Stories: Injuries
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These are great stories. I particularly loved Dave's and Islander's. I was a spectacularly accident prone kid, I have to say, but never broke any bones .Swallowed my grandmother's heart pills, you know the sort of thing. But the accident I still bear scars from is the one where I was chasing my brother around our swimming pool. In those days, health and safety was unheard of, and fencing around pools? Don't think so. There was, however, a netty type thing, like a fence, and some lovely slippery tiles around the pool. So there we are, chasing the brother, and of course I slipped over. I cracked my chin open and I vividly remember having a jar under my chin to catch the blood that was strained through a serviette before it got there. Don't ask me, I was eight. So off to hospital we go to get it stitched. The old North Shore Hospital as it happens, on Taharoto Rd. In we go, hop onto the table. I don't remember much except what the doctor said to me. Which was this - " If you do not stop talking, young lady, I will stitch up your tongue". Ah, life before all this governmental interference...............
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These are all great stories and back up the theory that we wouldn't be here if we didn't have genes from good survivors.
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good survivors
I'd point it more in the direction of very very lucky survivors with a knack for getting themselves hurt
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One summer, when I was about 7, we went camping in Whitianga. The first day I'd run down the beach and had a lovely swim. It was all sunshine and beach and sand and ticking about a dozen 1980s/Kiwiana/holiday boxes.
The next day I was helping Mum wash some clothes. The camping ground had an old-fashioned washing tub and wringer. I was feeding some clothes through the wringer when suddenly my left hand started going through the wringer.
My instinct was to pull away from it, but the tight rubbery rolls of domestitude were pulling the other way. It was a girl versus 1950s technology tug o' war.
As all this was going on, Mum was trying to figure out what to do. I think eventually she pulled the plug on the wringer (take that!), but it still had a rubbery grip on my wrist. The emergency release spring - which, the camp owner later claimed, would always come unsprung when you didn't want it to - initially refused to give up my hand. But eventually, with a bit of banging and swearing, I was freed.
Off to the emergency clinic, and my hand was X-rayed. A bone had sort of moved out of placed, but nothing was broken. My left wrist, hand and forearm were then set in a demi-cast, with plaster on top and a bandage wrapped around it.
For the rest of my Coromandel beach holiday, I spent most of the time with the sea splashing at my feet, keeping my hand dry. This proved tiresome, too much of an effort, so in the end I went off and made my own fun. A valuable skill, which has served me well to this day.
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3410,
I've been told, though don't remember, that as a very young lad I crawled off the top of a ponga retaining wall at my uncle's place. Apparently mum and aunty spent some time removing "hundreds" of ponga spines from my chest, arms, and face.
On another occasion my friend Matthew and I were play-fighting in his room, as seven-year-olds do. Upon pausing for breath we both began to wonder why the walls, bed, and floor were splattered with blood. The search for the cause culminated in the discovery of a 3/4" wide x 1" deep stab wound precisely in the crease between my right leg and buttock. Further investigation revealed an un-retracted craft knife that had previously been abandoned on the bed.
Matthew's mother took my pants off, laid me face down on the dining table, and cleaned and dressed the wound. Incidentally, I later began to consider this procedure my first sexual experience.
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pure genius! people love to talk about their injuries don't they? as evidenced by my poor father, who worked as a case manager for the ACC for 15 years. should have seen him dodging and diving through the aisles in the supermarket trying to avoid people he just knew would give him the long drawn out version of the latest news about their horrible injuries ....
my worst / funniest injury - i was minding my business, cycling to work along great north road, through the grey lynn shops. low and behold a little zippy sports car shoots in front of me, parks, and flings open its unreasonably long driver's door before you could say "hits the door, flips over the handlebars and lands unceremoniously on her arse on the road, breaking her left elbow in the process!"
even funnier, the little guy driving the car (five foot two, irish and apoplectically apologetic) picked my quite hefty frame up off the road and lifted me bodily to the footpath. he must have been in shock.
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I remember at age 13 babysitting my brothers, we were playing this game of chicken. Somehow or other during this I managed to fall through a window badly severing an artery in my lower arm. Bemused as blood began spurting, I gathered my senses, slapped a hand over it and went to the neighbours. Knocked on the door, Mr Campbell answered and I very politely said "I think I have cut myself". He told me later that as I was covered in blood head to toe he nearly laughed at that piece of understatement. Off to the local GPs, arm swathed in towels, said GP grumpy as it was afterhours, and he had been called in. His tune changed when he saw the extent of the injury and I was hospitalised for a week. Ambulance ride, with lights blazing, sirens blaring, I was in heaven.
Needless to say we were banned from playing that particular game again.
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I guess this says more about me than I’d like it to. The injury itself was a small burn the stupidity is staggering. I have a track record of doing this sort of thing.
One 13 year old laid on the bed holding the sort of mains lead that plugs into this side of a radio or an old school cassette player. Small black plastic cover thoroughly covering the two live contacts (safe ? not from me !). I put it in my mouth, I suck on it, I manage to suck the soft tissue of my upper lip onto one of those protected contacts – yes the electric shock was scary, the colours fascinating. Being a good scientist and not being quite sure I how I had achieved this feat…..I did it again. That’s how I know it was done with the upper lip……….
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You know those horrible videos of sports accidents, like the ones where a soccer player appears to develop an extra joint in his shin?
Well, that's my arm. More specifically, that's my arm at judo. There we are, rolling around doing groundwork, I get a good grip, the other bloke gives a good shove, and the torque on my arm combined with the pressure from his push pop the bone apart. Into three pieces.
I have a very clear memory of the moment my head moved around and I could see my arm, now with a Z where the L of the elbow should be; the humerus bent back at a 90 degree angle, then the elbow bending forward again.
By the time I got to hospital my muscles had pulled the arm back into the correct orientation, but had also pulled everything such that from the rear it became apparent that my left arm was now several inches shorter than the right.
While the length is sorted out, my arm is now permanently crooked as a result of the setting, which makes me wonder if I should have skipped the hospital and had a go myself.
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If you have to break a wrist make sure you do them individually and not simultaneously. Having two arms in plaster can make certain areas of personal hygiene rather challenging.
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If you have to break a wrist make sure you do them individually and not simultaneously. Having two arms in plaster can make certain areas of personal hygiene rather challenging.
Indeed. An in-law of mine fell down some stairs and broke both her elbows (her elbows mind you!). She was stuck with one arm in a large plaster, and one arm in a sling but with no movement. Needless to say she and her fiance got rather better well aquainted...
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3410,
If you have to break a wrist make sure you do them individually and not simultaneously. Having two arms in plaster can make certain areas of personal hygiene rather challenging.
You said a mouthful, brother. In '81 I was being chased around the classroom by a bully. I leapt up onto desks and then out the window (the room being about 4 or 5 steps above ground level). However, one of my Trek-laces caught in the aluminium joinery, rapidly converting me from a mainly forward momentum to a mainly downwards head first momentum, which was ended by a hands-first landing on concrete. Cue four weeks of "difficult personal hygiene".
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You know what we're missing? Injury stories of a groinal nature. I know you guys have got 'em. I have this theory that women have a reflex that makes them entirely incapable of not laughing when men bollock themselves.
My partner was recently playing squash with a mutual friend. Said friend was going for a low shot he really should have let go. The bottom of his raquet hit the floor, and instead of sliding, just stopped dead. He kept going, and owing to the angle of the raquet, copped the end of the handle square in the goolies. Cue friend spending five minutes lying on the floor. Cue partner telling story to Emma. Cue Emma spending five minutes lying on the floor, laughing so hard she cried. Cue Emma passing on said story while referring to self in third person.
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Injury stories of a groinal nature
Just a near miss - age approx 10, playing with friends in the hills east of the Hutt valley. Came across a grazing horse. We didn't touch it, but it touched me.
Somehow I ended up behind it & close enough so that when the kick came it caught me just above the groinal area & somewhat below my navel. I was lifted off the ground completely & landed flat on my back, badly hurt.
Extreme bruising (all critical equipment safe though) & swelling ensued.
On hearing the story from my friends who carried me home, my dad's response was
"a horse? I wonder if it was Cardigan Bay?"
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merc,
Groinal, specifically testicular injuries are a shared man space, and infrequently shared at that, sorry.
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merc,
Aww Andrew, I'm telling.
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Does that mean my brother's painful story of a mountain bike, it's cross bars and walking very very strangely for a week afterwards is out of the question. His delicates were, I swear, blue (according to his wife).
Damn, looks like I told it.
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My first vaguely significant injury was when I was 3. We were staying at a very basic rented house on Waiheke (this is 1967, well before it was trendy). No bathroom - wash in a tub, long drop outside, you get the idea.
Its at the top of a hill: the lawn goes down this steep grass with a blackerry bush at the bottom.
I woke early even then: I toddle outside to play on my own at about 6am and there's a pushchair, which I decide to pretend is a truck. I hop into it, start making brmm brmm noises and move the only lever on the thing, which happens to be the brake...Oh, did I say I only had shorts on? Anyway, down the hill, caterpaulted into the blackberry, my yells woke the house. Cuts and scratches and bruises all over chest.
the other memorable one was when I was 18, on my first job on a newspaper. We wrote on Imperial 70 typewriters with very basic newsprint copy paper: we were also allowed to smoke in the office in those days, in fact it was encouraged.
We were short of ashtrays. I used to stub my cigs out on the edge of my tin rubbish bin. One afternoon I failed to do this properly, I turn around and the bin is on fire.
Thinking quickly, I stand on the fire. My foot gets wedged in the bin and next thing I'm leaping around the office with a burning bin stuck to my foot and the flames leaping up my trouser legs. Burns to the lower calf eventuated.
A third one....17, journo school field trip, Blue Anchor motor in, Picton. Much Blenheimer had been consumed. I suddenly think it would be really fun to play on the trampoline. Run out, take flying leap onto tramp. I sort of thought I could just bounce up and down but momentum is a bastard. I remember rising up from the bounce and looking down - and this is the important bit - BACK, as the trampoline disappeared behind me. badly damaged knee as I hit the hard earth.
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merc,
We should tell only of our own testicular terrible tales if we feel the need and as for other's misfortune, only I would suggest out of decency tell his tale if you have approval. I know having witnessed a poor individual being wrestled by his father welding pliers on a savage zip-scrotum tie up...oh God, I've told.
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Oh the zip/scrotum nexus is a terrible thing. Mu mind has blanked out the very few instances that I have experienced.
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LOL - I believe my cousin set fire to his place of work (also a newspaper) on his veryu first day... in much the same manner.
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3410,
Well, it's very easy to set fire to a newspaper; there's no denying it.
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and it's very easy for a hastily drawn zipper to set fire to a groin.
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Zip/scrotum is for softies.
Zip/foreskin, now _there's_ a real eye-waterer...
I speak from experience: was about 16, I think, the only person in the house was Mum and, come on, no 16 year old male is going to invite his mum to look at that department, even if, as in my case, she is a nurse.
So it was close eyes, grit teeth, 1,2,3 ZIPP!
Didn't bleed as much as I'd have thought, but walked funny for a few days.
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After days of hard slog tramping, on my first sorte to Stewart Island, me and DOC cohorts were parked up by a small fire on the most delectable shores of Mason's Bay. The sun had just set and I was off to grab the (decanted into plastic) bottle of Johnnie Walker (hey...I was eighteen and lacked both knowledge and the refinement a later trip to Scotland would impart)...
The boots had come off as soon as we hit the beach and I was digging the feel of the sand in my toes when, on my next step, I felt a good hint of pain and the feel of a chasm opening on my sole.
The effect of an upturned boning knife, buried just under the sand, leaves quite the impressive slice on a bog-wrinkled foot I'll tell ya.
No fancy radios in those days so I wash out the sand, bandage and re-insert foot into sock and boot, imbibe painkillers (Disprin for mercy's sake) washed down with most of the Johnnies and wait a day and a half for a colleague to double time back to base.
Eventually a mercy flight is dispatched from Half Moon Bay, lands on the beach and I hobble in and away we go. The doctor takes photos he is so impressed with the gash, and knits about 30-odd stitches inside and out.
The police had to follow up (due to it being of an emergency nature) and I dutifully got my name in the paper a few days later. The scar is still there and with a few nerves suffering slice-age, I have a numb spot on my big toe.
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