I tried to do a cartwheel when I was… umm 10 or 11 maybe, sprained my ankle, I now have a fear of cartwheels.
Copied from an earlier thread on injuries:
my 3 worst injuries :
OK first one is a result of not listening to my Mom
We had an old TV antenna that was just rusting in the back yard my cousin and I broke off pieces of it and decided to play swords which wasn’t bad but we were running around and my Mom says "don’t run around with that its metal and you’ll stab your self … well, later on I was running and there was a plate of glass on the little stair top to the side door … i slipped and out the metal piece through the glass and then fell on top of it sliced a 6 in cut down my chest it bled but didn’t need stitches i still have a little scar on my chest from it
second injury that almost cut my thumb off was the result of dumbness on my family’s part
My Mom had a knife that was sharpened occasionally … well shed been complaining it was dull so my step dad sharpens it then my grandpa sharpens it more no one tells anyone … I’m drying dishes i give it a quick swipe it cuts through the towel and 3 inches in my thumb it bled for 3 hours in the ER and was 12 stitches
the last one was just dumb luck really
OK moms out doing something my and my severely handicapped brother is swimming I’m wearing these trunks that are like a size too big for me its lunch time I’m making ramen noodles I’m boiling the noodles and water … the pan has a loose handle and with my weak hands its heavy my brother does something to distract me what i never can remember my hand jerks and turns the loose handle or did the handle turn on its own …
I dump a pan full of boiling water and noodles right down my shorts … first and second degree burn to my parts ensue the doctor after going through the usual burn treatment tells me (im 12 at the time) “oh yes you’ll have no side effects sexual or other wise” my Mom about died
I was driving down the highway and listening to the boom box. It stopped playing music for some reason. There was a hissing sound. (stupid/pathetic part coming up) I lifted the hissing sputtering boombox up to my ear…as I thought it was coming from the box. The batteries exploded squirting battery acid into my eyes and ears.
I have a rule now: If it is hissing and sputtering do not put it near your face!
Knowed Out, your story reminds me of the time, during high school, when I was playing tennis with my mom. I made some sort of stupid mistake and got mad enough at myself to smack myself in the forehead with my racket. On purpose. Not with the frame, but with the strings. I hit myself hard enough that the strings caused a couple-millimeter-deep waffle-type pattern in my forehead. It bled a bit, and I had this very…interesting-looking scab for about a week.
Like other people have mentioned, when I’m mad at myself on account of my own stupidity, I often do something in the heat of irrationality that causes me injury. :o
i just did this on saturday
i was visiting my friend at work and her boss came by and she was like, GO RUN N HIDE IN THE BACK ROOM
i went in there earlier b4 but never made a mental note that theres a lil step
so i ran to the back room, only half of my foot actually on the lil step, and twist, pull, pop and there i went, tumbling into a pile of boxes in the pitch black room, landing on the floor, holding my ankle, while the door slammed shut on me
i was stuck laying there for a good half n hour trying not to cry from pain until her boss left
then he leaves and my friends bursting out laughing and im locked in the room wimpering “its not funny!”
im just finally starting to walk on it
i admit tho, if i saw her do that, i wouldnt be able to contain myself from laughing
Oh, I do this all the time: I’ll be ready to take something out of the oven, I grab a potholder, open the oven door with the pot holder and pull the hot oven rack out with my bare hand. Sheesh.
I fell down the quad stairs at my school. At the beginning of lunch time. With hundreds of people around. Ugh.
It wasn’t a really bad scrape on my knee. But for some reason, it got infected and now I have a purplish scar down the middle of my left shin.
I’ve never suffered any serious injury, touch wood. THe worst injury I’ve ever had is also the silliest - I got a knife for Christmas and I was taking the little plastic dealie off it with another knife when my hand slipped and I sliced my knuckle up real well. I put a bandage on it, then I had to lie down for a little while. Now I have a pretty little scar there that can sometimes make it a bitch to wear rings.
I was playing volleyball at the gym last year. Upon jumoping mightily to block a hit, I land gracefull, and rather swan-like, on my ass. I chipped my coccyx (tailbone). It hurt to sit for a month. Yes, I know, very funny: “I cracked my crack.”
I also injured my coccyx, while working at Domino’s Pizza about 11 years ago. I was sitting in the office, trying to open the safe when the chair rolled out from under me, and I hit the concrete floor.
The thing that gets me about injuries like this was what my doctor told me -
I could have surgery to repair it, and it would hurt like hell for about six weeks,
- or -
I could let it heal on its own, and it would hurt like hell for about - six weeks.
I was sound asleep at 4 am in my bedroom, when the cat woke me up, crying to go out. My floor was littered with boxes full of books, clothes, etc, because I was preparing to move. I stumbled out of bed to let out the cat, stumbled over a box, and sprained my ankle. Damn.
whew
Thought I was the only one who did that.
I do seem to burn myself quite a bit.
As a child, on a very windy day, I was attempting to light the trash in the burn barrel. Did I mention it was very windy? After wasting half a book of matches I went for the gas can, poured some in, and leaned in reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal close to light it. Fortunately, my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes grew back before school started up again…
That same summer the muffler fell off the mower. I had no idea what it was and picked it up. There’s that moment, you know; you look at the thing hurting you, your brain registers that the object is hurting you, and yet you wait until your brain whispers, urgently, “Drop it, you freakin’ idiot!!” That stung for a while…
I soldered a lot in a former life. As the soldering irons were military issue (built by the lowest bidder, you know), sometimes they’d heat up and sometimes they wouldn’t. A normal person would, for instance, lick his or her finger and quickly touch the iron. Me? I’d wrap my hand around it to check. I’d like to think it’s because the irons were more often than not cold, but STILL. :smack:
I once gave myself a contusion while playing a video game. I had made it very far on the final level of Buster Brothers (on my Playstation), and then I foolishly lost, and I punched the sofa as hard as I could, in frustration. Only, my roommates’ boom box was sitting on the sofa. Ow!
Two sports related ones:
Probably the worst injury I’ve ever had was when I walked up behind a guy who was in the on-deck box swinging a bad with a batting weight on it. For some dumb reason, I thought he saw me. Wham! Batting-weight to the upper jaw
Also, one time I was playing goalie, someone kicked a high shot, I turn around to run after it, and ran smack into the goal post. Good times.
I was making fish sticks for dinner, and we had an electric oven. I had just turned on the oven when the thought crossed my mind: “I wonder what the heating element feels like?” (i.e. is it smooth, rough, etc.) Less than a minute had elapsed since I turned it on, so I figured it was safe to touch it to check.
Heating elements, even when you think you “just” turned them on, feel like HOT HOT HOT. I ended up with a second-degree burn on the tip of my finger.
This might not have been so bad if I were a young kid when I did it, but actually I was in seventh or eighth grade, old enough to feel like a real dumbass afterwards.
So, I stop by the minimart while I’m filling my truck with gas, and buy a coffee and one of those little baggies of multi-vitamins. About halfway through the coffee on the way to work, it’s cool enough that I can use a slug of it to wash down the handful of vitamins (which I take in one swallow).
By the time I get to work, my throat is hurting really bad. I barely manage to finish my coffee. By lunchtime, I can’t swallow. I heat my lunch in the microwave, but I can’t eat it. I can’t even swallow a sip of water, it just goes down partway, and then turns into a ball of fire in my throat until I cough and gag it up. This goes on for the rest of the day, and the next.
My wife finally convinces me to go to the emergency room, as it was about 36 hours and I haven’t had any food and no water either. I wait around for hours, am referred to a specialist, who has a look down my throat with an endoscope.
Apparently, when I took the handful of vitamins, one of larger horsepills scratched my throat, and then an allergic reaction caused it to swell enough to block normal peristalsis (swallowing).
The docs were not impressed. They told me the situation would improve on its own, and it did… I could swallow sips of water by the end of the day, and I gradually progressed back to normal food. I haven’t taken any vitamins since that day, though.
I still can’t believe that I was injured by a vitamin pill. I must be getting old.
Oh my. Well…
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I fractured my tailbone sledding in the backyard. I was 27 and had been drinking. There wasn’t really enough snow on the ground, and the sled hit a small stump. Ouch.
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I fractured my left ankle pogoing (Yes, the '80s dance where you jump up and down) at a party. I immediately fell to the floor, but was so drunk I thought I was OK so got back up and kept jumping. Hmmm.
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During a conducting mid-term (I was a music major) I poked myself in the eye with the baton. On videotape.
Eight years ago, at 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning I woke up needing to go to the bathroom (and note, alcohol is not to blame for this story in any way, which makes it even more embarrassing). So I immediately got up, when into the bathroom and urinated “guy-style.” I flushed the toilet and turned around to wash my hands. However, right then I passed out, fell forward and banged my head on the edge of the counter. I gave myself a 1 inch gash just above my left eyebrow. My dad woke up and drove me to the emergency room where I received 8 stitches to my head. When I explained what happened the doctor chastised me: I should have waited a few minutes before getting out of bed when I woke up due to my blood pressure going down when sleeping and/or doing my business sitting down on the toilet (as urinating causes blood pressure to drop a bit).
So the need to take a leak in the middle of the night gave me a nice, 1 inch scar rising at a 45 degree angle above my eyebrow!
Global Citizen
I was at the beach and saw a crab. I picked it up. Whoever would have thought it would have reached under its stomach to pinch my finger? Which then bled on and off for several hours. And no one had a band-aid. And the only place to rinse it was dirty water. It got infected. I still am not particularly fond of crabs.
I fell off of some bleachers my freshman year. When i went to scoot over, i was sitting on the next highest row, and i did not notice that the adjacent set of bleachers had been pushed back in. Somehow I landed flat on my back and knocked myself out.
It took me a couple of minutes to haul ass, and stand, to go to see a nurse. I missed half of the pep rally, and watched the other bit lying on a bench of some sort. i got on the bus and made it down my aunt’s extra long driveway , told them what happened. and went to lay down,
I had to hang on to counters and shit so i could walk to put a plate in the sink. Ended up going to the emrgency room to be xrayed and given pain killers.
This very spring - May 2002. An injury that I’m still recovering from. And the best part - the initial “dumb” accident was followed by an even dumber one three weeks later that is keeping me laid up even longer.
The first dumb move. I crashed my brand new motorcycle. Now that may not sound like a “dumb” accident, but you have to understand that it happened on a simple, basic left-hand turn that I had taken 1000 times before. I simply wasn’t paying attention this time and took the corner too fast and dumped the bike. BUT, the injuries came from having my leg crushed under a 600 pound machine… broken fibula, dislocated ankle.
An ambulance ride, surgery to install two screws in the ankle (that’ll become important shortly) and an overnight stay in the hospital followed.
Now, the second dumb accident - happened three weeks after the surgery to install those stinkin’ screws. I was coming home one night from work and hadn’t quite gotten all that great on crutches yet. While going up the six steps into my house, I stumbled because one of my crutches missed the next step by 1/4 of an inch. I came down hard on my bad foot with my full body weight. It hurt like hell for about 30 minutes and a trip to the doctor’s office a few days alter comfirmed that I had poppped the damned screws out.
So, a few weeks later, a second surgery, MUCH bigger incision, MUCH bigger screws, MUCH longer time in a cast.
Maybe I’ll be off crutches by some time shortly after Labor Day. Maybe it’ll be the first of October!
So, wanna ask me how I’m feeling about my summer?? 
('course there was that one time that I was having sex outdoors and fell off the rock we were on and banged my head … but that’s another story)