I injured all 4 limbs simultaneously in about the most cartoonish way possible

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When I said that to my students (who asked upon seeing my wrapped knee and arm), one asked, “Did an anvil fall on you? Or a piano?” No, not that cartoonish. Almost. I fell into a trash can.

Tuesday is trash day at the barn, and I was moving the recently emptied trash bin (one of those big black ones) back to Ana’s paddock. These things are a bit top-heavy when empty, and when the bin hit a bump on the ground, it fell backwards toward me. The lid hit the ground in front of me, and I stepped (stumbled) onto it…which made the bin stop with a jolt, which sent me lurching forward, which resulted in both knees nailing the lid on the way down and then my forearms nailing the edge of the opened bin. Added bonus: I also smacked my forehead (and knocked off my hat) on the inside of the bin. TA DAHHHHHH! :smack:

(Normally I would give a more detailed account, but my right arm is still a big mess and it hurts to type.)

When I got up, I first checked that no one saw me (they didn’t). Then I realized I still had to muck Ana’s stall and feed her. As I was feeding, I realized my arm still hurt and saw it had a huge lump on it. Awesome, I think. I’m going to have to tell the story to a doctor.

I waited until the next day to go to urgent care (at my coworkers’ urging). The x-rays were clean, though the doc suspects a crack that (according to him) is of the type that doesn’t always show on x-ray right away–in a week or so, he thinks it’d be visible. Regardless, I’m to ice the arm, take 800mg of ibuprofen, and keep it wrapped. My left knee is still quite bruised and sore, but mostly okay; my left arm has an ugly but substantially smaller bruise. My right neck and shoulder have been KILLING me–I think I gave myself a bit of whiplash. Betterish now, though. The pain there actually eclipsed my arm for a bit.

My now has weird pinkish purple stripes from wearing the ace bandage, and there are really dark red-purple dots all over it. Prettttty.

But, maiming aside, feel free to laugh at me. I still do. I mean, come on. I fell in a TRASH CAN. :smiley:

2

Don’t feel too bad, we’ve all done it.

A few years back, I was pushing a kind of heavy-duty, waist-high step-stool across the floor at one of our customer’s facilities. I was using it to access some instrumentation on the customer’s mix tanks, moving it about from one tank to another as I worked, until I had to cross the floor to the row of tanks on the other side of the room. The step-stool was a little too heavy to lift and carry without major awkwardness, so I was pushing it across the very smooth floor at a pretty good clip.

Until the front legs hit a small perturbation in the floor and the whole contraption quite suddenly stopped, and a shin-height crossbar caught me right across the shins, like a baseball bat.

I lay on the floor and whimpered a good while before being able to get up and hobble about like a 100 year-old man with bad hips, knees, and ankles, and had impressive matching goose eggs on both shins, that took their damned sweet time going away.

I still have two scars on my shins from that, and it’s been over 2 1/2 years now.

3

Good comedy always hurts Ruffian, and the only thing you might have considered to end the skit is having Oscar the Grouch push a banana cream pie in your face for wrecking his house.

Still, I give you an 8.

4

Yeah, I fully appreciate the comedy 6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast. I just wish that once I moved on, all these painful reminders would move on as well. ExTank, OUCH. Ouuccchhhh. Shin hits are the worst! Hope those scars fade soon. Gah.

Just a few moments ago, I noticed a pair of huge bruises on my lower right leg. Huge! I looked at them incredulously and said, “Where did these come from?!” Hubby: “You haven’t seen those?? Same thing, same time!” How the hell have I missed those??

I felt a bit odd when I went to the urgent care with a long list of injuries from a fall. I was concerned the doc would suspect it was a “fall.” Sure enough, when he saw me, he started speaking with concern and raised eyebrows: “So, tell me how this happened.” By the end of my tale, his concern turned to bemusement. I’m sure my story was retold in the break room, perhaps a few times.

5

Ask someone who loves you to get Arnica cream and some Arnica pills. It’ll help with the bruising. Then ask that same person to make sure that trash can duties are never yours again, since you’ve been scarred for life and cannot be trusted with gravity.

6

Impressive piece of slapstick, Ruffian. I’m wincing on your behalf, but I’m afraid it is still funny.

I think I posted my most ridiculous self-inflicted injury story a long time back, but I’ll keep you company in your cartoonish misfortune.

When I was a kid, I generally spent the afternoons after school in the family TV shop. One day, I was perched on a stool behind a partially disassembled TV, working on a puzzle and sipping a Coke (from a glass bottle–this was longer ago than I really care to think about). The stool was too tall for me, and I had my feet hooked through the legs so they wouldn’t dangle.

After scribbling for a while, I stretched. Big mistake. The pencil, with its conductive graphite core, came a little too close to a high-voltage source in the TV, while my other hand got near the grounded chassis. ZAP–a purple-white arc jumped to the pencil, and the jolt raced down my arm, across my chest, and back up the other arm to the chassis. I spasmed, knocking the bottle off the bench and tipping the stool over backwards. The bottle reached the concrete floor first, shattering, and I slammed down amongst the shards, bonking the back of my head on the floor. The stool, which had somehow flipped entirely upside-down in an instant, was precariously balanced on its seat. It slowly toppled over with one of my feet still caught in it.

I must have made for an awfully woebegone sight–a little boy with assorted lacerations, a goose egg on the back of his head, small but deep burns on both hands, and a sprained ankle…and then I had to explain that I had acquired all those injuries while doing a crossword puzzle. Even for a child so accident-prone that the doctor once offered me a bulk rate on stitches, it was something of a red-letter day.

7

Wasn’t DeathLlama there with a video camera? :smiley:

The story reminds me of the tale of the Barrel of Bricks.

Heal soon.

8

I’ve told this story about my dad before.

We were living in Japan, and the house was not exactly up to Western standards. Dad was on a stool, repairing some wiring in an overhead fixture.

Back before digital watches, some watches did have alarms. They didn’t go ‘Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep!-beep!’ Instead, they had a hammer mechanism that beat rapidly on the inside of the case to make a buzzing noise. One brand of watch was known for its loud alarm. The Vulcain Cricket had a resonator shell on the back side of the watch. It amplified the sound, which escaped readily through the little holes around its circumference. This was the watch dad was wearing at the time.

So back to the scene. Dad was standing on the stool with both hands up in the fixture. It’s just announced that the problem was fixed, when the alarm on his watch went off. He thought he was being electrocuted and fell backwards off the stool.

I have that watch.

9

Ouch, Ruffian! Feel better soon!

Here’s my story to give you some company:
Just this morning, I am blowdrying my hair, while my daughter is standing in the doorway talking to me. My hair dryer has a handle that folds, which is broken and won’t stay in the open position. So, I have to hold the barrel of the dryer, which gets hot.

At one point, I lost my grip on the barrel and dropped it. As I bent over to pick it up, I tripped on the cord with one foot, then while trying to recover, stepped on the hair dryer with the other foot. This sent me tumbling backwards towards the toilet, scraping my arm on the door edge and smacking my head on the wall between the toilet and tub. Knocked myself a little silly and I sat there for a few seconds shocked at how fast I just went down.

Scared the heck out of daughter, who called for hubby. Hubby comes running thinking I had passed out. Made me feel kind of sheepish, but with a new appreciation for how easy it would have been to break my hip had I been several decades older.

10

This watch, it’s your watch, it’s your father’s watch, its your birthright :smiley:

11

You’re not the only one who’s done that.

12

Heh, these are great stories. Balance (oh the delicious irony of your screenname), yours is my favorite so far. “I received an electric shock while doing a crossword and sprained my ankle…” Awesome.

Meanwhile, my arm is changing all kinds of weird colors. Dark purples, in particular, and they tend to appear where pressure from the wrap has been. My arm is weak and achey, but not sore. Now I’m wondering if maybe it should be re-evaluated.

(My paranoia has reason–my father broke his back and his hip in a fall, but the doctor he saw said his hip was only cracked and there was nothing they could do. This gross misdiagnosis was the beginning of his nightmarish final years. So, when the only available person is a tech-in-training to do my x-ray, on a night where everyone is overworked and overtired and it took 3 hours to complete my visit, I find myself circumspect.)

In other news, I was making something over the stove involving Karo syrup and sugar. Not thinking, I picked up the candy thermometer, and a stripe of 300 degree sugar syrup glued itself to my left thumb. I now have a huuuuuuuge burn blister there.

When hubby and I got frisky last night, I found myself a bit limited. Left thumb (and webbing) has big ole burn blister, right arm is a big purple mess. Good thing the boobs and other relevent bits are okay.

13

Speak for yourself! I’ve never fallen into a trash can! The dumpster incident is an entirely different thing.

14

Mine would have been better, only I forgot to link a video of a Cricket alarm sounding.

That’s what dad heard as he had his hands in the wiring.

15

My story:
Monday: I felt like frying some fish, so I heated up the oil, slid the fish in(while holding a splatter scree), and flop! the oil slopped out and burned my arm in 5 places.
Thursday: I made an oven pizza. When I pulled the pan out, the hot pan stuck to the grate, and the pizza pan swung out and burnd my other arm. I ate salad and take out for two week after that.
My friends story:
Two years running, my friend has burned herself during the first tailgate of hockey season. Last year she burned off an eyebrow and her bangs, this year she barbecued all the hair off of her left arm.

16

Too bad. The video might’ve been work something.

My story: It’s winter, and damned cold. I’m working in a garage heated by a wood stove. I’m simply trying to change the plugs in my car.

I pull off a plug wire, take out the old plug, put in the new plug, and replace the wire. Repeat three more times. Then, I move aound the car to change the plugs on the other side–the side near the heater. It’s pretty warm, so I take off my jacket. Now I’m just wearing a t-shirt.

The next plug wire doesn’t want to come off. I pull harder. No good. So I give it a good yank.

The insulation around the wire splits, and, with a tight grip, I run my index finger along bare wire. This slices the shit out of my finger. That hurts, and I automatically jerk my arm back from the pain and straighten up. This causes my bare elbow to come in contact with the chimney of the heater. It’s freakin’ hot, and it burns me, so my arm jerks the other way–causing me to punch the raised hood of the car.

Total elapsed time: about 1.5 seconds.
Immediate frustrated anger level: Nuclear Murderous Armageddon Mayhem Plus

But all I did was yell and swear at my car.

Wish I could’ve gotten it on film.

17

Oh, that’s horrible Ruffian. I hope you heal soon. tries very hard not to laugh

I’ve done something almost as similar. Pretty sure I posted it here before, but here it is anyhow.

About three years ago, the house I was living in had the laundry room straight off my bedroom. I got a load of laundry out of the dryer, put the used dryer sheet on top, and went to the kitchen to fold laundry. I didn’t notice that the dryer sheet had been blown off by the fan. Got the laundry taken care of, and went back to my room to continue chatting online with some friends.

About an hour later I got up to get a drink, and I step on the dryer sheet, which slides out from under me. I pitch forward, arms pinwheeling, only to be stopped short when my forehead meets the protruding corner of the closet with enough force to bounce me back. Stumbling, I try to regain my balance; however, the dryer sheet is stuck to my sock at this point, causing my foot to slide out from under me again. This time I fall backwards, where I smack the back of my head on the protruding corner of the desk. This hurts so much that I roll to the left, where my nose hits the wooden arm of my recliner.

I give up trying to stand back up, and finish falling to the floor, when I smack the back of my head again. I lay there stunned for a few seconds, where it dawns on me just how funny this must have looked to my youngest sister and brother, who were in my room at the time. We’re all silent for a moment, then burst out laughing.

The rest of my family comes in to see what the commotion was, and by the time I get through explaining, they’re all holding their sides laughing. It took us about 15 minutes to finally get ourselves under control; for the rest of the week the mere mention of a dryer sheet was enough to get any of us laughing again.

18

“Hey, mate, stop waving that newspaper around, I’m cooking breakfast.” “Oooh, what, you’re pissy this morning (wave wave) (Paper passes over burner, catches on fire.) AAAUGH! (tosses paper in the air.)” Paper lands on me, I fend it off with an arm, lightly sunburnt over arm and some of face and torso, all the hair on one arm gone.

Flaming newspaper likes to wrap and cling.

19

No need. I’ve seen your username. :slight_smile:

20

Ouch.
My BFF broke her nose. With her wedding album. She was carrying it, fell backwards, up it went into the air and WHAM into the face when she was on the ground.