It sounds almost like I did what **tdn **did. My in ability to land the last step correctly onto my driveway (both ankles rolled and I fell over) caused me to break my ankle in 3 places and severely sprain my other ankle. It happened about 2 months ago and I had a cast on for 6 weeks and I am going to be wearing aircasts on both feet for most of the summer. I narrowly avoided having tons of screws and plates inserted into my leg. I have told the story to everyone who has asked at work, and they get excited when they see me with two messed up legs and ask me excitedly if I got hurt at work and I’m still trying to figure that one out :dubious:
As a young teen visiting a friends house, I was inspired to attempt lifting the barbell he had in his bedroom, which was fairly heavy for a lad my age. I managed to get it up to about chin height, but was having trouble holding it straight. One of the weights began to slide off the edge of the barbell. I watched it with mild curiosity, anticipating a satisfyingly loud thump when it finally fell off the end.
What I was not anticipating was the sudden alteration in the barbell’s center of gravity, which resulted in the now-unweighted end of the bar whipping up and cracking me across the face with enough force to pop both lenses out of my glasses.
I was driving my olds cutlass supreme in a blizzard and visibility was pretty bad. I was driving down a city street fairly slowly and saw a small snow bank. I figured I could gun it and bust through so that’s what I did. Turns out the bank was bigger than I thought and when my car hit it the front end lifted up a little and then after the forward motion stopped it sunk into the snow like a rock. I was just fine but my car was stuck really good. My engine compartment was filled with snow almost all the way up to the top. I had to clear it out so that’s what I did…with the engine running of course because it was cold out. Well I was smart enough to stay clear of the big fan but forgot about the alternator fan and POOF!! The tip of my glove disintegrated into fluff and my finger nail got completely ripped off and my finger changed color and swelled up to the point that it looked like a stubby little purple carrot. Man did THAT hurt for a long long time. I was so embarrassed by my stupidity that I made up a story about trying to shut my car door and then I slipped on the ice while it was closing and the first thing I grabbed for was the door and my finger got smushed in it.
I caught my (admittedly too long) pinky toenail on the frame of our bed when walking around it and ripped it completely off…twice…within 3 months time.
I was running late for work and swung open my apartment door while rushing out of it at the same time. As I swung the door open really fast and leaned forward to rush out the bottom of the door bounced off the tip of my boot and swung right in my path. I had a big black and blue knot in my forehead with a little bloody hole in it about the size of a chicken egg. Had to go to work that way.
Also…when heating caramel in a pan to make caramel apples, if your wife lifts the spoon up and accidentally drops burning hot caramel on the top of your hand, do not…I repeat DO NOT…go with your first instinct and try to wipe it off with your other hand because you will just end up with two very nasty blisters instead of just one.
Our family had just moved up to this big farm on San Juan Island, WA. Out with my dog, there were a ton of cool and different places to explore. Eventually we came to the top of a hill with a gravel drive way at the bottom of it. Just being a kid, for no particular reason I decided to break into a full sprint down the hill. However, because of that gravel drive way and the angle I was at on the hill, I didn’t realize that there was also a waist high barbed wire fence separating the two. Jessie, my dog, did and was able to hit his breaks on a dime, I on the other hand, never saw it until I doubled over on top of it and had the barbs a few inches from my face. Would’ve done a complete flip in typical blooper fashion had it not been for the three lines of wire firmly hooked in my shin, thigh, and stomach. There was also an electric line on the fence that, for all great mercy, was no longer live.
Looks like I’m going to hell. I had to laugh at that one.
My story.
When I was around 14 or 15 we had a porch on the front of the house. No railing, just a wood platform.
About 6 feet to the left of it was a large pine tree under which was a large cable spool serving as a table.
I was standing on the spool and tried to jump to the porch. Tried. As I elegantly sprang into the air the spool rocked a bit which caused an ever so slight alteration to my trajectory.
My right foot made it solidly onto the porch, my left toe caught on the edge. My right foot slid forward, my left, down. Scraping the front of my shin down the edge of the wood. I was wearing jeans and over the calf socks so my immediate reaction was “ow, that hurt. I probably scraped some skin off with that one.”
I walked into the house and into the bathroom and set down to assess the damage. Rolled jeans up and sock down and found myself looking at 5 inches of bone where the flesh had been effectively split and peeled away.
My next comment was, “Dad, I’ve think I’ve got a problem here.” He looked in the door, “Yep, I think you do.” I grabbed a towel and off to the ER we went. 20+ stitches for my trouble.
I can’t believe I forgot the biggest one of all!! My brother got two strippers for my bachelor party. They were both giving me a lap dance while I lay on the bed. One of them climbed off and gently kneeled on my calf but it was at just the right angle that she popped my knee out of the socket. My foot was pointing inward but my knee cap was pointing outward. Very gross looking. My brother popped it back in for me and I limped around for the rest of the night but all was good. I still get a lot of crap over it though.
I reached into an empty blender, grabbed hold of the blade, then turned the blender on.
I broke one ankle and sprained the other trying to jump across a gully that was a bit too wide when playing paintball a few years ago. You make me feel graceful by comparison 
I have also broken my wrist falling off a bridge, my foot jumping off a lifeguard chair, and my hand when punching a wall (found the stud, unfortunately).
One time we were playing in a yard with an old rail fence for a chicken yard, so the top rail was only about 3 feet up. I knew that one rail was almost off the post, so in one of those stupid 14 year olds inspiration I decided to Karate it the rest of the way out for no reason at all while I was running near it one day.
At full speed I gave it a perfect palm strike on the hangy-over end past the nail. Apparently it had fallen out many time and both the the nail holes had been totally reamed out, there was no resistance whatsoever. The rail flew to the ground. This caused a failure of the deceleration I was planning on, and severely over-extended follow-through leaving me off balance.
I at high speed I hit the rail of the fence section dead on belly button leaning forward. I Pitched forward over the rail… But instinctive knowing the humiliation of doing something that stupid I managed to catch the rail in the crook of my other arm, and swung around the rail with my head missing the ground by mere inches. I managed to hold on the the rail for a rotation and my feet hit the ground squarely.My legendary save was now complete, the adoration of the masses would be mine except … Freakin OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! OWWW! OWWWWWWW!
My right shoe had landed at high speed right on the newly upturned huge rusty fence nail which was now poking out the top of my foot and shoe.
I went out to surf late during the day when there was a lot of chop. I got knocked around a lot by the waves and fell off the board repeatedly. At one point, I was close enough to the shore that after I fell off I was able to stand. Unfortunately I didn’t have a good hold that time as it separated from me as far as the tether allowed it and when a wave came in to the shore, the board chopped me right in the throat. I spoke with a very raspy voice for about 2 weeks after the fact.
I think you were doing it wrong.
Well there’s my basketball injury…
While watching the 1987 NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament on TV in the basement lounge of my column dorm, I got so excited when an Indiana player (Ricky Calloway?) hit a last second shot to win a spot in the final four that I jumped up and put my hand through a flourescent light fixture (thankfully not the bulb).
Two torn tendons and several stitches later, I was able to see IU go on to win the tourney the following weekend. I won the pool on my floor! The take? $32. That went a long way to cover the medical bills…
I’m the Queen of Odd Injuries…
When I was three, I sliced the side of my neck open on a glass-topped coffee table at a rummage sale. 22 stitches.
At six, I split my upper lip by running into a three-sided mirror in a dressing room. My brother and I were playing tag in the department store and I ran face-first into the mirror. 4 stitches
At 10, I gashed my ankle by trying to hold a heavy metal apartment building door open with my ankle… and the strong wind had another idea. It forced the door into my ankle and almost sliced my Achilles. 11 stitches.
At 16, I fell on a music stand. It was resting on its side with the third leg straight up in the air. I tripped on the shaft of the stand and fell on the third leg. It went right between my legs and missed my uterus by less than a centimeter. 2 1/2 inches wide by almost 6 inches deep. 35 stitches.
be really careful, and keep your eyes open for gout like symptoms … my pseudogout started with broken bones in my foot … at least the whole process of being diagnosed hyper parathyroidistic, hyper calcemic, seriously vit d short … ending in surgical trauma and dehydration …
I remember reading a post in a thread alot like this some time ago where some doper threw a brick up into the air…and it hit him on the head.
I nearly peed myself from laughter from the visual.
One of my best friends broke her nose with her wedding album.
She was going outside carrying it, slipped on something, fell on her back and the book went flying WAAAY up and WHAM on her face. ( You would have to know her to understand that she has the Klutz Gene ( or is very ADHD, which is my diagnosis.) to the Nth degree.
Oh!!! I just had a whole-body shudder.
My story is not nearly as horrifying, it’s just gross. My city had a transit strike during the hardest, coldest part of the winter, so I wound up walking back and forth to school. About 10 kilometers a day total, which isn’t too bad until you consider that half of that was overland and the other half was on sidewalks and trails that had been plowed poorly, if at all. So it was ten kilometers of snowy, frozen, uneven ground. And I was doing this at seven in the morning or nine at night, so it was dark either way. And it was cold–at the coldest it was down to about -25 or -30C. It was bad.
Anyway, one day I forgot my ski mask and figured I’d just truck on without it. My nose began to run (predictably) and I wiped it on my glove, because let’s face it, nobody was going to see me, or care. Fine, I’ll be disgusting. My nose ran and I wiped it and it ran and I wiped it and so on and so on. I didn’t notice that if you use exactly the same spot, you’ll get…snot buildup, after a while. Now bear in mind that I was doing this a lot and it was damned cold. Finally I raised a hand to my face to wipe my nose and noticed a sharp little pain.
You may have guessed it. I cut the tender little part of the bottom of my nose on my own frozen snot. When I got to school, I checked four times in the mirror to ensure it wasn’t just a nosebleed. Nope. Had a tiny little cut that stung like a beast.
Bow down to me. I injured myself with my own snot.
Last week I was wearing flip-flops, walking on the lawn. Stepped in a rut on uneven, sloping ground, stumbled, fell into a half dead shrulb, a branch of which poked me in the neck, leaving a nasty cut. Good thing I’ve lost weight, that stick could have pierced my carotid artery!
Sheesh, not the thread one really wants to be making multiple posts in, but just remembered a few more shining moments and lessons learned…
Sure, it may seem obvious, but remember, if you should ever decide to jump off a swingset, make sure you jump when the swing is all the way forward not back. Your nose might never be the same.
Or, if you are ever snowboarding(or skiing) and you decide to go over to the chutes and they are closed for not enough snow, even if you got to go back up hill a little bit, just do it. Taking your board(or skis) off and deciding to try hike down(you know, since you’re already there after all) is not the best idea. While it may be the fastest way down, it is neither the smoothest or easiest, and definitely not the smartest. Those spots of snow and ice that may look like a good step- not always as solid as they appear. But if you must, do try and keep your board in front of you(and it is tough to do even with the leash wrapped around your arm). Because even if you start off sliding in front of it, it will catch up- fast; and it might smack in you in the back of the head- hard.
Also while in the mountains, if you hit a jump, make sure there is not going to be a tree in the middle of your landing. If you do do this, try not to do it right under a heavily used chairlift; that is just opening yourself up for a whole different type of hurt.
Just saying…
Speaking of snowboarding…
I was seriously injured at Mammoth 9 years ago (concussion, split liver, torn MCL). Spent a week in the hospital there, then was on bed rest for another 5 weeks (was supposed to be 9, but hey, it was snowing at Brian Head). My buddy Blue Elk and I went up there even tho I was still really weak, cause I’m an idiot and I can’t resist an opportunity to risk my life, I guess.
Anyway, we went up Giant Steps, headed down The Plunge and then made to cut back over to Powder Run to get back to the lodge. Elk was ahead of me, but I took a shortcut thru the trees to beat him back to Powder Run when I saw this excellent looking little 4 foot mound of snow where I could get some air and maybe champagne Elk. So I got low and headed for it, and as I crested REALIZED THAT THERE WAS A 25 FOOT DROP OFF.
I let out a strangled “FUUUUUCK ME” and went over the edge, while my best friend watched his still-injured buddy hurtle off into space.
Luckily there was a huge depression filled with powder below. I missed the car size boulder by about 2 feet.
So, no injury that time, but my point is that snowboarding seems to lend itself to the possibility of injury. I figure its some kind of inverse ratio of fun : pain at play, kinda like dating, or stuffing weasels down your pants, or letting Jehovah’s Witlesses inside.
STUPID INJURY? OK, I once threw my back out by using my hands to squeegee off my bald head in the shower. In a motel. 5 hours drive from home. Right before we left to go home. That sukt.
I slipped on dogshit, threw my hand up to stop from falling, broke the plate glass window that was there and had a 6" piece of glass imbedded in my wrist.
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