T-12 ischemic spinal cord injury, 16 years ago.
Broke my arm when jumping from one rock to another (didn’t make it!) I was being pursued by the Restless Dead at the time.
(Well, we were live-action role-playing-gaming. The Zombie who was chasing me was kind enough to drive me to the emergency room.)
Injuries - I’ve had a few: a broken scaphoid in my left wrist. It wasn’t really serious but I’m left handed and I had a cast on my left forearm for a couple of months.
I’ve also got a dessicated L4 disc which heralded itself by massive and spectacular waves of pain for a week.
And a broken collarbone. It was more spectacular but it had much, much less impact on my life.
Illness: a few cases of various flue-like things; pneumonia during which I had 2 litres of saline solution intravenously input; and a real flu which had me down for the count, with absolutely no energy, for a week.
My wife, on the other hand, had a four month stay in the hospital while she had about 40 days of chemo, five spinal taps, and 20 days of radiation. I can’t complain and, at 57, I still either walk a round trip of 10 km to and from work, or bike a big detour of 35 km round trip.
Feb 14th of this year - fell of my bicycle, but my foot didn’t come out of the cage. Really bad twist. 3 weeks non-weight bearing. 10 weeks in a walking boot. Another 3 weeks in a brace. I still have noticeable swelling and aches. The ankle is stable, but not perfect.
I’m also still re-learning how to do things like run, and strengthening/stretching everything I lost in the last four months. I was able to jog a whole mile today!
worst illness, lets see, extremely mild case of chicken pox as a child, had the flu last year, felt bad enough I had Mrs. Guest remove the guns from the house that week for fear I would take drastic measures to ease the symptoms.
worst injury was a broken arm as a teen, most painful was when I cut the tip of my finger off. nicked the end of a blood vessel so the doc “cryogenically cauterized” the wound. . He didn’t lie when he said it would be the worst pain I’ve ever felt.
I developed high blood pressure via an episode of hypertension urgency. (A medical emergency that sees your BP sky rocket past stroke range!) Spent 5 days on the cardiac ward and was exceedingly fortunate to escape permanent life altering consequences such as stroke, or damage to liver, kidneys, heart! But I did receive a severe ‘concussion like’ injury that saw me spend 5 weeks on my couch icing my brain stem, holding my head, while taking the strongest antivomit script and morphine for the unstoppable headache!
It was so very awful, it’s hard to describe. Plus I was a little addled so I didn’t quite understand exactly why I wasn’t getting better. They let me go, I thought I should be well. I pointed out to the Specialist I continued to see, that athletes got over seeming worse quicker than this! He pointed out when athletes injure their brains it’s usually one big bump, in one spot. Whereas what happened to me was my whole brain at once! Your brain heals in its own time, no predicting and no speeding it up.
I hope I never, EVER feel that way again.
Injuries: Broke both arms near the wrist, left when I was about 15, right when I was fifty.
Illness: for pain and discomfort, a kidney stone that had to be forcibly removed. Most serious: prostate cancer, although the treatment has been a doddle compared to the damn kidney stones, or just about anyone else I know of who has had to have cancer treatment.
Illness: Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome with renal failure, got my kidneys jumpstarted with short-term peritoneal dialysis, still have the dimple/scar almost 50 years later. Kidneys are a wreck but still puttering along with a nephrologist’s care.
Hyperparathyroid adenoma popped out via a now-faded throat slash
Injury: Snapped kneecap from tripping on a sidewalk. After fixation, knee joint collapsed and contracted MRSA (staph) infection that required multiple joint wash-outs with general anesthesia, joint ankylosis, extended stay in skilled nursing facility with daily woundcare, skin resection to remove tissue necrosis and wound closure.
Worst illness - Tuberculosis. One of the first cases of an American who had not been outside the country getting it.
Worst injury - Snapping off my left wrist bone. Whenever I describe it to anyone, they cringe (See this bone? It was sitting here).
Middlebro broke my leg when I was a wee little Skywatcher. Took about a month for anyone to notice.
Was hospitalized with pneumonia at around the same age.
Much like** Ivylass** my appendix ruptured. I walked around for about two weeks with moderate abdominal pain, puked randomly and felt slightly unwell, but none of the other classic signs of appendicitis.
The doctor said that my appendix had ruptured and encapsulated in my abdomen, and that I could either wait it out and feel unwell for a few months before they removed it, or get it removed then and there. I had it out. I am very happy for the morphine pump I woke up hooked up to. Everything hurt. Breathing, talking, just lying there.
I also got kicked in the knee by my friend’s horse while riding my horse. The impact pulled the PCL off the top of the tibia and required opening up the back of my leg to surgically repair it. Compared to my recent ACL injury, recovery from that was a whole lot quicker.
Having my skull crushed by the idiot doctor that delivered me.
Going into status epilepticus at age 4 and almost dying.
I got Myocarditis from either the nightmarish dental cleaning I endured (my mouth was full of blood and I could barely eat for two days!) or the flu (I got the shot but ended up with the strain that didn’t match the vaccine).
A few years earlier in the 80s the following horse back injuries happened to me:
- Horse bolted and headed to the stables, staying on would have meant getting killed, so I did a controlled departure (did.not.get.thrown) and the knee injuries bother to me to this day (thank god for Synvisc)
- Was thrown from a horse going over a jump when a bird flew at its face and spooked it, the compression fractures in my spine bother me to this day.
I also had short term amnesia after getting thrown on my head by a horse that refused a jump, but I’m over that. However, the instant my memory came back was an experience I’ll never forget.
A couple of broken bones and a sprain or two as a child.
One break came from playing flag football in high school. I was part of the nerd group and when our gym class was divided up, the coach gave each team someone good and someone klutzy. Our team had the guy who became the QB for the high school team and I was the uncoordinated extra boy who tried to not get in the way.
They would have us nerds do rush and defend the line since we couldn’t be trusted to catch the ball or defend it. We didn’t want to get hurt to the unspoken rule was the we would pretend to rush and pretend to defend.
On the final game of the year, we and another team were tied for the lead and had a play off. Toward the end of the game with the score tied, our QB came up with a brilliant plan. He sent all our receivers wide and deep. He had me take a few steps down field and do a “buttonhole” – simply turn around and he would toss me an easy catch. Then I was to run as fast as I could down field.
It worked beautiful. My fellow nerd friend was so surprised to not have any defense on the line, he simply stopped in his tracks and neither did a pass rush or tried to run with me. The defender were all sprinting after our receivers and I had an open lane all the way to the goal.
When I crossed the line one defender was so pissed, he came over, grabbed my arm and threw me to the ground. I broke my wrist fall.
The best thing was that got me out of gym the next year, and I could always talk about my “football injury” when I got older.
The most painful was after a surgery in Japan and they had not prescribed enough painkiller. That was a bitch. I finally got that sorted out but not before teaching the nursing staff some new vocabulary words in English.
Worst illness–a stomach flu type thing when I was ten. I had intestinal pains for months.
Worst injury–I got drunk and fell over, smacking my head on the floor. I wound up with a subdural hematoma; the blood pressed on my brain and had to be drained. I don’t remember the week prior to the operation.
I have mastocytosis, which occasionally cases me to go into anaphylaxis.
I also had a brain tumor, but is was removed (and benign).
As a result of a head on collision when I was 17 I had:
A broken/pulverized femur it was held back together with a rod and resulted in 1 inch of bone loss.
Skull fracture this resulted in bleeding into my eye, gave me a cool terminator looking eye for a bit but no lasting consequences
Facial lacerations, my scars have been revised a few times by a plastic surgeon, slightly visible now, much better than the original staple lines going through my eyebrow and chin.
Bruised ribs, the accident report said I wasn’t wearing a seat-belt, the seat-belt shaped bruise running shoulder to waste implied otherwise.
Lost a tooth and chipped another.
All at once kinda sucked, it took some time to recover. Then a few years later when I had the rod removed from my leg I got to spend a significant amount of time recovering again.
Beyond that my life was uneventful. That was the first time I’d ever broken a bone.
Worst injury: Sciatic nerve injury, hurt from my left knee to my left shoulder. Totally incapacitating for a week or so. I got better, no lingering effects. Kayaking.
Worst illness: Some kind of virus thing I got from (I think) kayaking in a river when it was really high due to heavy rain and probably chock full of sewer overflow and toxic run off. I can’t begin to describe how messed up I was physically and mentally! It was bad.
The closest I came to death was while giving birth, so I guess that. It was pretty awful and they ended up putting me under general anesthesia and surgically removing my baby to save both our lives. Even 50 years ago, one or both us would likely not have survived.
Pneumonia. They called it “Walking Pneumonia”, which I understand means only one lung was affected. This was in the winter of 1962.