Dumb Injuries

Not a dumb injury, but since we're telling surgery stories ...

When I had my appendix removed in Bagram in 2012, they gave me a catheter, but neglected to tell me. Taking that first piss hurt like hell.

 

The first, and so far only, broken bone I've ever suffered came eight years ago after my wife, son and daughter spent the better part of a day spelunking through the cave at Raccoon Mountain, near Chattanooga. We hiked and crawled all through the cave, including some pretty tight spots deep in the ground, without incident, then, as I was going to the bath house across the street to clean up and change into clean clothes, I stepped off the curb wrong.

At first, I thought it was just a bruise, but it never quit hurting. So when we got back home, I went to the urgent care center where they x-rayed my foot and found that I had a hairline fracture of the far outside bone. Not a thing they could do about it except give me a walking boot and some crutches to let it heal on its own.

But the scary part was this happened about six weeks before I had an angina attack one Sunday night that required an ambulance trip to the ER. After being admitted, a heart cath found all sorts of blockages in the veins and arteries around my heart (one was 80% occluded) that resulted in triple bypass surgery and a six-month recovery period. I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd had that attack when we were down at the bottom of that cave. Probably would have died down there.

 

When I was a child, I took off the long-sleeve t-shirt I was wearing and tried to use it as a jump rope.
I caught my foot, feel and broke my thumb.

After it healed and the splint was removed, my mother and I came home from the doctor's office, and my older sister asked me: I still don't understand. How did that happen in the first place?

I responded by removing my shirt to demonstrate, caught my foot and fell, fracturing my other thumb.

I wish that was made up, because it seems impossible and impossibly stupid.
In my defense, I was 5.

 

When I was 6, me and some friends were playing wiffle ball in the yard. The bat was one of those really cheap ones that are two pieces of plastic melded together, so that have a little edge of raised plastic along the seam.
Not quite, "Hey y'all, watch this!" but my best friend says, "Hey! Watch this hit!" and takes a huge cut off the tee. Turns out I was standing too close behind him and caught the backswing right under my eye.
When I opened my eyes, I saw blood running down my arm and freaked out. I ran home (about 10 houses away) and started hysterically beating on the door. For a while after that, there was a trail of blood drops on the sidewalk between the two houses. One of the neighbors heard me screaming, looked out, and freaked out herself when she saw this blood-drenched child running down the street.
My mom took me to the ER, where I was ratting out my friend like a mob informant. I was trying to give them his name, number and address and telling them to arrest him.
Turns out I only needed two stitches. My friend was not arrested.

 

Just this past autumn we were in NJ for a funeral.
I had a bit to drink and slipped in the kitchen. I caught the edge of the dishwasher just right and cut my scalp open.
Scalp cuts bleed a lot, and this was a good one.
Took seven stitches.

Reportedly I was flirting with the nurse with my wife in the room.
Also reportedly, I ordered my niece's husband to go fetch me a pizza while we were waiting for the required CAT scan.

 

I was at a low-budget wedding of some friends. Low-budget as in, they asked me to be the photographer. I declined. They said, you have a camera, right? I said yes, but I'm not sure where it is, might be covered in dust in a closet somewhere. But they persisted. My wife and daughter were in the wedding party, so I finally agreed. The wedding was at the house of the bride's parents.
There was an empty section in my camera bag that could accommodate about 8 airline bottles of Jack Daniels, which came in handy before and after the ceremony.
The reception was in an enclosed patio at the house. Near the end, they are getting ready to cut the cake. I looked for a spot to shoot. There was brick planter box next the regular-height cinder block wall. It was a good spot so I could get above the couple and shoot down at them (and the dude was 6-foot-5, so that helped). So just before the cake cutting, I stepped up on the planter box, and grabbed the top of the wall to pull myself up. What I didn't know was the wall was double-thick. So when I reached up, I hit the middle of the top and there was nothing to grab. I came crashing down right next to the cake table, camera smashing into the ground. Totally embarrassed. That was the end of the photography for the night. I wasn't hurt too badly, I thought, thanks to the Jack Daniels. When I got home later, there was a big gash in my knee, blood trails down my leg into my socks, and bloody suit pants. The last roll of film (remember film?) wasn't any good but most of the rest of the shots were OK.

 

Covering a prep football game a few years ago, and I was pissed. It was a series of games and I was to cover two, back-to-back. So I lug my laptop into the press box, and... "We don't have seats for print media." Something like 18 spots, of which radio got about four, coaches for the teams NOT playing get another handful, upper level is reserved for video (which turned out to include team video cameras for the late game, so those spots will be unused for most of the first game, but the 30 minutes between games just isn't enough time for them to set up...)

Anyway, now I need an outlet, so I string a cord out the front of the press box to an open seat just in front of it, walk out the door and some jackass is looking at the cord, then flips it away in preparation to grab himself a seat.

I get out "Uh... no..." then miss my footing on stadium step. Tumble down metal stairs (only about 10 feet) and then catch myself. People around me are nice enough, asking "are you okay?"

"yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine..."

"No you're not. Man, you're bleeding. Bad."

Yep. Ripped a huge gash in my shin that required 17 stitches. Basically opened up my leg. The ER had nurse trainees in that night. One puked.

 

Dumb injury. Not mine, but I work primary care medical.

Doc sends this 22 year old kid around to get x-rayed. He's got a small through and through wound to his foot, top to bottom, maybe 3/8" wide. Doc wants to check for broken bones and be sure nothing shows up in the wound, which was unlikely, but that was the order.

"So what happened to your foot?"

"Well, some buddies of mine and me, we were down by the creek behind the house, shooting at tin cans, you know? And I have this AK-47, you know how they have that fold down spike bayonet under the barrel?"

I nod, hearing this coming.

"So I needed to put it down, but there wasn't a tree to lean it against or anything, and I didn't want to just lay it down and get sand all in it, so I unfolded the bayonet and was just gonna stick it in the ground and leave it there, and I, uh, I stuck it through my foot."

I'm holding my best poker face but my belly muscles are twitching with the urge to bust out laughing.

"So was there alcohol involved?" He kinda startles and gives me a quick look, like I was the State Patrol or something, and says "Uh, I mighta had a couple."

So now I have this mental picture of this kid with his foot spiked to the ground, hollering and yelling for help while all his half drunk buddies fall over laughing and leave him there...

 

Did the kid remain your friend?

 

This story happened before I joined sj, but was the butterflied penis a dumb injury or a standard medical procedure?

 

He did, for about another five years. We moved to the other side of town, different schools, all that, and quickly grew apart. By the time we wound up in the same school again it was high school and we were two different people.
It's a shame, too. He was the kid in every school who grows through the roof early on. He was about 5-9 in the third grade and taller than our teacher. I, meanwhile, was the smallest kid in my class pretty much through high school and got picked on and beaten up a lot. We could've teamed up like Master Blaster and dominated shit.

 

Damn, I haven't thought of Raccoon Mountain Caves in 30 years; we went there when I was in Boy Scouts and it was a harry ordeal. It was like a low-rent version of Cumberland Caverns, which is itself a low-rent verson of Mammoth Cave...but the spaces inside Raccoon are tiny! That place gave me nightmares for weeks.