f13.net

I write at half speed since I'm down to one finger typing after returning from the emergency room, where the nice doctor reattached the chunk of flesh on my left hand/index finger, that I had just chopped halfway off with a rusty axe.

Only a couple of stitches and no anasthetic. Post your tales and tell how much of a wuss I am...

Your avatar is now strangely appropriate.

Heh, I can't mock you.  This 4th of July, I was taking advantage of the day off to work on my wife's anniversary present (a mahogany bench).  Like a complete dumbass (instead of my usual semi-dumbassedness), I use the tablesaw improperly:  instead of ripping wood the long way and then cutting the halves into the short pieces I needed, I foolishly cut it into short pieces first , say "WTF did you just do, n00bler" and then think "Aw, hell, don't wanna waste this wood, I can still do this."

If that's not clear enough to visualize the problem, you can just skip to the conclusion:  small pieces of wood get kicked back HARD when you haven't got the clearance to maintain a safe grip on them.  Lost most of a fingernail and had two fingertips sewed back together, and frankly I'm surprised I didn't break a finger in the process.

Watch them powertools, people :)

Stitches are really cisturbing for some reason. Hopefully you have a quick and painfree recovery.

This has become a gross out injuries thread, right? Don't read any further if you don't want that.

I played basketball in high school. I'm 6'4'', and in those days i could jump pretty well. Once in a game, I was on a fast break, and someone threw me a high lob pass to try and dunk.

I miscalculated my leap, and my right hand spiked right into the bottom of the backboard. My momentum carried me up and forward. My pointer finger was bent completely backward until it snapped. My fingernail hit the back of my hand.

That one took months to get back to normal. I'm getting the willies just thinking about it.

Be careful of your fingers. No fingers, no gaming. Better break your legs or something instead.

Both my job and my hobbies with gaming require intact digits. My natural clumsiness dictates that I am not allowed to have any power tools more complex than a power screwdriver.

Since I'm still equipped with 10, 10 and 1, I must be doing something right.

(http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2004-11/15171313.jpg)

Ouch indeed.

I've been pretty lucky in my life, haven't sustained any serious injuries.

Worse thing that happened to me was when I was helping my dad move a very large rock from one place in the yard to another.  We placed it on a little rolling platform to make the actual move easier.  Would've been great, too, except we hit a bump on the way and the full weight of the rock landed on my thumb.  Didn't break it, but I did lose the nail, and it took the better part of a year before it looked completely normal again.

Jelly knees.   :?

My two worst injuries were from fights, but not from the other guy. PvE injuries in PvP.

First time I was fighting a guy on a ledge, which had a timber beam border. Beam broke when I was swinging, he was dodging the other way and stayed up, I fell. Landed on my head, no big deal...but then the timber hit my pelvis the same time my pelvis hit the ground and snapped it in half. Not the timber.

Second time was when I punched my stepbrother through a plate glass window. He had locked me out of the house and was gloating. The injury was sustained on the withdrawal of my arm, cut it deep along the wrist on a shard of glass. Totally worth it to see the surprise on his face and then all the multiple cuts he sustained. No stitches needed, I never even went to a doctor for it, just disinfected and bound it up. Left a sexy scar.

Good times. Only major injuries I've sustained, despite a lifetime of crazy shit like freeclimbing and cliff diving and whatnot.

You may be a wuss but at least you're not as stupid as I was.

Sounds like nearly the identical injury.  The way I sustained mine was at the beach, out in the water, spied an aluminum can sunk to the bottom in about chest deep water.  Pulled it up and attempted to chuck it all the way back to the sand and ask a buddy to toss it further up where we had our own trash bag.  Now I'm already blitzed on about 4 or 6 quick beers and when I grasp the can to throw the pad of my index finger slipped inside the opening.   :roll:  Need I say more?

Was the end of the day at the beach for me, wrapped my whole hand up in a tee-shirt to stanch the flow, bled through in about 3 minutes.  Foolishly I declined to be taken to the emergency room and instead I went to my brother-in-laws house nearby and we cleaned my wound with everything he had, wrapped it tight, and I moved on from beer to the hard stuff.  To this day the side of that finger is kind of numb but it doesn't seem any clumsier than any of the others.  Quite the scar for just a little ol finger to show for my tough-guy manly brand of idiocy.  For about a week it was touch and go whether the whole pad of the finger was going to rot and fall off and wouldn't that have been a wonder.

When I was young, around ten, I went with my father on one of his waterfowl hunts.  It was in a harvested soy bean field and we arrived before dawn.  In the darkness I tripped and managed to impale my wrist on a cut stalk.  Part of the muscle was cut and it took four months to heal a significant amount.  While I have full motion, I  cannot put nearly the amount of strain on that wrist as my other and the scar tissue on the muscle can still be felt.

One time when I was six, I drank a large Slurpee way too fast, and got a wicked headache.

It still haunts me to this very day.

.....

The DM says, "Giant rocks fall on your head.  You all die."

Hell, the only reply to that one is "don't breed".

Edit: Signe said "maybe he can't".

Ok, stupid injury time.

My only fight injury was when my six year older brother babysat me and twisted my arm 'till it snapped... I was however trying to throw our television at him.

I've cut my knuckles taking my anger out on a mirror and  most of my underarm putting it through a window. The time the school bully threw me through a window (closed) I suffered no cuts at all - contrary to what the Mythbusters say, those Hollywood type throws can happen. My school principal did however suffer greatly, when my mother verbally tore him a second asshole, when he suggested I'd pay half the windows price...

My brother also broke my arm, when playing soccer, he bet me 10 cents that I couldn't save his next shot. I couldn't, but I tried hard touching the ball with my fingertps, which snapped my entre hand back making a fracture that basically split the underarm almost to the elbow - only visible on x-ray of course.

I almost lost an eye, when a friends older brother was cleaning the exhaus pipe of his moped with gasoline. It was burning in one end, and he suggested we blow air through the pipe from the other. Three of my friends tried and got a blast of hot air back, my turn came and a five foot flame burned my face... the doctor said my quick reflexes saved the eye... the hair did look stupid and smelled funny from weeks to come.
While training firefighters facial burns just became a part of life...

I've stepped on nails, so many time it's not worth counting. It feels like my entire childhood was spent with one foot in soapy water, trying to get yet another rusty nail out of my foot. One time however, I managed five at once, We were playing catch at a friends farm, when I stepped on something painfull, since I was running I stepped on it three times more, before I managed to stop and stand on one leg. Pulling the piece of wood from under my sneakers revealed blood dripping through my shoe... in five different locations.

My mastery of the sewing machine ended, when I sewed my right thumb together with a pair of trousers I was making (we had to in preschool). One of the quiet girls in class tried to help, by manually turning the wheel to bring the needle up... but turned it the wrong way. I still remember that feeling.

It's a wonder I survived childhood and a wonder that I suffered my first axe-related accident today...

Wtf were you doing with a rusty axe and were you fighting yourself. That must be it! You had a sword in one hand and the axe in the other. And you were dueling. Highlander style. You're lucky you didn't lose your head.

What is with all you guys getting injuries from fighting with siblings? Did your parents not beat you enough as a child?

The vast majority of my injuries are cooking related.  For some reason I'm extremely careful with things like power saws and soldering irons but have no problem doing very stupid things with very sharp knives or very hot pans.

Yes thanks.

My wife has a parallel story, wherin she punched through the sidelight glass to unlock the door and proceeded to lay into her brother.  She might be small but she does have that whole "blind rage" thing down.

I was in my 20's, living at home. Decided to take the shepherd for a wlk - on my rollerblades. I am not a very talented rollerblader.

i discovered about 200 feet from the drive way what a bad idea this was, as Kimo discovered she could just keep on running faster and I wasn't offering up any resistance. After just a few strides I know I'm going way too fast and let go of the leash, planning on just getting my balance and riding it out until friction slowed me down a bit.

Then she decides to cut in front of me. Wheeee, Splat, skid, crumple. Kimo must have known I was hurt, since she actually followed me back home, which would never have happened under normal circumstance. Walked in the house, asked my mom for some bandaids (heh) and then nearly passed out.

Mom takes me to the hospital, where I only waited 45 minutes (I must have looked really bad). Doc starts squirting novocain all over the place, jabbing the needle in my arm, my hand, my elbows, knees, then finally my chin. I'm so out of it I barely notice as he's scrubbing away at the wounds to get the gravel out. I look over at my mom, I've never senn anyone look so green, but bless her heart she sticks it out trying to be strong for me :)

My brother broke my nose when I was 6 by tripping me as I ran down the hall to my room. I got my revenge by dropping a large piece of coral on his head while he was watching TV the next day.

....

As a small kid, I was riding on the bottom part of a shopping cart when I decided to stick my index finger under a back wheel while it was moving and full of groceries.  Squish.  It wasn't an accident.  I remember it clearly but I don't know what I was thinking.

And here I was thinking it was the internet that damaged your brain but it was broken all along! 

I would like to thank everyone in this thread for giving me jelly knees and a fluttery stomach, especially Hanzii whose scenarios made it into my dreams last night. 

 :-(

Hey, the fucker tripped me. My parents used to live in Florida, and there was a decent sized chuck of coral they had from their time there they had on display in the living room. My brother was laying down on his stomach watching TV, I just walked up and dropped it on his head.

It was a hospital visit, but no stitches or concussion/brain damage.

You're all lightweights:

Injuries to myself: When I was 14 and staying home sick from school, I shot myself in middle of my palm with a .22 short. Since I knew I'd get an ass beating for playing with his pistol, I dug in and pulled the bullet out myself with a pair of needlenose pliers, then spent the next month and a half with bloody wads of toilet paper concealed in my palm to slow the bleeding.

Injuries to siblings: My sister kneed me in the nuts in a fight over the remote controle. In response I grabbed the back of her head and slammed the side of her jaw into the knee that I was bringing up to meet it. It didn't break anything but she couldn't talk or chew right for a while. And she never kept the remote from me again.

You people are nuts.

Paelos beat me to it. But I was going to say sick.

In the spirit of the new year of the dog - my latest major injury was a couple years ago. I practice a chinese martial art called Wing Chun (Wing Tsun, other spellings.) Anyway, i was the only non-chinese member of my club invited to participate in a demonstration being held for a large new years festival in chinatown. My part of the demo involved showing some of the forms and techniques used with a wooden dummy (Mook Yan Jong):

(http://wing-chun.ru/foto/Hanging%20Dummy%202.jpg)

Anyway these things are heavy as shit and because my part of the show came near the end the dummy was set up in a real hurry. I got onstage, ssaluted the dummy, saluted the audience, started the routine and within 5 seconds the damn thing fell - or rather sprang - off its supports landing on my left forearm with the top strut, breaking my wrist and forearm with a particularly gory looking compound fracture as the outer wrist bone was sticking through the skin. It didn't hurt at all but was bleeding like a mofo. So i saluted the dummy which was now lying on the ground, saluted the audience and walked off stage. Where i promptly fainted due the fact i hadn't remembered to keep the wound above my heart.

To the organizers credit they never missed a beat - the music came on right away and the dummy got hauled offstage and the rest of the show went on while i went to emergency.

As a child I ran around with a pencil in my hand, slipped and fell on the pencil, narrowly missing my eye. I have the scar to this day.

Thats what I call a fitting injury for my hobbies. I wouldn't have pegged you people as the fighting and Tim Taylor related sort.

Hey, it wasn't the most creepy axe injury I've ever heard of.  That belongs to the elderly Alzheimer's victim I took care of (back in my nursing home employment days) who got frustrated with his inability to pee, decided there was something wrong with his penis and went out to the barn to get an axe to "fix" the problem.

The docs did manage to reattach it, but I'm sure he probably didn't remember what the thing was for anyway :P

Can squirrel's new title be "Everybody Wang Chung tonight"?

For me the worst was when I was 14.  I was at football practice, playing back-up QB for the 1st string Defence to get in some practice (this is "fun").  Suffice to say I got sacked and someone's shoulder hit my forearm and broke both bones, audibly.  I freaked out.  Coach thought I was faking it.  I got the enjoyment of sitting on the sidelines for the next four hours of practice while I "learned my lesson".  Sweet.

Do you live in Bikini Bottom?

When I was 5, I stuck a paper clip into a electrical outlet. I don't remember much else that day, nor do I remember why the fuck I did it.

Around a similar age, I tried to help out by removing a plug that was stuck into the wall outlet, which my mother had been unable to remove. Because, you know, five year old boys are stronger than mom. The cord had come free from the the appliance, leaving just a plug and cord connected to the wall socket. I grabbed the power cord like you would a rope, wrapped it around my little hand and pulled as hard as I could. The plug didn't come out of the socket, but the cord slipped through my hands until it got to the bare wires at the end, at which point wire and flesh became one, and the house power had to be shut off before I could be cut free and taken to hospital. The scars are quite prominent to this day.

I did the exact same thing. I believe it's a rite of passage.

Never poked anything into an outlet.  My childhood blackouts were the result of head trauma, such as kamikaze tricycle rides down the side of a high, steep embankment or foolishly walking directly behind a kid who was about to swing a bat at a baseball...

Bare fingertip.  Very young.  Never again.

Same here, though mine was on accident rather than due to curiosity. Grandparent's house, outlet on the floor, left uncovered, about 5 feet in front of the TV, pretty much right in the range for a young kid sitting in front of the TV and leaning back using his hands to hold himself up to nail it dead on.

It was interesting.  It actually didn't hurt initially.  Just "bzzzzz", going through your body.  Then it stopped, and I figured out what happened, and about a minute later I suddenly had a very dull pain that was fairly intense (or seemed so at the time) which lasted for a decent while.

All in all, it wasn't so awful.

knitting pin at five.

And then there was at 10 when my interest in gadgets started and I tried to fix a radio... not thet I knew a damn thing about, what made radios go... but I did learn in the future to unplug the suckers, before messing around with the insides.

I broke my right arm twice, left arm once, left leg twice and right leg once. All before i was 10 years old. I think i was a very active child.

I've broken my nose twice.  I won't bore you with the details but the first time involved sleep walking and steps, and the second involved climbing a tree to be mean to a raccoon.  I was also concussed that time and don't remember if I reached the bad raccoon or not.  I'm assuming I didn't because I'm still alive.

My grandparents had a homemade electric fence running around their backyard and garden. It was pretty much a thick bare wire running around on posts about 10 inches above the ground. I think they had it to keep varmits/people out of their garden. We knew to be careful around the fence and step high over it. I was around 6 years old and I decided that I wanted to know what it felt to touch it. I don't really remember too much about it except my body jerked really hard and I fell back on my ass.

When my parent's were having their house built, the builders left a long piece of vinyl flooring stuff on the back porch. I rained the night before and the vinyl was really slick. My 7 year old self decided that I had to run and jump of the flooring and slide across it like I was surfing because it would be so cool. What was not cool was my feet slipping out from under me and cracking my head on the concrete. Luckily I only suffered a big painful bump on the back of my head.

Ahh, head cracking. I have a couple of good stories about that.

I went to visit my little brother in college in Bellingham. He lived with 3 other good friends of mine in a house in the north end of town. One night we had a very large toga party, and I was busily getting drunk and having a good time. One of the housemates discovers I hadn't yet seen the attic, and drags me to one of the rooms to see it (along with a couple of chick we were chatting up). As I continue with my witty banter, he climbed up the ladder on the wall to open the attic. The attic 'door' was just a large unattached piece of ceiling that lifted up. My buddy, being the drunken idiot he is, mishandles the door. It bounces off his shoulder and then onto my unsuspecting head, driving me to my knees (I didn't even spill my beer!). I knelt there, dazed, when I saw one of the girls look at me in horror. I went down onto all four over the cat's litter box (hidden in the room for the party) and watched as a giant stream of blood ran from my head into the litter box. Owwie!  A couple of towels full of ice followed my many more beers, and I was as good as new (other than the nice scar I have). I probably should have been in an ER instead of a toga party, but it was too much fun to miss!

The other story is much shorter. I was helping my dad and his buddy move a washing machine out of the basement of an apartment house they owned. There was a low-hanging beam in the door way that was about 5' 6'' ( I am 6'1'' for reference). As we were about to exit the door, I shifted my grip in the washer and stood up straight- directly underneath the beam. Knocked me fucking goofy, and I think I am a couple of millimeters shorter to this day  :cry:

The avatar makes much more sense now ...  :rimshot:

My guess is he took over your body and is living in your chest cavity to this day.

I have a cavity in my chest?  Dammit.  What sort of dentist do I see for that?

Para-psychologist.

I can add to the head cracking stories with my own stupidity...

Hanging around in the parking lot of our high school one day after school let out one of my friends pulls his car around and I decide to get in his way. Well he bumps me with the car and I decide to go ahead and leap on the hood of his car. This prompts him to gun it and he speeds off across the parking lot with me attached to the hood. Once he hits about 20-25 mph I decide i better grab on to something and grab hold of the windshield wipers. Of course this freaks him out and he yells "Don't do that you'll rip them off." For whatever stupid reason I decide to be more concerned about his car than my own well-being and let go as requested. At the same time he hits the brakes, my heals hit the ground, I do a complete rotation bounce off my head, and eventually come to a rest in a half kneeling, half standing position.

He jumps out of the car to run over to see if I'm ok. Of course putting the car into park first would have been a good idea as he has to dive back into the car and stop it as it's just about to hit me/run me over again. One of my other friends comes running over yelling about how that was the coolest and most acrobatic thing he's ever seen until he realizes that I actually did the back flip, off of my dome, completely on accident and I'm now wandering around in a bloody daze.

Of course the next thing I actually remember after hitting my head is waking up in the ambulance and hearing the paramedic relate the fake story my friend told him about how I was sitting in his car as he was starting to drive but the door hadn't closed all the way and I fell out. I decided to go with that so as to avoid as much trouble as possible.

I still managed to get a 3 day in school suspension for the whole thing so I guess the "cover-up" didn't work as well as we hoped.



My other stupid injury was a fractured thumb due to a golden-tee accident but we won't get into that. Sure enough the same friend from the above story broke his hand in a similar golden-tee accident a month later.

I must have been about 5 or 7. My sister was climbing over the gate at our grandparents and I opened it. She said it was fun and that I should try - it was just like a ride. Climb up the 6 foot wooden gate, start to get positioned and she slams it. I fall right on my head. Bled like a headwound. Being a stupid kid a week later I picked the scab and drenched my bed in blood. I have a nice scar/odd lump on the back of my head to remind me my sister is evil.

Car accident a few years ago my glasses ripped a nice gash in my forehead, I remember coming to, and feeling the blood dripping down my face, but seeing something shooting out of my forehead. I must have been getting about 2 feet per squirt. Not wanting to lose to much of my blood I clamped my hand on my head. I got the bleeding stopped about the time I got to the emergency room when they peeled my hand off my head and started the fountain again.

The only real bad shock I have ever gotten is when I worked at a golf course and I was running the golf ball washer. Picture a big plastic tub with what looks like a big ice auger in it filled with water.

Due to the friction of the golf balls you need to tighten all the bolts on the motor before you start the sucker up or you rish the motor turning and not the auger part. Well I was manning the metal collector bin while my coworker was running it and feeding more golf balls into it. What I didn't notice is that my coworker did not do the requisite tightening of the screws. Well after a bout a minute I hear a pop and the motor part of the thing starts spinning fast which striped some wires and caused it to short.

I was holding onto this metal collector bin one minute and the next minute I was on my back wondering what the hell just happened.

I am just glad to this day that the shock from the short blew me off the bin and did not make my fingers clench and hold onto the bin or that probably would have been really really bad.

kaid

I've always thought this one was good.

Skiing once when I was about 15, I narrowly avoided a particularly clueless skier and ended up ramming right into a permanent snowmaking machine. I snapped my femur in half, clean all the way through. Ski patrol came up while I was buried in the snow, and set it on the mountain side. With no anaesthetic or anything. I actually tried to punch the guy who set it, it hurt so bad. I think they were expecting that, because his aids had already pinned me down to prevent me from getting a good swing in. Most if it is really hazy, but my friends maintain that I spent a few moments whining for "my daddy". I don't doubt it, hehe. Lemme tell you, the bumpy ride down the mountain coupled with uncontrollable shivers from the cold (they had cut off my pants at the crotch) wasn't very pleasant.

Before the injury, I used to run cross country, with about a 5 and a half minute mile. It took me over a year to completely walk normal again, and I've never been able to run as well. They hollowed out the femur and put a metal pin through it, so I have a wicked purple scar on my ass where they guided it in through near my hip. Interestingly, when I got back to school my biology class started on human anatomy. Our teacher had a preserved femur that he passed around, and explained to us that it is the strongest bone in your body... comparable to reinforced steel. My aunt the doctor also tells me I'm lucky I can even walk after she looked at the X-rays. The break was right above my knee.

And one time... my dad (raised on a farm) tricked his urban cousin into peeing on the electric cow fence. True story.

How the fuck do you get a suspension for getting hurt? High School...pfft.

What?!
I thought every boy tried that - at least once.
I know I did. On a dare. Hurt like a motherfucker!

Worst crotchrelated pain was the one time I tried my hand at tossing a baseball with the (US-centric) guys from my English class at university. Thing is, I was operated in my right eye at the age of four, had to spend a year in kindergarten always playing the pirate, because I was the only kid with an eyepatch. This cost me my ability to see the world in true 3D, which is quite a handicap when trying to catch fast moving objects. I missed one shot by a mile and the ball bounced and connected with mine. I woke up on the ground crying. Now I'm the father of two small kids... you somehow get quite hardened by the constant hits, kicks and headbutts to your private parts - allthough the week after my vesectomy, I wished I had an iron codpiece. That'll teach the little bastards.

Now the whole "Buttrot" thing makes sense.

My son racks me at least twice a week.  Word of warning to the childless: YOUR BALLZ R AT STEAK!!!

It's nature's way of preventing overpopulation.  The more kids you have the less likely you'll be able to continue producing them.