An incident I had repressed, but has been dragged kicking and screaming to the surface by some of the earlier stories.
Many years ago I was a physical therapy tech. One of our patients was a young man who had somehow managed to get himself knocked off of a tractor driving across a field.
Onto the stob of a small sapling that had been cut or mowed off.
It entered through his scrotum and exited just below his navel.
I cringe every time I remember it.
And there are more than a few incidents of hand -vs- meat grinder on the web. [NOT for the squeamish]
When I was 17 I worked with my dad in a small-engine repair shop. A customer had a riding mower he wanted restored (detailed and repainted along with whatever engine work needed to be done). Dad fired up the Ryobi hand grinder to grind off the old paint, only in this instance he used the tool literally. The 4 inch grinding head runs at about 100,000 rpm and Dad’s index finger offered next to no resistance.
Now, Pop was a commando in WWII and a seriously tough and stoic man. He walked up to me while I was working on a carb. He was white as a sheet with a shop cloth around his finger and said in an incredibly soft voice, “Would you mind taking me to the hospital?” I nearly crapped myself.
I wrapped him in a blanket we kept in the trunk and blew all three red lights in my hometown. 24 stitches and a divot out of the bone.
My first wife and I treated each other to a pair of inline skates for our 2nd anniversary. We skated down to the tennis and basketball courts to practice. She broke a finger stopping herself on the chain link fence. As we were skating back to our apartment so I could drive her to the ER, I went over a speed bump and my right wheels buried in a spot of broken asphalt. I was wearing blade type sunglasses, and they cut a gash over my eye.
My wife went on to get the car, a pair of shoes for me and my 1st aid kit. I gauzed my wound and we went to the ER.
After hearing our story and seeing her with a broken finger and me with an impact gash over my eye, they separated and grilled us both to find out why were were fighting, was there a history of her abusing me, etc. She was 5’2", 120. I was 6’1" 185. We finally convinced them and got splinted/stitched and sent on our way.
In 7th grade I lived across the street from the Emergency Room, 40 feet door to door. I was riding my bike through the ER parking lot and flipped over the handlebars, scraping off half my face in the gravel.
So where do I run? Home. Instead of to the ER door 10 feet away. Across a busy road blindly. Only to be walked back across the road to where I started.
Has anybody had shots in their face, like over the cheekbone? The doctor said it wouldn’t hurt since the skin was so thin and close to the bone. Friggin lie, worst pain in my life. He also said that scrubbing gravel out of flesh with an SOS pad wouldn’t hurt after the 5 hell shots, lied again. Maybe it was his first time with facial road rash.
My parents and I went back to get my bike later and couldn’t find anything in the entire parking lot that would cause me to flip over. Weird.
My Dad’s the coolest, but it’s a good thing he’s a doctor. He’s:
[ul]
[li]broken his ankle in CO the first day of a week-long hunting trip; didn’t get it fixed until he got back home to WI. I don’t know what he used to hobble around with.[/li][li]Dislocated his finger while pushing a van my bro’d gotten stuck in snow, popped it back in hisself. In Ireland.[/li][li]The best: while cutting down some dead trees, sliced himself open just below the groin with his chainsaw. Got Mom to take him to the hospital, then stitched himself up. According to him, there either weren’t any other doctors around, or no one would do it and he didn’t want to wait.[/li][/ul]
I’ve seen that one before. What I can’t understand is how it happened - it looks like my mom’s old hand-crank meat grinder, and I can’t imagine continuing to crank it by hand once you get a fingertip in the business part - and you can uncrank it. But maybe it’s an electric grinder?
I don’t know. Am wondering how much use the person had of their hand afterward, if any.
I believe that’s a stand mixer-powered grinder. Something along the lines of a Kitchen Aid mixer - possibly an old Sunbeam Mixmaster. The hook coming off the bottom of the grinder is a probably brace that rests against the base of the mixer.
We’re sixteen and driving aimlessly one afternoon when we pass this 10-year-old jumping up and down hysterically next to a bicycle laying at the side of the road. Seems the kid’s chain fell off and he tried to put it back on without stopping the bike. Finger caught between sprocket and chain, chopped off the tip of his finger. We wrap his hand in a towel and spend five minutes on hands and knees before we finally find the finger tip in the grass. I held it in my hands all the way to the hospital, did not seem right to drop it into a pocket.
Not quite the ER…but my mom once had to call paramedics to her house because she had eaten some toffee and it got caught in her partial, which then came loose and got the sharpest part of itself stuck under her tongue or somewhere equally soft and tender. She was bleeding from it. On the phone, she sounded like she was having a stroke since she could barely talk.
When the guys came, they had her point to where the knives were. They got a table knife and got the thing unstuck. She said it was the first time this had ever happened to her. They replied, “Us too!”
Took me three days, but it was worth it. I even read the 7-page “Medicine Sucks” thread that was linked in there, too.
My mom is a doctor, and I am old enough to remember her going through medical school. Her ER rotation had a doozy. A guy decided that it would be a good idea to make a plaster cast of his rectum for his lover. As it turned out, it did damn near kill 'm.
When I was a kid there were two brothers living a few doors down my street. On a warm summer day, Jerry proved to his brother that he could make a lawnmower’s blades rotate very rapidly by squirting them with a garden hose.
Neat. So Jimmy proved that he could stop those blades by grabbing them with his hand. Well, theoretically, anyway.
He was known from then on as “Nine Fingers”, and was fortunate that he had that many left.
A friend of mine, thirty years ago, thought it would be a good idea to lube his motorbike chain by putting it on the centrestand, starting the engine, putting the bike in first and wrapping a piece of oily rag around his hand to wipe the moving chain with. The only sensible part of this plan was that he used his off hand. :smack:
We didn’t consider him overly bright before this little incident, and afterwards, rather less so.
When I was in college, several of my friends took various martial arts for their PE credits. Since I was a black belt it was pretty common for us to spar in the volleyball pit so they could practice their techniques on someone who knew what he was doing and could offer constructive critiques. (Most of my friends were also math and physics geeks with no background in learning physical activities whatsoever.)
I was sparring my friend John and he threw a kick a bit faster than I was anticipating. Most of the time I keep my hands lightly open. As a result, I cracked the ring finger on my right hand because I didn’t get the fist drawn closed in time before it connected with his ankle. No biggie, certainly not my first broken finger. We fought for another round, then I went to get ready for my date.
It wasn’t a full break, so I didn’t worry about it. My girlfriend, on the other hand, noticed it was swollen, purple and kind of useless and tender during dinner. After we left the restaurant she just straight up drove me to the ER. I told her it was no big deal, I’d tape it when I got home, etc. No dice.
They x-rayed it, told me I had a fairly bad hairline break, splinted and taped me and sent me on my way.
The next morning, I walked in the dorm lounge with a brand new can of coffee to see if someone could open it for me since I was having some trouble operating the manual can opener. There sat John, casted from fingertips to elbow. Apparently when we were sparing he stopped a kick open handed. He thought at the time he’d just stubbed his thumb, but we’d actually broken it clear through the base where it connects with the wrist. Two surgeries and a set of pins for him.
I think that was the most damage I’ve ever seen come out of a single point-contact sparring match.
I did admin support for a medical photography lab and over the years the photographer had been called to the hospital to document interesting cases. One of the most dramatic photos was a guy who had felled a tree but part of it broke off and entered his neck and poked out from under his eye. “Oh, he’s fine–I saw him and he just has a little scar on his cheek.” Another photo was of a guy with a dagger buried up to the hilt, in his eye. Him, not fine.
One of my college professors was a Jesuit priest; as a matter of fact, the Order had sent him to learn Chemical Engineering when he already was ordained and working on his Theology PhD, and this was back when in Spain priests weren’t seen as “some guy who makes a living talking about God,” more like avatars of The Big Guy In The Sky.
Sadly I don’t remember the exact details (ok, so they’d bore most of you to tears anyway), but at one point in his last year as an undergrad he decided he was going to distill something from a mixture including ether. The TAs told him “father, that’s a really bad idea” “nah, c’mon, it can’t be that bad” “father, that’s a Really, Really Bad Idea” “listen, I’ll just do it under my responsibility.” The TAs looked at each other, looked up to Heaven, made sure the priest was wearing his safety goggles and herded every other student out of the lab.
A few minutes later,
B[COLOR=“Magenta”]OOM![/COLOR]
The eyes were the only part of his face that hadn’t gotten pierced by the exploding apparatus. It wasn’t shards of glass, the whole thing had turned to powder. When he taught me, some 30 years later, he had so many tiny scars it just sort’a looked like he had rougher-than-usual skin.
And Dad was a research chemist for about 40 years, helped develop thyroid medication for Armour. One day, he had a project go off in his face; he’s worn a partial ever since.
