TMI being short for “Too Much Information”, for the newbies. TMI threads are always among the most memorable, thanks to the bizarre and often disgusting tales that emerge, and we haven’t done one in a long, long time.
I propose a medical theme for this one. You have been warned.
I’ll start.
This was about 6 or 7 years ago, about a year after I’d had laparascopic surgery to remove my gall bladder. Over the course of a couple of days, I started to notice a pain in my belly when I sat down. It felt almost exactly like when my belt buckle catches a hair and yanks it out, but that wasn’t the cause. It got worse and worse until I dreaded having to bend at the waist. Finally, at work one day, I sat at the computer and felt the most intense pain yet, followed by a huge sensation of relief. At the same time, I detected one of the most foul smells I’ve ever encountered. I looked down at my shirt, and it was stained with what can only be described as bloody goo right over my navel. I ran to the bathroom, pulled up my shirt, and all I can say is that my bellybutton exploded. There was a huge blood clot, and pus, and I don’t know what all in there. I should say that I have a very deep innie.
Luckily, my workplace had an in-house medical clinic, so I ran right down and had them take a look. It took a good half hour for them to clean everything out. The physician’s assistant had to use forceps to pry my navel open and a flashlight to find the bottom. After quite a while of painful, embarrassing, and smelly work, she finally figured out what happened. During my gall bladder surgery, one of the incisions was made in the bottom of my bellybutton. For some reason, one of the stitches down there had never dissolved, and had gotten infected, forming an abscess. This had finally swelled and burst. She eventually managed to actually find the stitch material and pull it out. I’m sure she wasn’t expecting to deal with anything like that when she went in to work that day.
Still, to this day, I have a bit of a vague fear of my bellybutton exploding like a land mine again.
That reminds me of when I was young and had to have 12-14 stiches on my left hand. At the base of the index finger but on the side of the hand, not the palm. Anyway, a few weeks after having them out, we were down in florida. After being out all day, I sat down in front of the TV and saw two loops of stiches sticking out of my hand. It wasn’t gross to me. Instead it provoked a sort of “huh, cool” reaction. Then I yanked them both out. It hurt, but not too bad and there was no bleeding as everything was thouroughly healed. Just four little holes.
Similar to when I had an infected ingrown hair on the back of my thigh that I scratched at a little too hard while in a bathroom stall at work. It burst in a soupy deluge of blood and pus. The inside of the stall was a disgusting mess of bloody handprints, footprints, and smears by the time I was able to clean my self up and stop the bleeding.
about 35 years ago, my brother sliced the bottom of his eyelid ANd his tearduct right the hell off. My dad was union, and had good insurance, and they found a doctor for him who not only used to be Jimmy Carter’s eye doctor :eek: but was the only person who’d done a successful re-attachment at that point. So he reattached the eyelid, and for months my brother had stitches in his eye.
One day, while in the car, I told him he had a spider or bug in his eye. Which I thought he did. My mom, smarter than that, said ‘Leave it alone, it’s his stitches!’ But I really thought it was a bug. So he tugged on it. It was stitches.
Ok that was anticlimactic.
I think I have an ingrown-hair/boil thingy, somewhere between my hoo-hoo and my nether-yaya. Is that better?
When I was 11, I was riding my motorcycle in a snow covered ditch along a county road. Going about 30 miles per hour, I hit culvert about a foot high.
In the course of tumbling with my bike, the still spinning rear wheel sucked my head in between the fender and the tire. The steel fender went in above my forehead and under my helmet. For all practical effects, I was scalped by the fender and my right ear was nearly removed.
Head wounds cause a LOT of blood. 130 some odd stitches.
I posted about this in the classic TMI thread about pimples, but if you don’t mind I’ll repeat it here.
In 1974 I was in basic training for the US Army. We had to get a lot of shots, and a small spot on my upper right arm became infected.
At first it was just a small red spot, flat on the arm. It gradually started to spread, and then to swell, until it was a big lump. It hurt to raise my arm, but I didn’t want to go on sick call, as I was not the most accomplished recruit and didn’t want to be thought to be malingering.
I decided to doctor the lump myself. I gathered soap, water, bandages and a needle and went to stand over a sink in the bathroom. I used the needle to prick the tiny white spot that had appeared in the middle of the lump on my arm, and that’s all it took. A stream of green and black pus started trickling down my arm. I stood and stared at it in surprise, then started wiping it up and squeezing to get it all out. It took a while but when red blood started emerging I scrubbed it up and put a bandaid on. My arm felt much better.
But there was another gal at the next sink and when she saw the stuff coming out she screamed bloody murder. I guess she told our drill sergeant because next morning at roll call she called me over to look at my arm. it didn’t look bad by then, so she gave me some Phisohex in case it came back. It did, a little, but this time I made sure nobody saw me take care of it, and after that the arm was fine.
I had snuck out one summer night to light off fireworks. I was running away through some back yards. One of the yards was replacing a septic tank and there was a large hole there. The hole was empty, the tank was gone, but there was a large jagged pipe at the bottom pointing straight up.
It was a lot like a Burmese tiger trap with just one rusty jagged spike. It missed the bottom of my foot, but pierced my calf. 50 stitches worth. When my hand felt enough purchase along the muddy sides of the hole to pull my leg up and off, the side of my calf had ripped open/out.
I could see the muscles w/in my torn leg flex as a I limped home. They had long red strands.
Wonderful story. Thank you. I mean that in all sincerity. I would have been so excited if I was that nurse. (I’m a little weird, even among nurses.)
Ever find yourself not really wanting to “Me too!” a post? Yeah… They come (and swell and hurt and then “pop” and bleed and hurt) and go, for me. I think it’s time to start shaving again, that seems to discourage them.
Way long time ago, in another lifetime for me, I was working at a Photon (Motto: “We aren’t Lazer Tag”.) This incredibly obese kid went careening down one of our ramps and he ran into a wall and his calf just exploded. Didn’t cut in a slice, just…burst open like a baked potato. First time I ever *saw *fat on a living person. Bumpy.
/spoiler/ So I had a baby, and they had to do an episiotomy, which resulted in my left inner labia being smaller than my right due to normal bloodflow issues and whatnot. Some 16 years later, a mole came up on my right inner, with a 95% chance of going cancerous. When I went in to have it removed, I told the doctor to take enough of a section out so I would be “evened up”. Now I’m normal! /spoiler/
My first night in my new apartment, about two weeks ago… I was trying to heat something to eat. I had literally been moving all day and was exhausted, plus everything was still packed, so I was improvising… never a good thing to do in an unfamiliar kitchen. I was cooking on the stovetop with a Corningware casserole dish (since it was the only thing I could find), and I leaned toward the pot to stir it while wearing a loose tank top. My right boob sort of… fell out of the tank top and hit the side of the Corningware and… stuck to it.
I have to say I kept my wits about me and immediately stood with my boob under the cold water faucet for about ten minutes, then found a bra which would accommodate both my boob and an ice pack wrapped in a towel for the rest of the night. If I hadn’t been so exhausted physically (and emotionally, but that’s another story), that tiny little voice inside me that was FREAKING THE FUCK OUT would have probably been louder. It’s probably the worst burn I’ve experienced, but it only really hurt for that split second until I pulled away from the stove.
No gross stories about pus, though. I’ve kept it scrupulously clean and bandaged, and it’s healing well. It will be at least another 2-3 weeks before it’s no longer a weepy wound, though, and I’ll probably have the scar for years if not forever.
I can’t give much detail, but let me just say to all the young male Dopers that no cosmetic enhancement to your equipment is worth it. Really, just leave it as nature created it.
Not as TMI as everyone else, but during my recent stay in hospital I impressed the nurses with my bedpan filling capacity - apparently I peed a litre in one go. Google tells me the average woman’s bladder holds 500ml, muahahahaha!
Probably not Sudden Kestrel’s story, and definitely not mine (thank Og), but I came across one account back when I worked for a publisher of medically-oriented magazines. A urologist wrote that he’d been approached by an adult patient who wanted to be circumcised. The urologist declined, explaining that he simply didn’t do elective circumcisions on adult patients. Not long after, he got a call from the patient, who explained that he had “cut” himself, with unexpected results, and needed to know what to do next. He had the patient come in to the office.
When the man showed up, he explained what had happened. He had used a clamp of his own devising to pull his foreskin past the end of his penis, then severed the offending tissue. Unfortunately, he had pulled too tightly or too hard, and some of the skin that’s normally behind the foreskin came along for the ride. When he cut, this skin sprang back to its normal position, leaving the portion of his penis between the glans and the middle of the shaft denuded and oozing blood.
The urologist handled the situation by pulling the remaining penile skin *back *to the base of the glans and stitching it in place. Presumably, the skin stretched over time to accommodate erection.
