Tell me your worst self inflicted wound

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Y’all are sick bastards, so I feel right at home. :slight_smile:

This ends with a stick sticking out of my eyeball.

So I’m helping trim the trees and collect dead branches so no one “will get their eye poked out.” We’re putting them in one of those really tall dumpsters (~6ft), so we were taking turns climbing into the dumpster to pack the branches down so we could fit more in.

I'm jumping up and down on the branches to pack them down, and as I came down on one jump, a branch flipped up and POW-SQUISH pushed right through my cornea, into my eye.:eek:

Anyway, that made the sliding down the street on my face seem like a pleasant memory. :rolleyes:

PC

62

The worst was probably the time I was trying to seat a bearing race in a brake drum. As I was pounding on it with a hammer, I smacked my thumb so hard it split open completely, exposing the bone.

OTOH, the most painful injury occured one time when I was trying to fix a carburetor. I was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, holding the carb in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. I needed to get a better grip on the carb, so I turned it over. This was a mistake. I dumped the contents of the carb into my lap.

Guys, don’t do this. Gasoline and your scrotum do NOT go together. My balls were on FIRE. Not literally, mind you, but it sure felt like it.

63

I was trying to chop a tree down while camping when I was about 16. I’m standing on a slope. Ax blade hits wrong, glances off the tree and sticks in the BONE of my right big toe. :eek:

It also completely severed the tendon that hold your big toe in place. I really freaked when I took off my shoe and the toe just kinda flopped over.

64

Incident 1

When I was about 10, I was playing with some friends next to the gas station my father owned. We were trying to fill a glass soda bottle with rocks. We found a lot of smaller rocks, and they worked well. Then we came upon a rock that I thought would fit, just given the right angle into the bottle. I pushed on it, shoved it… did my best to get this odd rock into the bottle. My friend’s younger brother decided to use his hammer to get rock into bottle. Of course, the bottle broke. But me, being the stubborn little girl that I was, decided that now that the opening was wider, I would definitely be able to get the rock into the bottle. So, I put the rock on top of the broken glass bottle, and pushed with the thumb on my right hand. My hand slipped, and the glass cut my thumb all the way to the bone. I just looked at it in shock and had my friend go into the station to get my dad. I still have a nice scar on it from the incident.

Incident 2

[sub]Not as braindead, really, but still memorable[/sub]

I was about 5 years old for this one. I grew up in the country in upstate NY, and we had an old logging road next to our property. My aunt and uncle decided to take all of the neices and nephews sledding down it. It was a blast! Until, of course, my cousin and I went down on the tobaggan. She was lying flat on her stomache, steering, and I was laying on top of her, just along for the ride. Well, she managd to steer us off the road right throught the thickness of the trees. I, of course, had to look up and see what was going on (it didn’t sound the same) and managed to have my face mangled by the branches. And, of course, I didn’t think to put my head back DOWN after the first branches hit. So I had scratches and cuts all over my face from the ride. My uncle panicked, but I was relatively calm. It turned out none of the cuts were too deep. It just looked worse than it was. But it wouldn’t have been bad at all if I’d just kept my head down!!!

Yeah, I never claimed the prize for the most common sense. :smiley:

65

About 6 or 7 years ago, I was managing a Dunkin’ Donuts. There was a coffeemaker running, and I was doing something, but I don’t remember what. Anyhoo, my trained manager ears heard a hissing noise that was not quite right, and recognized that it was the coffeemaker. I turned around, and saw coffee spilling from the top of the brew basket. The spout underneath had gotten a little clogged, preventing the coffee from flowing down into the coffee pot.

So I race over to the coffee maker. Now, you folks may think McDonald’s coffee is hot, but Dunkin’ coffee makes that stuff seem positively iced. I turned the coffee maker off, and start to slowly pull the brew basket out, so as not to slosh this literally boiling coffee all over my hand. But I didn’t pull it out slowly enough, and it sloshed. 210 degree coffee and grounds dumped all down my right hand and wrist. One of my employees saw this, and she screamed. I just looked at her, and said “Don’t scream. Do NOT scream.” I dropped the brew basket and stuck my hand into the icemaker, which was conveniently located right next to the counter where I was standing. Then I told my employee to call the main office, because we were going to need somebody to come clean out the icemaker.

I ended up with 2nd degree burns on my hand, and I wore a bandage on it for about a month. Didn’t want flakes of my dead skin falling in to people’s food, you know. But I got really good tips for a while…:smiley:

66

The only self-inflicted wound that stands out in my memory was the time I tried to scratch my back with a stretched-out wire coat hanger and ended up stabbing myself in the back. It didn’t go in all that deep, but the instant pain caused my arm to jerk upwards, resulting in the end of the coat hanger digging upwards through my skin and causing a 6 inch laceration across my back. It wasn’t very deep, I didn’t even need stitches for it, but the scar is still there to this day.

67

#1 - Bernse’s brush with a Darwin Award

I was working with a friend on his car. I couldn’t get the jack stand out. So, I lay on the ground using the tire as a brace pulling at it. It finally breaks free and flies right into my head. The car dropped (oh yeah, thats why it didn’t want to come out in the first place! The stand was still supporting some of the weight of the damn car!) The car dropped inches away from the rest of my body. I guess it was a good thing I was semi drunk (??? really!!) or I would have been in a lot of pain. My hair and face was totally drenched with blood. I was slicking my hair back with it so it wouldn’t drip on my friends carpet on the way into the washroom and bathtub to rinse my head. Like a dummy I didn’t get stitches, but I know I should have. I was pulling dried blood out of my hair for weeks, even with washing it every day.

#2 - Fun with making dinner

Does anyone remember those plastic vegtable slicers that were the rage about 10-20 years ago? They were European in origin, flat orange or yellow plastic and about 16" long and about 6" wide? It had a big “V” blade in the middle and a sperate “handle” with little spikes that grabbed the vegtable you wanted to slice. You then basically slid the veggie over this long thing with a blade contraption to slice it.

Well, like anything else sold on TV, it came with an assortment of blades. One was shapped in a “V” still, but it had a dozen or so smaller blades abot 1/2" high in the vertical. That was to be used so that if you wanted to make french fries, you would slide a potato over it. Well, without dragging on to long, my hand slipped off of the handle, and went straight onto these blades that made “fries”. Interstingly enough, it didn’t hurt toooo much, but boy did it bleed.

68

I cut the lid off a can and it plopped into the sink. Forgot about it and it went down the drain, but got stuck on the top rim of the disposal.

After I peeled a few potatoes, I took my hand and shoved them down into the disposal. That’s when I realized the sharp lid was there, standing at attention. I shoved my hand right down on top of it and it sliced the skin in between my two fingers.

Yowsa!

69

Weird and boring are mutually exclusive, Scotti.

I’m glad you liked my excerpts. :slight_smile:

When I was eight years old I was lying on the basement steps one night watching my father do something–I was supposed to be in bed, but I was resisting. I shouldn’t have resisted–I fell asleep and went tumbling down the stairs. I hit the index finger of my left hand on something as I fell, and it started swelling up like a balloon–my father had to take me to the emergency room. They had to relieve the pressure, so they burned (yes, burned) a hole in my fingernail. I still have the scar from that 29 years later.

70

unixrat, when I read that post it made me recoil in shock. Playing without a mask is perhaps the dumbest thing you could possibly do, but I don’t blame you as much as I blame the people you played with. How could they, (being regular players I assume) let you walk onto the field without a mask! Grrrr… But anyways

One paintball related story I have happened during one of my teams tournament games. I had just been eliminated and my teammate was the only one remaining. He was shooting his paintball gun at 13 balls per second to keep someone down on the far end of the field. A referee pays no attention to the stream of paint flying by and steps directly into the line of fire.

Several paintballs scored direct hits with his unprotected (no cup) testicles and he dropped to the concrete floor, breaking his nose and knocking himself unconscious after vomiting and urinating all over himself.

He was taken away in an ambulance. We took 2nd place. Now I’m not the only one on my team wearing a cup.
Another injury that comes to mind was about five years ago when I managed to cut a flap of skin the size of a quarter out of my hand with a pair of scissors. Or maybe the time where I fell down some stairs and hit my head on the concrete guardrail. My skull has an indentation from that one.

71

Oh boy. Here we go.
Cyn is right, sharp cutting instruments + a lack of attention aren’t a good mix. I was trying to cut through chenille sticks with scissors and when it finally cut through, it also made a pretty little ‘v’ inside the middle knuckle of my left middle finger. What’s worse, I had to walk all the way across campus to get it cleaned and bandaged. Ugh, the blood was really flowing by the time I got there.

I was trying to be seductive by sucking on my boyfriend’s finger, but I got a little overexcited I guess and instead managed to leave a big gouge in the tissue in the back of my throat. I don’t think he was too turned on by that.

And my all-time favorite occured in the summer of '97 before I started college.
I had been sick from lactose intolerance the night before a street fair in town, so my electrolites were messed up anyhow, but I decided I just didn’t have time to eat breakfast before we went into town. We stood in the 90 degree heat watching the parade for an hour, then started walking around. I felt nauseated so I walked into a little alley between two buildings to get out of the sun for a minute, and my sister followed me. She asked me what was wrong, and all I could say was “I wanna go home right now.” Then I did a face dive into the pavement as I was passing out. They say I walked to the ambulance, but I sure as hell don’t remember doing it! What’s worse? They scrubbed the open fucking wounds on my face when I was in the emergency room.
If you’ve never had wounds scrubbed by a completely unsympathetic nurse, I don’t suggest you start with facial wounds. I think I left fingerprints on the metal rails of my gurney I was squeezing so hard.

72

Ok…as a little kid (i don’t rember the exact age) I decided that my life wasn’t exciting enough. To sort of spice it up, I decided that instead of just climbing up onto my bed, I should do a headlong dash towards it, and jump at just the right time, to make a strange bellyflop onto my bed. Now, you see, my bed is not a normal bed that you can put things under, because there’s a drawer under it, picture a large wooden box with a matress on top…we kept extra sheets etc. in the drawer. Now, here I am, a little kid running headlong through his messy room towards my bed as fast as i can. Now right about the time when i was supposed to jump, i slipped on a comic book or something and slammed my head into the somewhat pointy corner of that wooden box that’s holding up my bed. I CRY and CRY and CRY. My mom comes running out of the bathroom, “What happened?” Just about then the swelling starts, and soon i have a bump on my head the size of an egg.
When we go into the doctor’s office, it turns out that i have a medium sized concussion, and that somehow that caused a blood vessel in my eye to rupture. The doctor that I was going to was part of a practice, now picture every doctor in the practice (about 6) lining up outside the room to take a look at my eye, they’d never seen anything like it, i felt like a friggin circus freak.
However, it turned out to be not serious, being a little hyperatcive kid, i went back to looking for ways to kill myself again (No i wasn’t suicidal, just prone to doing risky things)

73

Raking leaves with a wooden handled rake. An old rake. A rather thick splinter from the handle goes into my palm, then breaks off below the surface of the skin. I promptly go inside to the bathroom, take out tweezers, a needle, an exacto knife, and a bottle of Anbesol and do surgery on myself. Two self-inflicted wounds within 5 minutes!

When I was around 16, I went up to Forest park to go sledding on the golf course. The park is at a higher elevation than the neighborhood where I lived, so all the streets going up to it had a pretty good angle. On my way home, I decided, “Hey, why walk down the street? I’ll just sled down to the bottom!” I looked at the street, and it was white all the way down. Cool, I thought, and took a running start on the sidewalk, then dove into the street with my sled. Sled stopped on the spot. I kept sliding down the street face first. Yeah, the street was white alright. White from salt residue! I just can’t describe the feeling of your face scraping over salty asphalt.

Had a staple gun put one right in the bone of my index finger. I had to pull it out with pliers.

Playing baseball, I lost a fly ball in the sun. My nose found it.

Tried skiing moguls once, and damn near broke both shins right at the tops of my boots.

A little dishwashing tip: Use one of those dish mop things for cleaning inside glasses. Not once, but twice (you’d think I would have learned), I had my hand in a glass with the sponge, twisting it around, when the glass broke. At least I had soapy water on the spot to clean the gashes.
:wally

74

Man. It’s amazing any of us lived to adulthood. Of course I tried my best to stack the odds against me.

Here are my contributions:

Highview Elementary School installed plexiglass in all the restroom windows because of me. In 6th grade, we were all big into stock car racing, so we’d have footraces pretending to be drivers. One day the “finish line” was the boys john, and several of us went crashing through the door to reach the urinals first. I got bumped making the turn and found myself running at top speed towards the window. I put my hands out in front of me, intending to stop myself on the sill. Well, I miscalculated and my hands hit the window, breaking the glass. Suddenly I’m looking out onto the playground, watching the broken glass fall two stories to the blacktop below. As I pull my arms back in, I see a rounded scoop of flesh from my left wrist just kind of hanging there by a flap of skin, and in the pinkness of the hole left behind I see a glint of white. It’s strange how the whole event plays out in slow motion in my mind. I covered up my wrist and ran out of the bathroom, where the teacher was already running to find out what had happened. They got me downstairs, sat me down on the nurses cot, and waited for the ambulance. It wasn’t until then that the first drop of blood fell. I’m told it didn’t bleed much right away for two reasons – because it was so quick and I was kind of in shock; and because I hadn’t hit the main artery. I’m told that was the glint of white I’d seen.

26 stitches later, I have this C shaped scar on my wrist. When asked, I joke about having tried to kill myself with only a dull spoon. ha ha. :rolleyes:

75

Other notable self-inflicted highlights:

As a city-kid, being let loose for a weekend on the farm. We played tag in the cornfields and I got to experience the indescribable sensation of having hundreds of paper cuts across my face and ears and shoulders from the corn leaves–just as the sweat starts to poor into them. Did I mention the sunburn?

The time camping when, in the dark, I asked my buddy to hand me the flashlight. He had a hatchet held up in his other hand. Before handing me the flashlight, he lowered the hatchet–right into the base of the thumb on my outstretched hand. Bit of a nick, there.

The time I removed a piece of a broken plug from an electrical outlet. Yes I was smart enough to use pliers with a rubber grip. I just hadn’t noticed the small part of the handle where the rubber had worn off. Zap.

Self-inflicted car accident? Well, when you consider that I had ignored that little voice inside me that kept saying “You know? You really should get those brakes checked…” I hit the highway off-ramp doing 60 and found I had no brakes. Shot off the side of the ramp (no guardrail), rolled the car downhill sideways, and came to a stop on the driver’s side. Other than a bruised elbow and a recurring pain in my neck, I was OK. (Yes, I was wearing my belt, and you should, too!)

Then there was the time that I took my wife to see Jurassic Park. You know that opening scene where they’re feeding the raptor and the guy gets dragged into the cage? I had bruises for a week where she had a death grip on my arm. :slight_smile:

Paul

76

I guess you can say I had a “self inflicted firearms wound.” Well, not really. Read on…

My dad collected antiques when I was a kid. One of his “treasures” was an authentic cannonball. This thing was as big as a bowling ball and weighed 80 lbs. One day, when I was about 12 years old, I rolled the cannonball outside to show it to someone. To prove how “strong” I was, I picked it up to waist level. I then proceeded to put it back down.

Well, I set it down too fast. My left hand’s pinky finger got caught between the 80 lb. cannonball and concrete driveway. Smush. My pinky looked like a banana after being run over by a car. Flesh and blood was everywhere, and the bone was sticking out. The rest is predictable… went to the hospital, got it operated on (skin graft), etc.

Today, the pinky is still there, but it’s about ½ an inch shorter than my other pinky. And there’s only one joint instead of two. The bonus is that it’s a neat conversation piece. The bummer is that I like to mess around with the bass guitar every-now-and-then, and I can’t stretch more than about 5 frets.

And oh, the cannonball… my dad gave it to me about 10 years ago. It’s sitting on our living room floor, in the corner.

More info on my cannonball here:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=50023

77

well, I’ve got a few stupid ones that i’ve managed to do.

There was the time in third or fourth grade. You’ve all heard some type of story or something about going all the way around the swing set, right? I had and actually tried i got to the point where i was almost to the hieght of the bar when i slipped off of the swing. What was infront of the swing was a set of pull up bars (they weren’t too close but i had the momentum) i went flying smacked in to the bar and then fell back the next 4 or 5 feet to the ground. I had a big ol’ bruise at a slight angle at the bottom of my rib cage and since the ground of the park was gravel had ripped my back up real well too.

At some point i don’t remember how old i was, maybe 10 or so. I had just come out of the shower and when i stepped out i slipped on the tile floor(i had forgoten to put the bath mat down) as i slipped back i fell smacking my head on the tile, theres a minor concussion. what i didn’t realize until it hit me (literally) was that as i fell i pushed back on the shower door it bounced off the wall and the corner slammed in to my head. i didn’t get stitches but i probably should’ve (lots of blood) and there is no aparent scar because i have really thick hair

one of the stupidest things i have ever done though was use a power tool whist taking apart a firework. I won’t go in to details (i’ve already made enough of a fool out of myself) needless to say it went off. i nearly blew my pinky off, couldn’t bend my hand for about 14 hours or so and there were some burns and to this day don’t have the same level of feeling in my left hand.

an inch long scar on my knee from having someone jam an ice skate in to it. suprisingly not much scar tissue on my knees having skinned the right one to the bone 4 times and the left 2 times. scar on my palm just above the tender “webbing” between thumb and forefinger, cut to the bone when i slipped with a knife. I currently have at least one broken bone in my foot from drop kicking rocks. Oh there was the time i missed doing a back-flip on a diving board landed on my ribs bruising 2 of them.

Most intresting scar i have is at the base of my thumb on my left hand. This is from being bitten by a shark, no joke. I have some minor scaring on the back of my forearm this was in fact self-inflicted. one of our fellow posters left three pairs of fingernail scars in my right forearm. index and middle all perfectly alligned. And i now have a (i dunno) about 5 inch scar on my upper back from some surgery. I have a scar on the top of my foot from dropping a knife point down in to it.

Most unpleasent feelings. Recently: when i went in for my surgery the nurse in the check-in/pre-op room forgot to put the novacaine (topical anisthetic i don’t think it was novacaine) on my hand where they would put the iv in. i got in to the wait room and they out some on of course it was only on about 1/8 of the apropriate time. She treid to put the iv in my left hand, it wouldn;t feed through so i have this nurse jamming me repeatedly with the thing finnaly she says to do the other hand. even less time to numb it, at least she got it right this time.
Before:1. at the age of 3 having your pinky closed in an electric car window, and not being the one putting it up and as such not be able to stop right away.
2. Slamming your lip into a door handle when it is slammed in your face plus the velocity of you running full speed.
3.Getting smacked in the eye with a tenis racket when it bursts a vessel. getting smacked in the bridge of the nose and leaving a trail of blood from one end of a large campus to the other only to find the nurse had left already.

This is a rediculously long and probably not too amusing for you people so i’ll shut up now, but if you want to hear more of my injuries email: username33992@yahoo.com Aim s/n: Batis420

We’re all stuck on this god foresaken planet may as well have some fun (especially with hypergirl my virtual wife)

:slight_smile: :wink: :wink:

-Hypergirl’s virtual plaything <?>

78

I’m another one who did it deliberately. Big razor scars all up my inside left-forearm. To be honest I have no idea why I did it - I was 17 and excruciatingly depressed and lonely. What gets me is that people tend to think I did them for romantic display, like a tattoo, even now, and get angry with me etc. I know people who did it for those reasons, but I only met them later. At first it was just… pain. I don’t think about the scars any more. Only children ever ask me why I did it wanting an honest answer, and they really seem to have concern in their faces, and that worries me a little. What will I tell my own kids?

Not really worth it.

79

Nothing major, just stupid :smiley:

Age 5 - Friends and I playing “Who can jump as far into the spa/jacuzzi as possible”. Keep in mind this was an inground spa. So, after a few jumps I must have been getting pretty far. I jumped and my chin ended up cracking up against the dividing wall between the pool and the spa. My mother heard my crying, saw me, then saw what she thought was my mouth was actually the split in my chin. Ewww. I don’t remember it bleeding a lot.

Age 7 - At my babysitter’s there was a wood jungle gym in the backyard. The other kids and I put bricks and things on the ground in the middle. I then proceeded to climb the gym. Fell down. Broke my wrist. HOWLED. What makes it worse is that my parents waited a few days to see if it was actually broken or something I could live with. Sheesh.

Age 14 - I went on a teen retreat with my friends right after we graduated from Jr. High. We went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, it was getting late and so we had to get in a few more rides. Well, I had to go to the restroom. My friends waited for me outside. I was in the stall and dropped something. I bent down, got it and BAM! I hit my head on one of those square, one-sheet-at-a-time-please toilet paper dispensers. I was very embarrassed. I finished in the restroom, we went on some rides(even through the headache) and then left for home. It was weird though because I didn’t bleed, but some brain fluid came out of my scalp. I didn’t tell the moderators what happend, but when my mom found out, she was so scared. I was okay though; nothing else seeping out except my common sense.

Age 16 - My brain did not fall out, but if it did it would have helped me here. My mom and I were making tacos and spanish rice for dinner. The rice is on the burner behind the hot oil for the taco shells. She tells me to check the rice. I pick up the pan lid, covered with condensation, and this proceeds to drip in the oil; snap…crackle…pop…sizzle. Oh man, did I have a beautiful burn from that. I did remain calm though.

Around the same age as above - I used my brother’s(who is older than me and has bigger feet than I do) rollerblades to skate to a park with a friend. I was doing well until we got to a hill covered with blacktop. I zoomed down it on my right buttcheek, somewhat exposed due to the shorts I was wearing. I had the worst wound there. What made it worse is that my friend was so insensitive as to laugh and not help me up. Ooh…I didn’t talk to him the whole way home and even went a different way. He still made it home, though. There’s more, but I wouldn’t want to bore you with this particular story.
Okay, this is the last one. No more from me after this…maybe.

Shop 'til you drop!
The weekend before my baccalaureate (sp?), I was shopping for an outfit with my mom. Well, as we were going down the escalator to leave for home, I was spaced out. Not noticing that the escalator was about to end, I didn’t step off at the right time. When I did step off, my foot decided to give way inward. I suffered a sprained ankle, but I was so afraid I would have to go to my baccalaureate and graduation with crutches or a cast. :o

Sorry to take up so much space.

80

Duh!