What's the worst you injured yourself without telling anyone about it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

[ul]
[li]You didn’t seek medical attention (well, maybe much much later if it didn’t heal right)[/li][li]You didn’t tell your mom, your brother, your lover, your coworkers, friends or your priest. At least not until well after you healed up[/li][/ul]

So, what’s the worst thing you did to yourself that you never mentioned? Maybe you deliberately hid it, or maybe you didn’t think it was worth discussing, or maybe it just never came up somehow.

The tldr version: I broke my tailbone

When I was a senior in high school my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and great-grandmother with Alzheimer’s…he begged my mother to keep his mom out of a home, so she and my little brother moved in with her in March. Dad and I were to move in with them too the day after I graduated.

So it gets to be the night of graduation, and we go to the chem free party, and one of the events is roller skating. I proved I suck at that by losing my footing and falling hard flat on my butt.

It hurt. Oh my God, it hurt so much every time I stood up or sat down. Or pooped. For weeks. Did it occur to me that it was broken? No, not really.

And I never did mention it to my parents. It’s not as though I was trying to hide it, but… there was a lot going on. Grampy was so sick, and great-grammy was being violent and just making everyone insane. So I didn’t want to give my parents one. more. problem. to deal with, not if I could deal with the pain.

And hey, eventually it got better. Well, mostly. The reason I’m asking is because ordering yet another gel cushion reminded me.

So, what did you do to hurt yourself and why did you remain mum about it?

2

Wow. Breaking a tailbone is no small thing. That’s pretty tough.

In my case, I was walking quickly and tripped on black ice. I flipped backward and landed on my back and shoulder. It took at least a week and a half before I could walk normally, and I didn’t tell anyone.

3

Damn! Broken tailbone? I think if it consistently hurts to poop, that always requires swallowing the pride and figuring out what’s up. But I am a weak, weak man.

After scraping an illicit pipe, I closed a pocket knife on my middle finger, right at the top joint. Hurt like hell, bled like a stuck pig - a deep, gnashy cut I still have a bright scar from. Ran it under water for 10 minutes, then constantly bandaged it til it eventually healed. But it shoulda gotten a couple stitches, to be sure. :smack:

4

When I was about 12 years old we were making ramps and pretending we were Evil Knievel on our bikes. My parents witnessed this and immediately told us were were not to continue doing this as we’d surely hurt ourselves. So, naturally we continued.

The ramps got bigger and bigger until we were mini Evil Knievels.

One afternoon I went flying through the air and landed all askew with my left ankle under the back tire. I definitely cracked something, and quite possible broke something but I could not tell my parents. This was during summer holidays and I put on a brave face while walking around my parents, but hobbled and winced and sucked it up otherwise.

It healed eventually, but I bet it was like a year before all the pain subsided and I was back to normal.

No more Evil Knievel jumps for me.

5

Nothin too awful, really.

I fell on ice and banged the crap out of my right side, from the hip down, and twisted the shit out of my good knee (as opposed to the knee that needs to be replaced). I didn’t bother seeing the doc since there’s nothing he could’ve done.

About 15 years ago, I sliced open the upper side of my left index finger removing the top wrapping from a bottle of wine. Bled like a fucker. Everyone else at the party was already drunk, so I just put on a pressure bandage and proceeded to numb the pain myself.

I did see the doc the following Monday because I couldn’t keep the wound closed and from bleeding. I got a lecture, a dressing, and a tetanus shot. No stitches; it had been too long. :frowning:

6

When I was about 7 or so, I begged my mom to let me iron my clothes for school the next day. She warned me that I would burn myself, but I promised I wouldn’t. Well, of course I burned myself. I kept it hidden until it got infected several days later.

7

When I was six or seven I put my foot through a windowpane (one of several that were stored out in the shed) and cut my leg just above the ankle… I wrapped a bandanna around my ankle and continued playing. A few hours later my sister came to get me for supper and told me to take the bandanna off my leg. I couldn’t - it was thoroughly stuck in place with dried blood. Off we went to the ER, where they cleaned it up and discovered that I’d cut my leg to the bone. It took 20-odd stitches, and ~55 years later I still have the scar.

8

When I was 16 I was working on a ranch during the summer cutting hay. I slipped on a wet step and banged my shin so hard there is still a dent in my right shinbone.

9

I fell out of a tree-house as a kid and landed on my side on some rocks. With the hindsight of a life spent falling down onto various awkward things, I figure I sprained my hip and shoulder, bruised some ribs, and got a concussion. I spent a lot of time reading & watching TV the next few weeks.

10

When I was 12 I was at a youth weekend for my church youth group. The first evening I fell going down stairs and “sprained” my ankle. I didn’t want to go home and I didn’t tell anyone. I had (and still have) a stupidly high threshold for pain. When my mom picked me up at the end of the weekend she noticed how swollen my ankle was and took me to the doctor. Three torn ligaments. I was in a cast for ages and have had trouble with it ever since. I’ve ended up re-injuring it a number of times and needing physical therapy.

11

nm

12

Hey. Don’t leave us hanging!

13

Yep, that’s how it starts.

14

I was working at the top of a ladder holding onto something high with my right hand and driving screws rightward with a drill in my left hand. Something slipped and the screwdriver bit wound up going into my right forearm. I pulled it back out, and a shred of something came out with it, about an inch long and a quarter inch wide. I cleaned everything up and all my fingers moved, but still there’s this ponytail hanging out of my forearm, and I wanted to finish what I was doing, so I just cut it off as close to the skin as I could. No problem,

15

Many years ago I crashed a motorcycle going around a curve around 40 mph; slid along the pavement into a ditch. I was around 150 miles from home and riding alone.

I crawled out of the ditch, righted the bike, and checked into a motel because I wasn’t walking so good. After about an hour (I remember Bonanza was on the TV) I limped back to the bike, got on it, and rode home in the pouring rain.

Didn’t tell anyone about it for several days. Never did tell Mom.
mmm

16

Back when I was bouncing I did this several times over the years. Needed to look and act OK to work, so I sucked it up and dealt with the pain. Cracked ribs (twice, once on each side), fractured bones in my right hand (twice), broken toes (three times, left foot once, right twice), slice on my left calf from falling on a broken bottle, concussion (twice), partial de-gloving of a toe on my right foot (caught it under the bottom of a swinging door at home in bare feet), two golf-ball sized cysts on my left shin that I eventually had to lance and drain and then bandage the gaping holes, torn “something” in my right knee that is still messed up 10+ years later.

For most of the time I didn’t have any form of medical insurance and I really hate going to the ER. Not to mention that I couldn’t afford the bills.

17

When I was 19 I was working in a lumber mill as a security guard. We would often stand by millwrights while they were welding to make sure no fires were started in the sawdust. The older millwrights were really stubborn, and refused to wear non-flammable overalls. Their old Carhartt overalls lit up like a dry Christmas tree if a spark got on them. I can’t count how many times I had to spray one of them down.
One night we were stretched pretty thin for guards, so I was fire watch for multiple welders and walking back and forth between the two jobs. I heard a shout and turned to see one of the millwrights trying to put out his overalls, which had caught fire on his leg. I sprinted over to him and accidentally brushed up against one of the saw blades they had set aside while they were working on the saw. It sliced from my wrist to my elbow. Not incredibly deep, but I’m positive I should have gone to the hospital and gotten stitches. I didn’t want to make a fuss (old grouchy men and I’m the only female security guard on staff, I wanted to keep face if that makes any sense), so I just went and washed it and wrapped it in gauze from one of the first aid stations. I still have a jagged scar up my arm.

18

Broke my right pinky finger trying to catch a volleyball. I didn’t tell my mom right away because I thought it was just sprained. About a week later, when it still hurt and I still couldn’t bend it, I told her, but said it was just sprained. A couple of weeks after that, when it still wasn’t right, she took me to a doctor. The doctor said it was broken, and it this point, the only way to fix it was to re-break it. I passed. It took about a year before I was able to full bend it again.

To date, the top half of that pinky takes a rather startling angle away from the rest of my hand when I hold my fingers together.

19

The first one that comes to mind was when I was 10-12 years old and was shooting arrows in the back yard alone, a big no-no. We were only to play with the bows under adult supervision. As I was walking to pick up the arrows I was holding the bow in front of me, by the string, with both hands in such a manner that the bow was horizontal (imagine a capital “D” rotated 90 degrees to the right). I was casually flipping the grip end over my head and back. One unfortunate swing back to the front ended with the hard plastic grip hitting me in the mouth and breaking a front tooth. I remember being on my knees in pain, spitting out pieces of tooth and thinking “No way I can tell Mom. Not only will I get in trouble, but she’ll take me to the dentist”. I hated going to the dentist. So I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t smile widely and stayed basically to myself. Mom finally noticed a day or 2 later that I was biting everything with the side of my mouth and asked why - busted!

I did get in trouble, and I did go to the dentist.

20

I knocked my front tooth out; it was left dangling by the nerve. It was twisting and flopping against my lower lip as I breathed. I pushed it back up into its socket, held it there for the rest of the day, arranged my pillows that night so that I slept on my back, jamming stuff up into the gums so that my lip wouldn’t touch it and move it out of place. Next morning, it was okay-ish, and over the next few days it settled back in solidly. It’s been fine for decades now - very slightly misaligned, but not noticeably.

I was about eleven. I learned a couple of important lessons: when riding your bike down a giant spiral stone staircase, make sure your handlebar won’t get stuck in your jacket pocket when trying to straighten out at the bottom, and also - denial works quite well sometimes. Improvisation, too.