Yesterday, I was visiting a client and had to park on a hill. When I left that client, I was kind of in a hurry and didn’t open my car door all the way. The combination of gravity and my haste worked against me, and the car door began shutting before I was anywhere close to seated in my car, and the door hit me in the ear. I was astounded at how painful this was, and how stupid. Worse, when I tried to explain it to a friend later, she initially got the impression that my ear got slammed in the car door, which makes me sound like some type of idiot.
My ear still hurts today. A lot.
What’s the strangest injury (and injury-related story) you’ve ever had?
Once, when swinging on a garage gate, I fell over backwards and slammed the back of my head on concrete. I somehow managed to bruise the part of my brain responsible for sight and spent a few days with incredibly blurry vision.
4th grade…we were playing some sort of run-and-grab-the-thing game inside during gym because it was raining. I was running, and slammed into the wall (concrete bricks) with my right arm stretched out in a rigid fashion. This was enough to shatter my elbow in three places and when I started crying from the pain, my PE teacher (may she rot in agony) said I was faking but I could sit down if I wanted. My next teacher (art I think…don’t remember) saw how my elbow had swelled to the size of an elephant and sent me to the nurse, who had me put an ice pack on it and called my mother.
When the doctor got my X-rays back, he said he was impressed. In all his years of pediatrics, he’d NEVER seen a kid do that to their elbow before.
About amonth ago, whilst I was talking on the phone, for some strange reason I felt a sudden slight pain at the back of my neck. It was definitely a sprain, a ridiculously painful one. After about five minutes the pain became so severe that I couldn’t move my neck even an inch laterally nor could I move it up or down. It would hurt when I walked, while I slept and pretty much whenever I moved. The pain lasted four days before the intensity started wearing away. It was about two weeks before I regained full range of motion in my neck.
I was maybe 8 and wrestling with my brother (5) in the floor of the living room. There was this little ottoman type footstool in the floor. He tackled me and as I fell back I caught my thumb on the edge of the stool. It knocked the end joint of my thumb back to the same level as the base. Scared me to death!
They rushed me around the block to the hospital (very small town) and the doctor said it wasn’t that hard to fix. He didn’t do anything but grab the knuckle and yank it back in place. At least I assume that’s what he did because as soon as he grabbed it I blacked out and came to later that night.
It took weeks of rubbing this black tarry goo on it to get the swelling to go away, but it’s fine now.
Last summer I was thrown from my horse, executing a textbook-perfect landing (I landed on my feet, with knees relaxed, and rolled to my shoulder).
I strained some small muscles around my hips that are apparently vitally important to forward locomotion. For about 4 days I could only walk backwards (with crutches).
I crutched backwards into Physical therapy and they told me: “first off honey, we’re gonna get you walking forwards.”
I was a very clumsy child and had so many accidents that the hospital called social services on my parents!
One of these many accidents occurred when my mom was vacuuming, and because I was deathly scared of the vacuum cleaner, I refused to stand on the floor any time she vacuumed–I always had to climb on something. This particular time, I just stepped up on to the bottom rungs of two barstools (one foot on each) and I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but my left foot slipped off the rung…and as it slipped, my “ring” toe and little toe stayed on the rung while the rest of the foot slipped off. This resulted in my last two toes being ripped partway from my foot. They were connected at the top side of my foot but the underside was a mess. I still have a scar at the base of those toes.
Or, if you want a grown up injury, I got my nose broken in a bar fight five years ago when a drunk guy’s aim was so off, he missed the guy he was trying to hit and got me. And it was two months before my wedding!
I had gerbils in a glass aquarium that would constantly scratch on the sides of the glass incessantly… while studying for finals one night, the noise started pissing me off badly, so I pounded on the glass with my fist, only to have the glass break. My fist was covered in blood, and I ended up in the emergency room, where I received 5 stitches on my fist. Upon returning home, my duty was finding all 5 of the gerbils who had escaped the cage and ran free through my apartment. This took about 2 hours, and I failed the final…
When I was 10 I liked to climb trees. Since we lived in a city, the only trees in my backyard were directly behind a chain link fence. This, of course, didn’t deter me in the least. So one day, after school, I was climbing and slipped and fell. I caught my little, un-developed chest on the spike of the chain link and almost tore my left nipple off. Fortunately, I was wearing my teflon coated Catholic school uniform and that probably protected me from more serious injury. My mom brought me to the emergency room where they sewed my nipple back on. They did a good job, too, because I only have a faint scar. That pretty much cured me of tree climbing.
I was ‘tightrope walking’ along the top of a neighbor’s fence made of vertical tree branches when I lost balance and fell to the side. Unluckily I caught one of the branches with my armpit which impaled me and kept me hanging two feet above the ground with the end of a stick about an inch through my armpit. Still have the scar, but not many people get to see it.
About a month or so ago a friend and I were going to the McD’s of one of thos combination McD’s/gas station places. When getting out of my car I noticed a very long piece of fishing line that went from the ground under the door of my car all the way under the wheel of another parked car. When getting back into my car apparently the fishing line was somehow picked up by my sandals and wrapped around my toes, unbeknownst to me.
I started to drive away and I felt something attacking my foot. I started screaming because I thought it was a bug, but i kept slowly trying to pull out of the parking lot. Finally, I realized what ws around my toe and was able to get it off by throwing my foot around wildly. The fishing line had cut a very deep gash in my toe that probably needed stitches, because it’s still not totally healed today.
In 1994 I was at a Superchunk show. The third song they played was “For Tension”, which was my favorite song of theirs, and they really rocked it out. Forgetting for a moment that I hadn’t been sixteen years old for six years, I jumped out into the mosh pit in a fit of Pentacostal punk rock abandon. Less than a minute later I was knocked down by a forearm to the chest and an inadvertant foot sweep that took my legs out from under me. I landed ass first on bare concrete and was then trampled by the other moshers who were unfamiliar with punk rock etiqutte. I crawled out of the pit and managed to limp around for the rest of the show, which was fabulous.
Once I got home and the drugs wore off, I was in tremendous pain. Had to go see an orthopaedic surgeon who took X-rays, said my tailbone (coxyx? how do you spell that damned thing?) was not broken but it was badly bruised and even if it was broken there wasn’t anything they could do about it short of surgery and here’s the bill have a nice day. I spent the next couple of weeks trying not to sit down. To this day, it still hurts if I sit the wrong way for an extended period.
Not one single injury, but a recurring one. To my right hand.
Over the past two years, my husband and I have made…lessee… 7 trips to Reno and one to Vegas. Before we leave, every single time, I injure my right hand. And we win. Now, these injuries are not intentional, and I live in fear of what’s going to happen next. I’ve sustained two burns, several cuts, and last time, I was turning around and one of my coworkers, who was holding a letter opener, came up behind me. The letter opener went under the nail bed about 1/4". Ow. We won quite a bit that time. Which is funny, because I didn’t even know we were going away. It was a surprise trip.
In 7th grade gym class we were in small groups playing basketball in the gym. Most gyms have not only the two “main” goals at the ends of the basketball court, but also have 4 goals that swing down out of the ceiling and are positioned so that half-court games can be played perpendicular to the full court.
On this particular day not only were the auxillary goals downs, but the bleachers were out as well, so that the bleachers were only about 5 feet behind the goals. I went charging in for a layup and couldn’t stop in time. I ran into the bleachers, which clipped me on the shins and flipped me head over heels. Both shins were split open and bled like no tomorrow.
This was in 1976, when everyone wore tube socks that ran all the way up to your knee caps. There I was, with white tube socks on and blood pouring down both shins through these cuts. Not only did it hurt like hell, but I looked utterly ridiculous.
Maureen, that’s called karma, baby!
Me? 1st or 2nd gade I want rushing off for the closet where our jackets and lunches were stores as were were getting ready to go outside. Me, being hyper and excitable, forgot about the pencil in my hand.
Pal on the floor, whether intentionally or not, tripped me and I went down face-first. The pencil embedded itself in my neck.
There the little graphite tip remains today, for the doctor couldn’t get it all out.
I was probably 7 or 8. It was summer, and my dad had everyone outside working around the house.
The last project was to fix one of the downspouts. My dad, my mom, and my brother were all holding on to it. My job was to stay “out of the way.” I was leaning against the house.
Of course all three people managed to drop it at the same time. I couldn’t back away and ended up getting caught right under my left eye. I had a nice gash about 1/4" below my eye. And it hurt and bled like nobody’s business. I ran screaming into the house, leaving a trail of blood behind me.
The odd thing is, my mom was cut at the same age in the very same place. She was walking behind her uncle in the garden and didn’t notice he’d stopped. She walked right into the blade of a hoe.
A few years later I was sprayed in the face (and eyes) with gasoline. That burned so very, very badly.
But the most embarrassing injury has to be when I was in a car accident in high school. I was hit by the short bus.
(No, I’m not making that up. At least there weren’t any passengers on board).
OMG! I feel so guilty laughing at your experience. My mind’s eye immediately put it in cartoon form and I couldn’t help it.
Okay, here’s mine so you can laugh back at me to even the karmic debt.
I was about 7 when I was mixing a cake batter and decided I wanted to taste it. I was in too much of a hurry to turn off the mixer thus I ended up with all five fingers entangled in the beater blades. I am standing there, hand lodged in the mixer, yelling for my dad to pull the cord. I walked into the emergency room carrying the mixer under my arm. They had to use bone cutters (on the mixer blades) to get my fingers dislodged from the thing.