Stupid Personal Injury

I sliced the nail on my ring finger in half last week and it's still killing me as it grows out.

1. broke collar bone after being (accidentally) kicked out of bed
2. broke arm after tripping over 6 inch high garden wall
3. broke arm after jumping off swing and tripping over a packing crate in friend's garden
4. broke arm after an inexplicable tussle with washing basket on the stairs/landing

My brother pulled the best one: on his bucks night drunk, he decided to footy tackle the trees in the park. The first two accepted his tackle - the third resisted. He broke his arm and had to spend his wedding and honeymoon in an ugly waterproof cast!

Very badly bruised right hand on spiked belt during rounds of ass slapping.

When emo fights back!

Stepped on garden rake whilst barefoot, impaled foot, rake handle smacked face when I was 13. Scariest injury ever that looks like moment from Warner Brothers.

i don't think i've had anything like this. maybe this time when i was 10 when i fell off the monkey bars in the playground and landed on my hand and fractured a finger.

oh actually and this time in uni when i tried to rip off this sign and didn't know there was a nail behind it and cut my hand wide open (didn't hurt at the time...)

and when i was six i had a whole bamboo bedding falling on me and my hand was swollen for a month.

stuff like that. and footie injuries.

The fork went right the way through his foot and into the ground, as far as I can remember.

The tacklee was a tree, Ken! It er, kinda didn't budge ;P

Forest: heh I assume dad didnt send the spade all the way to the grouns, or he'd have no toes to speak of. I dunno what happend, I think he just had a horrible stiched up foot gash.

oh dear andrew!

i'm just trying to picture the kind of tackling that would get your arm into trouble.. i'd have thought it would break your legs etc. did the arm scrape along the floor?

http://csucub.csuchico.edu/services/sum05/tq/images/football.jpg

as opposed to

http://www.rediff.com/sports/2000/aug/08slide2.jpg

Age 8: sliding around the hardwood floors in sockfeet, I end up with a 4" long 1/2" thick splinter of oak embedded lengthwise in the sole of my foot.

Age 9: running footrace on playground, winning, looked back. When I turned around, I smacked into someone (I've never known who), smashed my nose on his forehead, knocked myself out cold.

Teenager: I worked with dogs and horses, so bitten, stomped, thrown off, rope-burnt. These are more or less the accepted hazards though.

30s: Stupidly stepped backwards off a scaffold at a jobsite, in misguided attempt to catch an expensive piece of equipment dropped from above by a coworker. Fell ~6 feet down - nothing broken but serious neck compression injury.

Tripped over nothing in the roadbed of an underground hydro with 30 lbs of equipment strapped to my back. Crushed left hand and smashed face/glasses.

6 months later, spilled a latte on my wrist and hand when taking the lid off to add sugar. 2nd degree "glove" burn due to not getting it under cold water immediately. Gave up coffee at that point.

this is what happens when you trip over a baby gate and fall ear first into the sharp square part of a metal dog bowl stand:

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/4319/earouchab8.jpg

dancing to mc hammer vigorously in pub on hackney road. some muscle in left shin is completely fucked, it was 8 days ago and it's getting worse each day. all swollen and weird, can't walk on it.

another hammer related incident.

you can't touch it.

If you can't wear ordinary trousers any more, you could always wear parachute pants.

i was biking home at 10pm the other day, along the dark west side bikepath, which was totally abandoned. & i wasn't paying any attention & was playing around & biking with no hands & went around a sharp turn & went flying.

think i would've hurt myself badly if i hadn't had a helmet on cuz the helmet cracked. but anyhow, i was left with a couple bad bruises & a massive headache, but otherwise ok!

was glad no one saw but simultaneously had visions of rotting to death on the abandoned bike path, w/ broken legs or whatever...

someone piled up a bunch of stuff in the hallway right in front of my bedroom door. I saw no need to move the pile, since I could just step over it as I opened the door. then I lost my balance with my hand on the door handle, instinctively pulled the door back towards me, and basically headbutted it full force.

cut my finger sectioning a grapefruit with a butter knife

Ick! :-(

Nothing like citrus juice in a raggedy cut to make you perk right up and say hello pain!

My dad sliced the tip off his finger with a bagel slicer. He had to go to the hospital & it gave him the chance to try out the classic "will I still be able to play piano" gag.

I once cut my finger on a butter knife because I started to cut with it the wrong way up, that being with my finger resting on the blade. Yowee. But that wasn't as bad as when I was grating cheese and absent-mindedly finished with the cheese and continued on my hand. When I noticed the huge lump I'd taken out of my knuckle I shouted JEEEEESUS FUCK, an expression that, in retrospect, I'm pretty pleased with.

Once I was running the hot tap in the kitchen while engaged in a religious discussion with a friend, and I wasn't paying attention to the temperature of the water: "I'm pretty sure that Jesus didn't say (puts hand under very hot stream of water) BLOODY FUCKING BASTARDS!!!"

I think I've had a bruise somewhere on my body at all times since I was a small child, I am forever walking into doors/colliding with coffee tables/falling off chairs/taking things out of the oven without using oven gloves correctly/falling through floorboards.

I once, when drunk, jumped onto my bed and totally overshot, colliding face-first with the wall. My nose is a wee bit squinter than it used to be. It was squint anyway from the time I tried to run through a door while opening it on the move, except it was locked, so I collided face-first with it and got my arm trapped in the handle, cracking my wrist into the bargain.

May I suggest that you have "Look Before You Leap" tattoed on the back of your hand in tasteful but clearly legible script?

I'd probably walk into something while reading it. Or stop to think and get hit by a falling anvil/piano.

Inflatable suit? Also handy if prone to falling into lakes.

"inflatable rubber suit" is an interesting GIS...

whipped an apple branch across my left eye doing yard work, now I have a patch on it, am in pain, and will have to go to a doctor tomorrow to check for a scratched cornea, boy everything comes to a dead stop when you can't see. sorry, job!

Yeouch.

I was alone at my mom's house, and for old time's sake I thought I'd repeat a stunt I pulled a lot when I was a teenager: I'd stand at the top of a flight of 12 stairs with my hands on the banister halfway down and proceed to jump off the edge, slide down the banister a couple of feet, release my hands, and drop to the floor at the base of the stairs. but this time I overshot my jump and banged my head on the wall halfway down, crash landing on the stairs below and slamming my left middle finger point-first into the wood.

my head came out alright, but I must have stretched/torn a ligament in my finger, and three months later I still can't bend the middle joint all the way, oops

I can't believe I never contributed to this thread, seeing as how my life is regularly punctuated by stupid injuries.

Most recently, I split my knuckle open while manhandling a Christmas tree. Most stupidly, I once cut the living shit out of my finger with a bagel.

Actually, I'd be better served contributing to a Stupid Personal Accident thread (of which Stupid Personal Injuries are merely a subset).

Most stupidly, I once cut the living shit out of my finger with a bagel.

See also: a twist tie, a plastic butter knife

NB: I have worked extensively with power tools and done hardcore metal work (casting, welding, etc.) without sustaining so much as a nick or abrasion.

I fell into a fire at my brother's wedding.

jesus christ man it’s a miracle you’re still alive

I tried to athletically jump 3 concrete steps whilst pissed, and landed on the side of my foot and snapped my ankle. The metal in my ankle still gives me agony 12 years later. I walk very gingerly and with deep concentration up and down steps these days.

I have been insanely lucky to avoid injury considering I've done a lot of stupid shit (a season of treeplanting at 28, two marathons, countless ill-advised adventures alone) - the closest call was falling face-first in the woods and having a pokey branch hit me about half an inch to the right of my left eye. I still think about how stupid and arbitrary that was.

I still haven't broken a bone or opened myself up to the extent that I required stitches (although I'm well acquainted with the butterfly bandage).

I sustained a deeeeep cut on my wrist a couple years back (from...grabbing a lightpost to swing myself out of the way of a passing bus whose side mirror was pretty much coasting over the sidewalk). I somehow managed to cut myself just between a couple veins and must have barely even nicked a capillary because it bled very little. Pulling the bandage off hurt more than the cut.

The non-injurious accidents I've had are somehow even more O_O.

I embedded myself and my bike in a fiberglass garage door. My mom had to physically pull me out.

P.S. I am a cartoon character and/or one of the Stooges.

if i had to choose which stooge to be it’d be ron asheton obv

I'll save my sudden 'slapstick adventures of Iggy and the Stooges' brainstorm for the terrible ideas thread, but I thank you for planting the seed.

iggy’s anecdote in the gimme danger doc about moving to detroit with no possessions save a sledgehammer with which he aimed to gain access to a vacant house seems rich with comic possibility

I burned my finger on Pop-Tart filling this weekend. Like enough to raise blisters.

As you can imagine, this tendency of mine toward ridiculous self-harm is a source of great amusement among friends and family.

I opened the back door of the house to come in and Jonesy made a mad dash to get out. I stuck my foot out as fast as I could to block him and kicked the house really hard. The tip of my big toe and under the toenail immediately turned blue, and the nail has been gradually loosening as a new nail grows underneath it -- at least that's what it feels like. The injury was a couple of weeks ago and I think the nail will drop off within another week. It's held by the skin and cuticle around the edges, but it feels wobbly and it's raised compared to the bigtoenail on the other foot.

aiaiaiai nopppppeee

I've always had a mortal terror of foot/toe injury to the point where I always wear shoes, even in the house, so I was surprised and relieved that this didn't hurt more than it did. I thought it was broken for about 5 minutes and the toe was sore as hell through that evening, but the long slow process of molting hasn't been uncomfortable at all.

that couple of months after you really dig yr toe into something and still feel it because that crap doesnt heal quick

still, nail stuff is grossout central for me, a neighbour kid dropped a stormdrain cover closed on my toe when i was four or five and smashed the nail to bits and it was my first real "holy shit my stuff can break?" moments

also my first experience with antiseptic on an open wound iirc, and you better believe irc

I dropped a stool on my foot as a teenager to basically the same results, condolences

My dad dropped a ginormous metal pole on his big toe when he was young & working at a lighting company, and it never healed right. Lil bits of nail kept growing on top of each other. He'd have to get it shaved down or whatever every few years. Us kids were grossed out yet fascinated by it. "Daddy show us your 'brain' toe".

I walked with poorly fitting shoes recently for about 4 or 5 hours and two of my toenails were all blooded under them but neither fell off weirdly, and only one of them really hurt at all.

stupid personal injury that has endured for me. was playing a very casual co-ed game of "soccer" while on vacation in Toronto in October of 2013 and when turning on my right knee I twisted/banged/slipped and fell to the ground. this hurt like hell but I could play on. a couple of months later I was walking home from the pub and slipped on a manhole cover on the same knee, it hurt like hell for days. I still have bad knee now, and today it's playing up like never before. I suppose I should get round to seeing a physio

gave myself a black eye by stepping on a rake last year

Bent over to pick up a band-aid that fell on the bathroom floor, stood up quickly... right into the space that the corner of our glass medicine cabinet door decided to occupy. Gash in the head to the extent that I now have six staples in my head. Zero stars. Would not recommend.

good thing you had a band-aid all ready though

That sucks! Hope it heals soon.

My favorite personal injury story was falling over and banging my head on a metal light switch in our attic. I touched my palm to my forehead and it came back pretty bloody, so I applied pressure with my hand while I maneuvered over to the hatch so I could go down the six foot step ladder, which required two hands. When I released my hand from the wound and started to descend, a sheet of blood like in The Shining came cascading down my forehead, over my glasses and down my face obscuring my vision. It was very frightening for a moment.

I had assumed I would need stitches but apparently all you have on your forehead are capillaries, which bleed like crazy for a couple minutes then stop.

The last thing my wife said to me before I went up the ladder was, "be careful."

There was so much blood and such a deep cut that I knew it was going to require some attention, but I was not expecting staples, much less half a dozen.

It's hard to tell how much it actually hurts today and how much of it is psychosomatic for the cringing I do when I feel something up there and remember I have six staples in my damn head!

Yeah, my theory is stuff hurts worse the closer it is to your face.

I read this, thought "that's the sort of thing I would do". then I turned on the oven for dinner, stood up and smacked my head on a window sill. I just have a bump though. hope you're ok sounds nasty

a few years ago I genuinely stepped on a rake, like sideshow bob, and gave myself a black eye. did not get a lot of sympathy at work.

My older brother would own this thread, at least in the before-adulthood-kicked-in category. He once broke his big toe by dropping a manhole cover on it while 'pretending' that he and two friends were going to jam another kid into the sewer. Next stop, emergency room. (I bet the other kid was very gratified by that.)

A different time he got stranded partway up a utility pole he was climbing because a piece of rusty wire wrapped around the pole skewered his leg just below the knee and he could neither climb down or remove the wire, so he had to cling to the pole for about fifteen minutes while someone fetched my dad, who fetched a ladder and a wire cutter, and got him down. Next stop, emergency room.

Another time he was cleaning the goldfish's bowl, dropped it on the kitchen floor, then gashed his hand on the broken glass while grabbing at the goldfish to try to save its life. Next stop, emergency room.

My older brother wound up at the hospital getting a Tic-Tac removed from his inner ear. I've often wondered why he didn't just lie down with water in his ear and let it dissolve instead.

Tic-Tacs were introduced in 1969, so he was at least a teenager.