Well not really but you can be as graffic as the board allows to detail how you may have maimed or bludgeoned yourself. There's nothing more pitiful than comparing scars to obviously promote your own masculinity. We may as well have arm wrestles. But that's what we're going to do. Fingers crossed there's no way this'll turn soft. :p

Breaking my knee was pretty messed up. Well it was a chip, not actually a break but it kept me in plaster for 6 weeks. It's still never been the same. It was a climbing accident and a straight 3ft knee drop onto concrete. I couldn't manage to cycle home from the park so I walked with my bike. It didn't feel too bad at first until I got home and collapsed.

Hmmmm, I've got a few I think are worth mentioning:

I broke my leg when I was 3. I had a HUGE collection of little Matchbox cars, and my sister and I filled up our hallway with them. My sister had one of those little toy camera things that had the round slides (the name slips my mind at the moment), and she was pretending to take my picture. He asked me to take a step back. Being 3 years old (and an idiot) I stepped back...right onto one of the cars. I fell, and broke my femur. My grandparents didn't take me to the doctor until the next day. They thought I was overreacting!

There was another time where I was riding my bike, and I says to meself "Self, wouldn't it be totally awesome and rockin' if you stood up on the seat of your bike while going down a hill?" Well, long story short, I stood up on the seat, hit a mail box, and fucked up my knee pretty bad. I didn't break it or anything, but I did dislocate the knee cap, and I also needed quite a few stitches.

Hell, I'm coping with an injury at this very moment. As many of you know, I had an accident while working at Wal-Mart. I fell off the top shelf of the soda aisle, and broke my wrist. Now this was waaaaaaay back in August. I was in a hard cast for 6 weeks, I worked through the injury until December, when I finally decided to take a medical leave of absense. In total, I've went through 6 months of physical therapy, and I've only got 20º flexion (bending forward) and 60º extension (bending backward). The perfectly healthy wrist should be 80º/80º. So in a few weeks, I'll be headed to Baltimore for orthoscopic surgery. Then when they determine the extent of the damage, they'll discuss with me the other possible surgeries I'll need. I've been told if its as bad as they think it might be, they'll have to go in there and permanently straighten my wrist. I'll be able to move it side to side, but not up and down. That means no more guitar.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

I broke my wrist watching a football game in 10th grade once.

*copies over a post from another forum. This happened just over a week ago, the 5th to be precise*

Man what a crazy night. About 3 AM EST this morning, somehow, I think a rollover while I was sleeping or something like that, I dislocated my patella (kneecap) on my left leg, and it shifted over to the left. I of course simply woke up thinking that my leg was just asleep at first, but I tried moving it...big mistake. Worst pain EVER! I thought my leg was broken at first, but then I realized what had happened. I'm pinned on my side all this time, unable to roll over on my back, so I simply start hollering, "OOOOOOWWW!! HELP!!!" etc. etc. Praise God that my sister wasn't at a sleepover or whatnot, otherwise I would have been there for hours probably, because my parents room is on the other side of the house. (One story). So, about 3 minutes of yelling, and my sister goes to get my parents. At first they think I'm talking in my sleep again, and I'm like, "LOOK AT MY KNEE!!!" Then of course they figure out something is wrong just by the way it looks. So, they call 911, and the whole time I'm gripping the bed in pain, and shivering from shock. Ambulance arrives, and it takes me about another 3 minutes just to get from the bed to the gurney I'm in so much pain. Keep in mind I'm still on my side, and developing a crap in my butt from just being stuck there so long. The EMT had to try about 3 times to get an IV going on me because the shock had me shaking and that was making the tech blow the vein. Finally got it going when she made an attempt when I wasn't shaking. So we finally get to the hospital, and get onto the bed. The shock symptoms coupled with my tiredness have me just feeling like, "blah". Again, I'm still on my side. They gave me a line of morphine, helped a bit I guess. Managed to shift some so that I could take pressure off my butt to alieviate the cramp...but of course that made the knee pain come back. Then...finally...they gave me some Thiopental I believe, and within 30-45 seconds, I was out. Last thing I remeber was watching the nurse inject the Thiopental into my IV. Then I open my eyes again, and I'm feeling all tingly, and my mouth is writhing around, and so are my arms and legs. I realized slowly that I was on my back, and the nurse told me that my kneecap was back in place. So once the grogginess wore off, I got a knee immobilizer, and a pair of crutches, and was sent on my way. Had to lie in the back of the cab in my dad's truck, across the seats. Now I'm home, chillin in the recliner with this immobilizer on my leg. Out of work for 5 days, gonna TRY going back to school on Friday.


Status now:

Off the crutches and immobilizer, wearing a brace some, but off that today just to see how I fare. Back at work and school. Still can do some things, but overall doing good.

When I was in 5th grade I broke my arm. The doc didn't set it right so now my left arm is a little crooked. And back in '88 I was in a car accident And I wound up having my right wrist broke and the ligaments in my left wrist were all destroyed so the doc had to pin them back together. I had a cast on the right wrist for 6 weeks and I had to wear a cast on the left for 12 weeks. It wasn't fun having to wear a cast on both arms at the same time. I couldn't even take care of my 2 kids at the time. My mother-in-law had to take them to Ohio for a few weeks till I got better.

I broke my big toe last year; tripped on a concrete step I didn't know was there. The toe literally buckled under me and there was also a pretty decent sized gash from it hitting & scraping the concrete.

Since my father's funeral was the next day I couldn't really stay off of it so I cleaned, disinifected & wrapped it best I could and went on with the show. Over the next few days it really got quite ugly, was probably (no, definitely) infected. Green/yellow stuff oozing, swollen, purple, the works. My mother took a look and said it was one of the worst, most disgusting cuts she's ever seen, and she's 75 and has raised 3 children!! Once I began soaking in Epsom Salts it got much better, and the cuts did gradually heal. Luckily it was still summer and I was between jobs so I had no need to wear shoes other than thongs.

The wound is now completely healed but it's clear that the joint is broken because I can't bend it like the other one, it doesn't look like the other one and there is still some occassional pain from it healing wrong.

Ahhh...reminiscing!!

Apple

When I was quite young, about 8 or 9 I think, me and a friend of mind Nicholas, had the really bright idea of playing ball hockey in his apartment in my old neigbourhood. Well, during one play when I was goalie Nick mistakenly hit me in the face with either the stick or the ball (think it was the stick but who the hell knows?! ) and my lip was all puffy and swollen up for a week or so.

Another time when I was in grade 5 we were playing at the "Adventure Playground" near Forest Manor P.S. in my old neigbourhood. Anywho, we were all jumping off the top of the playground structure (it was quite high, but we were young so what the hell did we give a shit right?!) and when it came my turn I didn't want to pussy out and I wanted my jump to be the best. So I took off, and instead of jumping slowly or cautiously I just jumped and yeah it was better than the others but I sprained my ankle and was out of commission for about a week or so. The guy after me (Muhammad some Egyptian-Canadian dude) was afraid to jump then and all the other guys there gave him hell for it.

I can't really think of anything else too major at the moment, I like to play sports I've gotten into a few scraps but nothing really major actually comes to mind at the moment.

I broke my back in 2nd grade.

Before I formed a memory, my sister was juggling with some tin cans (like what soup comes in) and one flew astray. I have a slight scar on my eyebrow still. Before I was born, my sister fell with a toothbrush in her mouth; it spilt right through her cheek.

Touch wood, I haven't had anything worse than a fractured nose, which I acquired from a bigger boy at school. Getting it put back, even with anaesthetic, was far more painful than the elbow that fractured it.

I fractured my ankle maybe 2 years ago. Technically, you could consider it a break as there was a small piece that chipped of the corner of it, but the whole bone didn't snap or anything.

I was playing basketball, and I went for a rebound and kind of flew off the court. The edges of said court were just made of concrete that kind of rapidly sloped off as the court ended, and I guess my foot came down on that and just rolled.

The injury was bad enough itself, but even worse, this was the first practice of the season and I wasn't able to actually play a game until about half way through the season, maybe some 2 months later.

When I was 7, my dog Dusty bit my face. Took some skin with him. Actually, took a lot of skin with him. I had to have plastic reconstructive surgery. It's on my right cheek, I try to take pictures on the other side because of the scar.

I fell down a staircase and dislocated my foot.

I have a scar on the center of my hairline due to falling and hitting myself on a broken, sharp piece of metal that used to be a handle on a desk. It tore my scalp, leaving it dangling.

Wow, thinking back, nothing bad really ever happened to me physically.I should consider myself lucky.

When I was young, about 10, I stepped on a nail and it went through my foot. That sucked.

When I was 11 I fell out of a tree onto a board filled with nails, luckly I missed the nails. Still sucked.

The same year I was building another tree fort with my buddies and it collapsed with me in it. That sucked more than all of em. Didn't really get hurt bad, but lots of gashes and blood that time.

Worst of all, at 10 I got into a fight with my older neighbor in the woods. We were building a tree house and i got into an argument with him and he took his hammer and hit me in the temple(side of the head) with the claw side of it. I blacked out and woke up with a chunk outta my head and part of my ear missing. At the hospital, they said if he had gone half a centimeter deeper, I'd be dead. (Temple protects the brain)

I spent a lot of time as a kid in two places:

1. The Woods
2. The Hospital

The Doc

And that's why your Johnson is smaller than mine

i avnt done anything too bad but wen my girlfriend was about 8 she fell off her chair n headbutted the top of a fish tank n now shes got a scar jus under her eye n if it had been like half a centimetre higher she would of lost her eye

Oh yeah, I remember now. When I was quite young (don't really remember but most probably younger than 10) I got my left thumb caught in between a door and the edge of a wall. Not very pleasant...Also in grade 1, for some reason I was having a discussion with a classmate about how lead was poisonous and that you shouldn't eat it. The classmate then proceeded to lick a pencil to "prove" to me that lead isn't really that dangerous after all. :rolleyes: Anywho, can't remember if it was the same day or not, but for some reason I was fooling around with a pencil and I jabbed it in just below the middle and ring fingers of my left palm. There's still a blueish gray mark there...I think that this is the source of my superpowers. :p

I've had a large number of urological "procedures." They used to be done in hospital outpatient facilities under anesthesia or sedation. But since the insurance companies began clamping down on hospitals and their charges, nearly all the recent ones have been done in my doctor's office, without anesthesia or sedation. Now I know how The Inquisition got its confessions...

Turnbull, though your said procedures are far from dental practice, your post reminded me of a scene in Marathon Man...

"Is it safe?"

Yeah, that's a crazy scene...what could Dustin Hoffman have done?

Hospitals now days want you in and out ASAP! Geez, when I had my babies, an average stay in the hospital was 4 days. When my daughter had hers, she was out the next day!!

I've been very lucky as far as bad injuries. I had stitches once on my leg when I was little.

However, the most serious was when I was 3/4 years old, standing at the top of my aunt's steps going to the basement(They had kitchens in the basement). I was playing "I got you last" with my sister, lost my balance and fell down the steps, just as my aunt was coming up the stairs with a huge pot of boiled water (I guess with posta). I tumbled right into the scorching water.

I'm told that I had second degree burns all over and was bandaged from head to toe. Funny thing is, the only memory I have is standing at the top of the stairs. I don't remember the fall, the pain, the hospital, the bandages or anything. Miraculously I was left with not one scar.

TIS

Now that is lucky! Seriously, sometimes medical assessments and prognoses do not tell the whole story and are not always entirely accurate. Maybe you're just a lucky lady!

Everyone thinks I'm nuts when I tell them this, but I have always been more or less immune from the heat. It has to be over 100 degrees for me to turn the air on; when everyone is fanning themselves cause it's so hot, I'm thinking "it's just right." :p In my mind I think that does of "scorching" water changed my chemistry or system or something. But then again, what do I know.

TIS

Yes! When our youngest was born, my wife, thank goodness, was in labor for less than two hours, and gave birth only 11 minutes after entering the hospital. She could have walked out on her own. But they kept her there for 5.5 days because we had full insurance coverage and the hospital wanted to milk it for all it was worth. No wonder the insurance companies rebelled.

You can't have a thread like this without a graphic power tool story.

To paraphrase Bobby Fuller, "I fought the saw and the saw won." It always does. A couple of years ago, I did everything but sever my pinky finger from my left hand. It was a Friday night, I was working alone, and thought I'd make "just one more cut" before calling it a night. Right there you have all the elements of a shop accident.

When they say it happens so fast you don't even know it, they were right. The piece of material I was cutting kicked-back dragging my left hand over the top of the spinning blade. It happened so fast I didn't know what happened until I looked at my hand. It looked like one of those graphic medical specials on The Discovery Channel. Most of the skin just below my left pinky from the palm and wrapping around the outside to the knuckle on the back was missing. I could see daylight through that part of my hand. The pinky was dislocated at the knuckle and the only thing still holding it to my hand was the skin next to the ring finger and that tendon...the one helps you do that Mack the Knife thing. Everything on the front, back and outside was severed, or in the case of the skin, gone.

I calmly walked to the phone and dialed 9-1-1. I have since heard a tape of the phone call and it's amusing. I explain to the operator that "I cut my hand on the tablesaw" (which you can hear still running in the background) "and it's bleeding pretty bad." She asks if I still have all the fingers and there is a noticable pause...I was actually counting to make sure! Then I answered "Yes...and they're all still attached!"

Much to the surprise of the paramedics on the ambulance, I meet them at the door holding my hand in the air. I was remarkably calm, and I found out later one of the paramedics was in her first month on the job...and I could tell by the look in her eyes when she saw my hand. Her more experienced partner calmly explained what he needed from her and what he was doing to me. They had me patched-up and in the bus in ten minutes and at the hospital in another five minutes. In the village where this happened, I'll pay any parking ticket, moving violation, or municipal fine regardless of the circumstances. I had an ambulance where I needed it when I needed it in less than five minutes from the time I made my 9-1-1 call to the time they walked in the building and I could not have asked for a better response to an emergency from that fire department.

Talk about managed care...I was out of the hospital in 18 hours. 3 hours in the ER, 4 hours under the knife with surgery beginning at 1am and ending at 5am (with some really novel ways to use stainless steel and synthetic materials to hold the whole post-surgical assembly in place), and discharge at 3pm the next day with a prescription of Vicodin as my parting gift for appearing on today's show.

I still have the piece of material that I was cutting from that night (hanging on my "wall of shame"). I eventually completed the piece of furniture I was working on and I disconvered some of my blood on one of the other pieces from that project. The blood was on a side that would be unseen, so I covered that spot with clear packing tape, sanded around it, then varnished over it. It was a large library table, and it sits in the home of an unknown client who bought it through a gallery owner here in Chicago.

The day they put a sharp blade on a spinning motor is the day we all sacrificed safety for speed in the shop. The accident was preventable. I chose speed over safety and I paid for it.

tony b.

Tony B,

What a horrible experience!! I'm sure I couldn't remain as calm as you did. Thank God for 911. I'm sure that's something you'll never forget. Btw, how is your hand today????


TIS

It could have been so much worse, TIS. My hand is fine. The pinky and the knuckle are a little misshapen, there is noticible scarring, and I can't completely bend the pinky, but in general I have a useful left hand with a COMPLETE set of original parts.

For the record...I had debated dropping my insurance JUST PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT. I elected to keep it...but raised my deductible to a much higher amount with a 20% co-pay. Going rate for the whole deal -- ER visit, surgery with three doctors billing for services, overnight stay at the hospital, post-surgical follow-ups, and physical therapy -- was around $60,000 BEFORE adjustments and write-offs. That's what the uninsured would have paid. As it was, it cost me five figures for my error in judgement. Considering it could have cost me five FINGERS, I'm thankful.

How did I remain so calm? I'm not really sure. Time and again I'll read that "what we do (woodworking/furnituremaking) is inherently risky." And every time I walked into the shop, I looked at the phone and reminded myself that if anything happened to anyone, I should call 9-1-1. I just never thought it would happen to me, and I think I reacted instinctively to the constant reminder about what to do in an emergency.

tony b.

Aside from my many rolled ankles (which I attribute to me not being able to watch the "hobbling" scene in Mysery) and other "inherent" risks that come with skating and snowboarding, I only have a few injuries that stick out in my mind.

The only concussion Ive ever had came from hitting a tree in Telluride a few years back. Long story short, I caught an edge on a hidden root,it threw me 90 degrees and I bear hugged this enormous pine tree. I smashed my jaw into the tree as well, and I have no idea how I got down off the mountian. I remember certain parts of the trail, but most of my memory is of fire engulfed cliffs with black wolves.

My horrible back injury- I was messing around on this stupid little ride on rail 2 years ago back at my parents house in Hickville Colorado. I didnt have enough speed, and my board slipped out from under me in a way that whne I fell, my ass and shoulders/head hit the concrete, with my lower back still on the rail. Somehow I got down, but the ambulance took 30 minutes to get there.
They chose the bumpiest way, with my already damaged head hitting the back brace. When determining whether or not to X- ray me, they actually asked if I was pregnant! Once they realized that I was a man, I was wheeled into the x-ray room, where I was asked it I could get off the strecher on onto the table even though an ambulance had to come get me, and I couldnt speak for all the pain I was in. That prompts them to wheel the strecher a foot and a half away, and drag me across the gap.
Up until now, I havent had the most reassuring experiance. Then the ray of the x ray apperently burned out. My wonderfully brillian technition went to find 4 other collegues. When the came back, it took another 20 minutes of them hoveing around the table, yelling "Dont touch that!" at each other.
Finally, they were satisfied enough with the results of the eventual x ray to give me some morphine But I would never recommend that my worst enemy go to that hospital

This thread was made for people like YoTonyB.

I once tore my eyelids off with a rusty knife. They were sewn back on with knitting needles and fishing wire. True story.