hear those screams. And I just got goosebumps and crossed my legs…again.
I never thought I’d say this, but thank g-d for viagra. How many drinks do you have to have before shoving a glass tube up your willy sounds like a fine idea?
