Nothing exactly horrible, but there is some quantity: I've busted my head open roughly 13 times requiring anywhere from 4-15 stitches. A few minor concussions. I've fractured my right arm. My left arm is really just medical science at this point. I've separated the elbow, had a boxer's fracture, and the kicker was breaking most every bone in my hand/wrist (I fell backwards off a skate board and stopped my fall with the back of my hand, very bad plan) as well as both the Radius and the Ulna. I've also been bitten in the face by a dog. I have no clue how many stitches it required the first time, but I know that it had to be operated on around 6 times in order to remove a great looking new hair-lip. I am either tough, unlucky, or stupid. Probably the last two.
I had a vasectomy on Friday. If I had came with somebody I would've had them take pictures. In between the doctor jabbing a needle into my ballsack (4 times) and smoke billowing from my nuts, I would occasionally see his gloves covered in blood and a clear viscous fluid. I was awake for the whole thing. Yeah. But other than that nuthin'.
Gyad I love this story. In 4th grade I was in the student council, we were cutting the flaps off of cardboard boxes to use for paper recycling. With exacto knives. 4th Grade. Exacto Knife. I'm cutting towards me because I'm an idiot, and I end up cutting my wrist. Up and down like you'd do if you were trying to kill yourself. 4 Stitches only, but probably a mm away from an artery and certain death. The best part? The nurse calling up my mom and telling her that I slit my wrist. Fucking idiot nurse, not like these people didn't know that my father had passed away less than a year beforehand, why not tell the recently widowed mother of 3 that her youngest son just slit his wrist? All was well except... my god how did my mom NOT sue that school system for everything it was worth?
I got to watch a kid fall off the Confidence Course in boot camp. You climb up the rope, walk along a log, and then climb up the A-frame. Out ahead of you in empty space, just too far to simply grab from your protected vantage point, is a rope. You basically lean out, and as you start falling out, you grab the rope and then climb down. This kid missed and took the quick way down. I was on the weird sloped parallel bars when it happened, and got to see what happened to his ankles; it wasn't pretty. "CORPSMAN!" Here's a picture, although in this image they have some stupid pussy-ass rigging shit. We had one rope. I also got to see a kid break his femur in MCT; he stood up the wrong way with his pack on, said "Aw shit" and fell right back down. It sounded like a gunshot. His wife was in my platoon, and the instructors were joking about it right in her face. She got pissed off and called them out. Pretty much the only time that I've seen a private chew out three sergeants. Awesome.
Good call jogging my memory. I saw a guy fall off the top of the rope on the O-course. He slapped the log at the top, yelled his name, then dropped almost the same distance as the one pictured above. My whole platoon was standing right there and we all saw it happen. There was just a thud, then an "Oh Shit!! Corpsman!!" from the DI's. I'm pretty sure he was fine a few days later, but doubt he tried OCS again.
That's one thing I kinda miss about being a Corpsman. The difference between "Doc!" and "Corpsmaaaaaannn!!!!" I loved my guys though, they sure could come up with some interesting injuries.
More blunt-force trauma... Gymnastics is one of the most dangerous sports there is. None of the guys had any really nasty injuries, although we had some spectacular wipeouts. One of my buddies was doing this vault: He was doing it with a weight vest on. Unfortunately, it wasn't really fastened too well, and the vest came off and hit him in the face as he did the back handspring. He ended up hitting the vault sideways and landed on his head on the concrete next to the mat. We laughed our asses off until we realized that he wasn't moving. He had a really nasty concussion. Worst one I ever saw was a girl doing giants on the uneven bars. Girls' bars are retarded; the bars are too thick to wrap your thumbs around them, so you have to fishhook them and hold on for dear life. The girl peeled off the bars and snapped her neck when she hit the ground. She's paralyzed now. Whoops.
In 2005, I was on the USS Milius. I was a part of the VBSS (Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure) team. Basically, our ship would ask a set of questions of other ships we passed concerning their cargo, origin, destination, etc. If they gave us Janky answers, they'd send over my team and we'd inspect them. At gunpoint. America! Fuck Yeah! We'd been chasing a suspected drug boat for a couple days, and finally caught up to them. Team takes the small RHIB (Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boat, basically the boat you see SEALs coming up the beach in on commercials) over to this Dhow we'd been after. It's about an 8 foot difference between the lip of our boat, and the lip of theirs. Our boarding ladder is broken. I'm hanging onto a rope to steady myself, waiting for a good swell to come along, so I can jump up and grab the lip of their boat, and my team will pull me up the rest of the way. Unfortunately, first our boat went through a big dip. When it swelled back up, my right foot was on the side of our boat, my right knee caught the side of theirs, and POP! I fell back into the RHIB, and my buddy caught me. I turned to him and said, "I think I broke my leg". I looked back at my foot and moved the leg side to side a little. My foot wobbled like limp spaghetti at the end of it. I turned back to him and said, "Yep, definitely broke my leg. Take me back to the ship." The guy driving cranked the RHIB around and gunned it back through the chop for the mile and a half to the ship. That's when the screaming started. Broke the medial maleolus (the big thick ball part of your ankle), dislocated both Tibia and Fibia, and ripped all the ligaments and tendons off of both sides. Got a plate and four screws. All this was about 300 miles off the coast of Somalia, so I basically got broken boarding a Pirate. Second pic is my bone sticking out, first is three days later, after they put in the plate.
Tackle with your head up in rugby. I didn't get stitches and it took 4 months before the scab went away...chicks did not dig this scar
When I was 11, I climbed onto a rotting sawbuck, which immediately collapsed. I landed hard on my right forearm, which stung badly for a second and then went numb. I took a look at it and saw a mysterious, smooth white stone sticking out. I tried to wiggle it out and it wouldn't move. That's when I realized I was looking at my fractured bone, poking out through my skin. My mom drove me to the local hospital. Everyone I saw 1) asked me what happened and 2) stuck me with a needle. After awhile, I got drowsy, and replied to the first question, "You tell 'em, Mom." I discovered later that, by the end of the night, my mom was under investigation for child abuse. Anyway, the local hospital couldn't handle it, so we drove to a bigger one an hour away. I was told I'd probably lose most of my flexibility in my arm. I was put under. From what I heard, one doctor walked in with all sorts of gadgets, and another walked in and smugly snapped the bone back in place. My dad finally showed up later that night and looked like he'd had a few. I had to piss into a bag. Dad offered to hold it and accidentally spilled it all over my hospital bed. So that was his contribution. I wore a cast for a few months. When it came off, my mom, a physical therapist, put me on a grueling exercise regimen, and I eventually got 99% of my flexibility back. I'm left with only a purple, star-shaped scar.
I've got one that recently happened to me. Last February, I was making a cut with a saw. I have made this particular cut/pass many times before on other jobs. This time was different. As I came to the bottom of the cut, my pinky finger slipped off the board and into the path of the blade. Luckily, it was a battery operated saw and the instant my finger came off the trigger, the blade slammed to a stop against my bone. When you work with saws enough, you get to know how they sound when cutting things. The guy I was working with chimed in just after I cut my finger, "What was that?" I quickly answered, "My finger." He was in disbelief but yep, it was my finger. I drove myself home, then my wife drove me to the hospital. My brother has a couple good stories, maybe if he reads this thread, he will be willing to share.
I'm 98% sure I cracked if not broke my collarbone. A couple of years ago on Mother's Day, I was playing Cops and Robbers with the kids at my aunt and uncle's house. I had been caught and was handcuffed (had my hands behind my back). Being the inconsiderate criminal that I was, I took off running, with an 8 year old in hot pursuit. As I was making my getaway, I felt my center of gravity pitch forward. As I tried to slow down and reorient myself, my foot hit a patch of wet grass. I turned into a 250 pound human missile with my face leading the way. Unfortunately, I was headed toward a set of concrete steps. The good news was that I was able to whip my right arm around and protect my mouth and nose from splattering on the concrete. The bad news was that my forearm hit the front of the second step flush and immediately stopped me. All the momentum had to go somewhere and it went into my collarbone. I saw a flash of white and felt a wave of agony hit my shoulder. This was immediately followed by an urge to vomit. For about two months I couldn't raise my arm over my head. I still can't sleep on my right side because it gets uncomfortable. And of course, it aches when it's cold and damp. Go me for living in a state where the default weather pattern is cold and damp.
I've had one injury one could classify as gruesome, I suppose. At 15, at school year's end, in Northwestern Ontario for a camping/biking/hiking/general outdoorsiness thing through the school. I was on my bike at an abandoned resort lodge on the second story deck. There was a set of stairs that wound around the corner of the building that I decided I would traverse. I figured at the end of the stairs would be the parking lot that lay in front of the building, having rode down countless flights of stairs on my bike, figured this would be no problem. Well, after rounding the corner of the stairs, to my horror, there were large boulders overgrown with grass at my descent's end rather than the parking lot which lay just beyond them. Needless to say I went over my handlebars. I reached out to stop my fall and the first point of impact was my left hand. The force of the impact snapped both bones in my forearm in half just above the wrist, the effect of which was the bones in the half of my arm closest to my elbow sliding underneath the bones in the half of my arm closest to my wrist like a subduction fault. My arm from elbow to wrist was curved more severely than a banana. Pretty gross. Had to have it re-broken and re-set twice and had some mild nerve damage, but in the end, the arm is about 99% fully functional, just not quite able to rotate enough to hold my hand out flat, palm up.
This game hurt my soul as much as it did his leg. Fuck you Ohio State. I hope the same thing happens to Terrell Pryor at some point: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9-KkUH8yt8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9-KkUH8yt8</a>
I generally just visit TiB to read the ridiculous shit everyone else posts, but I feel like in the spirit of this thread, I need to share. This fall I was involved in an unfortunate snowboarding accident which tore my asshole externally and internally. The hospital paperwork listed it as "laceration-buttock, complicated." What does the hospital do when you awkwardly shuffle in to the emergency room with blood dripping down your legs? Stick a fucking tube up your ass to see how bad the tearing is. There has got to be a better way than this to see how bad the tearing is- when I broke my collarbone they didn't punch me in the shoulder to test the break. The doctor sent me off with a stack of hospital issue pads and a warning to stay off my feet and it would heal up on its own. I couldn't shit for three days because of the pain, and had to go buy more pads when the hospital issued ones ran out. On a side note, is it too much to ask for the university convenience store to sell unscented pads? Jesus. Its bad enough buying pads for yourself as a dude as it is. After the bleeding stopped I still had to wear them because your asshole isn't dry-you end up with that soft yellow scab shit and it will soak into your pants. The stool softener I was prescribed didn't do jack shit, so if anyone knows what I can do with a bottle full of prescription stool softener pills, let me know.
Unfortunately, I couldn't see it because I couldn't turn. Basically I got a second degree sunburn on my shoulders, which promptly blistered up. No big deal. But then I had a child jump up on my shoulders, wrap his arms around my neck for a piggy back ride, and then slide off as I buckled in pain. All my nice and intact day old blisters were ripped off, as well as any skin that was feeling a bit loose. It hurt a bit, bled a good amount (ruined one of my favorite shirts as well). Wide eyes and uncomfortable silences preceded me into the infirmary. Two people got a little weak in the knees as they saw me, but got control of themselves. Fortunately this was the worst wound I ever had. But I do want to nominate a BAMF who suffered a horrible injury and shrugged it off like it was a paper cut. Joe Paterno gets his lower leg broken and all of the ligaments in his knee torn at 79 years young by a huge freaking football player. He promptly looks around at all the mortified faces, and tells them, "Stand me up, you sissies. There's a football game going on."
Not quite sure it counts as an injury, but when I was 8 or so I stepped on an underground yellow jacket nest beside a pond I was going to fish. We were about 45 minutes from the hospital, and I didn't stop screaming at the top of my lungs until they sedated me in the Emergency Room. I had about 100 stings covering my 2 legs, and another 25 or so on my upper body and face. To this day, my Mom says that the best way to get service in an Emergency Room is to come running in with an 8 year old in his underwear screaming at the top of his lungs. Tends to wake people up a bit.
Nettdata, that happened to my wife. Those motherfuckers are NASTY. We found another nest this past summer, and I took them out with an aerosol can and a BBQ lighter. Burned every one of those bastards. When I was 5, we had a palm tree in front of our house. You know how the bases are covered with jagged edges kinda like this? Well, I was jumping up trying to grab the palms, and my forearm came down on the jagged shit on the base. It cut my arm open all the way to the bone. I can still see it in my head like it just happened yesterday. I don't remember it bleeding too terribly, but I remember that bone and the muscle being cut open. On the funny side of "kids being injured", my little boy fractured his leg when my old chocolate lab Mayhem accidentally knocked him over. Just a hairline thing, but he was in some pain and had to be put in a cast. NOTHING is funnier than a 3 year old on codeine cough syrup. I still remember him grabbing my face, pulling me up to him and going, "Daddy? Why you got eyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssss?????????"
Story #1: Me, 12-ish, in Wells-Gray Provincial Park, British Columbia, on a 5-day canoe trip with my parents and brother in remote wilderness. At the midpoint of the trip (furthest from civilization) the 3 boys take the canoe out from the campsite for a bit of fishing during the evening. I get into the boat with bare feet. Out on the middle of the lake, I, sitting on the bottom of the canoe, bend my right knee up for a shift of comfort, pulling my foot toward myself. As I do this, I feel a small prick on the edge of the sole. I look down and hmm, that fish hook just went into my foot. However, upon trying to reverse the motion, it becomes immanently clear that this is a barbed hook, designed not to come out without some rippin.' "Dad, shit. I got a fish hook in my foot and I can't get it out." My father comes over and starts wiggling the hook, macerating a network of small, sensitive flesh fibers (Thanks). We abandon the fishing, go back to the campsite, and given the circumstances, decide that the only option is to cut the damn thing out of my foot with a pocket knife. I was given a stick to clamp between my teeth, and told to look away for a few minutes. Then, stick in mouth (which suffered some rather mean teeth marks), I began to wolf-howl while my father managed to cut enough skin layers away to nicely free the barb (thankfully the knife was sharp). Story # 2 comes probably a year later, on a 3-day camping trip at Lake O'hara, British Columbia. Sitting around the campfire on our last evening, I'm whittling a piece of wood with my newly acquired Leatherman I had somehow gotten for free off an internet promotion. Not paying terribly close attention, I at one point feel the blade "touch" the back of my non-dominant hand, right above the main thumb joint. Thinking it was nothing, I go back at it for almost a minute, until wait, I can see the bone in my thumb! It's a clean laceration, 1.5 inches long. Luckily not a lot of blood, so a bit of gauze, tape, and a wrap bandage did the job. The tricky thing was we're in a campsite where the only access is by bus that comes a few times a day. I spend that night in a tent, and the next day doing a 5-hour hike up a mountain with the bandage. This is followed by a bus ride, and a 2-hour drive back to home to Calgary, with a stop on the way at some family friends place for drinks/tea and running around with their kids. When we finally get home late in the evening, my father takes me to a walk-in clinic. Unwrap, and the doctor asks how long ago did this happen? Oh, a bit more than 24 hours. Well? Too bad, I can't put stitches because it's already started to heal quite a bit. The best part is the 2 flaps of skin didn't joint evenly together, and now there is a rather ugly scar. I tell people I had my thumb joint replaced for arthritis.