Bloodtest
Where I live there is a methadone clinic in town, so that side of the city is real classy. You know what I mean, junkies ambling around, glassy eyed, hitting you up for change and cigarettes.

I've even witnessed girls shooting up on the side of the main road in broad daylight in front of their kids.

Unfortuantly, this is also the part of town with the bulk billing medical centre, where you can go and line up for hours to see a doctor you've never met before with no appointment and you don't have to pay (as long as you have your medicare card with you).

So, I was sick and had been for a couple of weeks. Unable to get an appointment with my doctor for about another week, I went into the medical centre and saw a doctor there. They thought I had glandular fever, so I needed a blood test.

The nurse came in and took my blood, I'm sure everyone has been through this at one time or another, but this was my first experience and the sight of a small bottle filling up with my blood made me feel a little woozy.

Then she pulled the needle out and held a cotton wool ball over it for about 10 seconds and let go.

My blood was all the way down my arm and dripping on the floor in about 2 seconds. It was everywhere.

"OK" She says "I think we need to hold onto this a bit longer."

No shit, I'm thinking.

So she gets me to hold it for another 30 seconds or so and we repeat. Blood goes everywhere again.

We repeat this another 3 or so times before the very smart and capable nurse realises that my long sleeved top was bunched up around the top of my arm and acting as a tournequet.

Roll shirt down, all is well again.

Except that, as a result of seeeing my blood cover the floor, I was more woozy than ever and therefore not so hot on the motorskills.

The nurse cleaned me up as best as could be managed, but I still had smears of blood on my arm and was holding a small dressing in place on the site, the inside of my elbow.

I was instructed to hold my arm in the air and the dressing in place for about 5 mins, just to be sure that the bleeding had stopped, told to come back in a week for the results, and sent on my way.

So, there I am, stumbling along, holding my bloody elbow up in the air, pale as a sheet and completely dazed and confused.

In the junky part of town.

Of course I saw every teacher from my old school, every one of my parents friends and friends parents, basically eveyone sure to come to the obvious conclusion and start the gossip mill moving along. Lovely.

The best bit? I didn't have glandular fever anyway, it was all for nothing.
(misskitty reeks of sex and turpentine; laudanum afternoons, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 2:34, Reply)

I've Got A Few Of These...
But by far the worst was when I sliced open one of my toes.

(This is going to be long. You've been warned.)

It happened last year at a house party. As you do, I'd partaken in a little too much alchyhol, so I wasn't particularly steady on my feet. I'd wandered up the stairs to use the bathroom and as I came back down, I found I couldn't open the door at the bottom of the starirs properly. Some clever sod had stretched an electric fan wire across the door. Not being in the clearest mind, I decided to step over the wire, rather than get someone on the other end to move the fan. The wire, by the way, was about waist-height.

Cue me, falling over said wire, stumbling a few steps and catching my foot on something. There was a momentary pain and then nothing, so I thought nothing of it.

Deciding I needed a non-alchoholic drink, I head off to the kitchen to get some water. While stood at the sink, I notice large red spots on the (thankfully tiled) floor. Then I notice my foot is wet. I look down, and sure enough: the blood is coming from me.

Weelll... I sobered up sharpish. Upon inspection, it appears that my middle toe is has a large, rather deep gash on the bottom of it. Which is bleeding profusely.

And then the pain kicked in.

Skip to three days later. I've got a proper bandage on my toe and it's still spotting blood everywhere.

Took about two months to heal, that did.

Told you it would be long, and tbh, I don't think it was really worth it.
(TuftyBee should have been working on, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 2:24, Reply)

streetlight ambush
as many of you may already have guessed, i'm something of a clumsy shit. i've lost blood through many silly things, such as falling over whilst holding a bottle of wine(6 stitches), sliding down a back garden wall, falling off bin sheds and getting shagpile wrapped around my rollerboot wheels.

this is something a bit different.

out with a friend one evening, we decided to go to the fancy new restaurant on the waterfront. we pulled up and parked in the black car park in front of the restaurant and went inside. the maitre d' informed us that, despite the fact that the place was half empty, we had no reservations and therefore could not eat there. not wanting to argue with the arrogant fucksock, we decided to leave.

now, i was quite a bit larger back then than i am now. so large, in fact, that the car's seat belts didn't fit me. unfortunately for me, in the black car park, we hit an unlit black lamppost.
well, i say we, the car hit the post, i hit the windscreen. i fell back into my seat, clutching my head as my vision blurred.
"are you alright?" my friend asked. "i think i've cut my head" i answered.
"let me see," he says, so i did. blood gushed from between my fingers and he turned white. in the time it took him to reach over to the back seat and grab a cloth, my lovely white blouse was turned red with blood. i didn't know it at the time, but i'd severed a minor artery in my forehead. the blood was pouring down my face so fast that i was spitting it, still warm, out of my mouth.
reclining my seat back as far as it would go, my friend managed to get the seatbelt round me, before he raced me off to the hospital.

when we arrived, less that 10 minutes later, i'd already lost over a pint of blood and my clothes and the car's upholstery were beyond salvage. fortunately, due to my blood loss, i was seen by a doctor immediately. he was very nice and, when he asked "how's your head?" i couldn't resist replying "well, i've had no complaints so far!"

i got 5 stitches and was told i was lucky not to get thrown out of casualty for being rude!

altogether, it was a funny night.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 2:15, 2 replies)

Appendectomy
I woke up in hospital after said operation and looked down to find a tube sticking out of an open wound in my abdomen.

Oh yeah, there was a bit of dried blood around it.

Hopefully that's warmed you up...

I've always suffered from a small amount of bleeding from my nose. Even having it cauterised hasn't fixed it. Normally it's not an issue and can even be fun at parties (no, my name isn't Martin and I don't know Legless), but occasionally it can be trouble.

Quite a few years back I got my PADI diving licence. During the open water dive part of the test my trick nose decided to turn the trickle to a bit of a flow, while I was underwater. I thought my mask was getting a bit of water in it, but my diving instructor and fellow classmates could see my mask gradually fill up with blood. Not really an issue - simple enough to clear and the flow wasn't heavy enough to cause a real problem.

The fun bit was when it came to equalising pressure in my nasal cavities. When you dive you need to equalise the pressure in your nasal cavities (which lead up to your ear drums) with the water around you, otherwise you will get a severe ear-ache and may even rupture an eardrum. The way you equalise is to pinch your nose and blow.

I was having some trouble this particular day so had to pinch and blow really hard (which may have caused the bleed in the first place).

I managed to blow blood from my nose back through the right naval cavity and on to the inside of the eardrum, where it eventually coagulated and turned me deaf in that ear.

The amazing thing is that it eventually cleared up and hearing was restored.

Not funny, not particularly gory, perhaps a bit overlong, but hopefully interesting.
( argyleblanket The man on the roof works for me, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 2:04, 2 replies)

Claret Trainers
Whilst at college in Southampton in the nineties I took to drinking heavily on a regular basis. At the time it was about 50p a pint and 15p for a vodka. Even on my meagre grant and student loan, I could readily afford a dozen pints and three or four vodkas a day, so that is what I drank.

Anyway, a year or so in, a girlfriend from home turns up to stay for a couple of days for some "front bum-bum" interference (which was always welcome). She was very sweet but a bit mumsy. Anyway, one particular evening in the bar, I return from the bog having drained off my ninth and tenth pints, when she notices a lot of red specks and blotches all over my shoes. Upon questioning I inform her that it is spray back from the urinal, and that due to my excessive drinking, I have regularly been pissing blood for several months now and think that perhaps my liver and kidneys are giving up the ghost. She is immediately devasted, cue two further days of nagging until fortunately she fucks off back home.

A week later, girlfriend turns up again, but this time with my parents. Mother looks ashen faced and Dad is on the verge of an explosion. She of course has told them about my toxic innards and regular blood urination. After an hour or so of resisting my parents' attempts to whisk me off the hospital, home, alcoholics anonymous, rehab etc, I finally show my hand. The honest truth was that I had been painting the garage door...red...the day before the girlfriend arrived, hence the "blood" spatters on my shoes.

I thought it was quite a good wheeze, but surprisingly they didn't seem to find it very funny. Bet they didn't talk much to the girlfriend on the six hour drive back to Norfolk.
(Mandrill, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 1:54, 1 reply)

Bloody Work
.
I just know that I'm going to get a chorus of "you bloody liar!!" for this one. But I swear on Davros's life that it's true. I'll even dig the Google maps link out if pressed.

But as a wee nipper I once worked in a tampon factory.

But only for a short period.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 1:45, 5 replies)

my most expensive bottle of wine ever
i'd agreed to spend a weekend helping out a guy at work at a trade show, but the only way he could pay me was through his expenses so he offered to fund a date. a year earlier, i'd met a guy i'd clicked with straight away but finished with the next morning due to feeling messed up after a bad split. a year on, i was feeling normal again so i sent him a text along the lines of

'sorry to contact you out the blue. i have up to £150 to spend on dinner with you if you'd like.'

no kisses so as not to be presumptuous.

he waits until i've assumed it's 'no' to reply with 'yes'. i do the victory dance. i pick a posh restaurant in london. i wear my special size 9 trousers, which fit almost biologically, and matching underwear. i intend to do some seducing tonight.

we meet at the restaurant and have a drink in the bar. it's the first time i've ever asked anyone on a date and i'm a bit nervous. i talk more when i'm nervous, which dries my throat and makes me need to drink cocktails. at the table, my date orders a £75 bottle of wine blowing half my budget. oh well, should have seen that coming. not feeling so nervous now, but i'm unable to stop talking and drinking and i barely notice the steak on the plate in front of me which goes cold.

i decide to go to the toilet, colliding with a waitress on the way. in the toilet, which is inexplicably shaped as an egg, i decide that it would be a good idea to skin up because we all know that after you've drunk cocktails, a considerable proportion of a £75 bottle of wine and skipped your dinner, what you really need to sort you out is some powerful skunk. by the time i finish, i am dimly aware that it feels like i haven't seen my date in a while. i'm pleasantly surprised that by the time i negotiate my way back to the table, he's still there so it seems like a good idea to suggest moving the party on. he's up for it so i pay the £300+ bill and we head out into the night.

the air outside is fresh and cold as we walk arm in arm through the streets of london. i spark up my spliff, amused that it's hard to tell when the smoke stops and my breath's vapour starts and therefore difficult to know when to stop exhaling so i don't realise what's happening until it's too late.

sometimes when you throw up, you get that feeling of having a knot somewhere between your stomach and your mouth, you find your mouth filling up with saliva and you're swallowing constantly. you start sweating and your hands shake uncontrollably. then you retch and you retch, your whole body straining with the effort, leaving you panting with exhaustion. other times you have no warning at all and before you know what's going on, you're spraying vomit over 2 square metres of pavement, your date, yourself and a couple of passers by.

clearly a glutton for punishment, my date takes me back to his house where i throw up all over both bathrooms, one of which is his landlady's. when she wanders out of her room in her nightgown to see what the noise is, i scream at her, believing her to be a ghost.

i remember how red my vomit was because, as i first looked down at it, spattered all over my dark navy, slightly iridescent size 9 trousers, still steaming, i thought 'what a waste of 75 quid'. and then 'wow, it looks like fireworks'.
(threadkiller, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 1:22, 1 reply)

Martin And The Hyde Road Run
.
A bloke I once knew, called Martin, was a disgusting cunt. His party trick was to stick his finger up his nose, twist, then bleed on people. Yup - he could make his nose bleed on demand.

Then this one evening we decided, yet again, to attempt The Hyde Road Run. It was a famous pubcrawl in the 80's. Starting from Gorton then drinking your way down to the city center. About 30 pubs in all. (Anyone any idea how many there are now?)

So off we went, a half pint in every pub. But Martin added a sinister twist to this drinking session. In every pub he quietly left about half an inch of congealing blood in an ashtray for the bar staff to find.

Like I said - he's a disgusting cunt....


Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 1:16, 4 replies)

Bleeding+++
Hello,

I was lodging at his best mate’s house about a decade ago. We both worked for the same company, he had a car so I got a lift into work each morning.

One morning, the frost had been quite bad, my mate and I were walking to his car. This walk evolved having to traverse some concrete steps in order to reach the car park above. These steps were nice big slabs of concrete cemented into place, with nice sharp corners on them.

On that fateful day, I was approaching the bottom of these steps at a right angle, with my hands stuffed into my jeans pockets because of the cold.

Unfortunately, at the bottom of these steps was a patch of ice, my feet slip out from under me and, without the ability to stop my fall (hands in pockets), I fall on my back with my head making a not insubstantial contact with the corner of the bottom step. I made an embarrassingly loud cry as my head smashed into the concrete.

My mate, who was ahead of me, turned round at the time I was attempting to get back on my feet. I think is words were ‘Oh for fucks sake… OH SHIT’. I remember blood dripping down the side of my face and my mate taking his jacket off and starting to wrap it around my head. I also remember saying ‘head wounds always look bad and can bleed a lot’, at this point all a knew was my head hurt and blood was dripping past my left eye. He told me ‘Yes, but they don’t squirt all over the place’.

I don’t remember much of the drive to A&E, what with my head being wrapped my mate’s jacket, like some mad turban.

When we reached A&E, I just about remember staggering around, jacket on head while my mate (bless him) explained what happened. The next thing I know, I’m bundled into a wheelchair and taken into a room where a nurse peeled my mate’s now knackered jacket off and bandaged my head. She wrote out a brief description: Head wound, bleeding +++.

After a short wait, I was wheeled into another room by a nice nurse, who told me to lie down on the table and she would treat my wound. By this time the panic had subsided and I thought I would be stitched up and on my way in no time.

As she undid the bandage, she went ‘Urh’ and then did the bandage back up. She said that she would not be able to treat me and was going to get the matron.

A couple of minutes later, the matron comes in and says ‘Ok Mr Shadders, your head needs some stitching that the nurse can’t do, so I’m here to do it now, no need to worry’. She then unwound my bandage and then uttered ‘Oh my, urgh!’ and promptly did my bandage back up. She then said that I had a serious wound that would require a surgeon to fix.

Another few minutes waiting, now I’m thinking, “Christ, how much damage has been done? It can’t be good when two professionals get freaked out and run off to find a superior”
Eventually, a surgeon comes in and unwinds my bandage yet again, he says “Oh dear, that’s a nasty mess”. Then he tells me that I have a severed artery that needs to be reconnected, but before he can do that, he has to get the bits of concrete out of my head. After that, he can sew my scalp back together. I’m no expert, but having a look on the interweb, it must have been the Supra-orbital. Mr. Surgeon then goes and puts on an apron.

By that time I was just glad to have someone say they could do something rather than sounding like they were retching and running away to find some other poor sod to do the work.

After he had injected me with anaesthetic around the wound and had started taking the bits of concrete out (an odd sensation), some other chap comes into the room and starts say ‘Ah, Mr. Surgeon there you are, I just wanted to….Urh, I can see you’re a bit busy, I’ll come back later’

Anyhoo, Mr. Surgeon finishes the job and sends me on my way. I remember waiting to a lift home, trying to see what my head looked like in window reflections as there were no car around (I would have used the wing mirrors). If my head hadn’t been throbbing so much I would have laughed at the amount of people who walked by took a look at me, then registered my stitches, grimaced and looked away.

I have to say, that I owe a lot to those people who were on duty at A&E that day. I doubt that my injury would have been one that would have stopped bleeding on it’s own. I certainly don’t resent the nurse or the matron for having the guts to say they could not deal with it and find someone who could. I’d much rather that, than making a crap attempt at fixing the problem. I should also thank my mate for sacrificing his jacket and getting me to hospital quickly, I shudder to think what would have happened had I been on my own. Thanks John!

You know what the weirdest thing is? After all that, the most blood I saw would have been enough to half fill a plastic cup from an office water cooler.
(shadders, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 1:07, 2 replies)

a "My Mate" story
My Mate Gary...

When he was a teenager he was once at this party (of many parties ofc) and he was showing off his Combat Knife from the TA. Gary shows off this knife by using it to open bottles of champagne. Throughout most the evening he opens the bottles the correct way, knife facing away from him but, as the night progressed, he made a little mistake....
He opened a bottle of chanpange with the knife facing him. He managed to make a hefty slice into his arm which preceeded to pump out the old life juice.
Arm gots wrapped in alot of towels before the blood stopped soaking through and he was rushed off to A&E by the one driver at the party.
They run up to the desk. "Quick quick! my friends cut himself really badly!"
"Fill in the form, sit down and wait. blah blah blah"
"No look, it's really bad!"
Cue Gary tearing off the towels. Blood spouting onto the receptionists keyboard and the receptionist screaming "we got a bleeder" into the the PA mic.
Gary got very fast treatment and was fine apart from a large scar he carries to this day.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 0:46, 1 reply)

nose bleeds
anyone get night time nose bleeds? i always mistake them for my nose just running. blood everywhere, yum yum...
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 0:44, Reply)

good qotw! bleeding is funny. esp nose bleeds.
couple of years ago it was one of those 'cor blimey, its raining... GET THE WASHING IN' moments. i stubbed my toe in the kerfuffle. this hurt like a bastard but i didnt really think about it.

i sat down again.

my sock (formerly white) was now red.

i hopped to the bathroom and peeled off the sock to discover that id taken the flesh off the tip of my big toe ... but not quite. it was hanging off by a thread. wasnt really sure what to do about this. surprisingly did not hurt as much as i thought it would but id left bloody footprints through the house.

prob should have done something about it. i woozily cut off the piece of toe and plastered up the wound, and ended up stuffing my sock with tissue paper.

toe a bit flatter now.
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 0:42, Reply)

Mine is a bit grim
10 years ago i broke my femur playing football (it was drunk football but i dont think that matters too much)

Anyway, somehow snapped my leg clean in 2. At first it didnt hurt, but then i looked down and could see the bone through my skin on top of my leg, and the bone through my skin out the bottom of my leg.

Then it really hurt. Blood everywhere, a few mates started to panic and ran around like girls. By the time the ambulance turned up i was white. Anyway lost a lot of blood and another 5 mins and i would have been a gonner.

8 months in hospital for that.

Broke it again 6 months later, fell of a bike whilst drunk.

I dont do stupid things anymore.
(Lanceuppercut, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 0:39, Reply)

American Pie
As (some of you) are aware my background as well as having academia has a bit of t'Army in it.

Whilst away in a warm country nearly 20 years ago now (and by GOD does that make me feel old) I was sitting out catching some rays with a carpenter working behind me using a band-saw.

A radio was playing American Pie by Don Maclean and I can recall it as if it were yesterday, said carpenter singing along to the tune.

"Bye, bye Miss Americ-aaaaaaargh"

He'd cut off his thumb and forefinger pushing them through the band-saw.

Blood *everywhere*. I don't recall much about it other than grabbing a bandage and wrapping it around what remained of that part of his hand before heading into the building.

Poor guy.
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 0:26, Reply)

I love Rock 'n' Roll
You might have read from my many stories that as a youth I was a bit of a hot headed type. However as I grew up I found that my temper mellowed, and I was often the one splitting fights, rather than getting involved.

However, there was one exception.

Me and a group of friends, including my brother, were in some local dive watching an up-and-coming band. We'd got a good spot, right at the front of the stage.

The atmosphere had been tense from the moment the first band came on, the venue had the kind of nervous feeling that you get when you know that a thunderstorm is about to strike.

The first glass flew straight past me right up front, and smashed at the feet of the lead guitarist. I turned round to see what the hell was going on, only to witness some skinny runt thug landing a punch on Our Kid.

Not many things get me angry in this day and age, but my brother is a Grade 'A' Pacifist and to see that going on, well, "Hello, red mist!".

I grabbed hold of the chav - I'm a big fella - and pinned him against the wall. Whilst I was giving him a bit of a talking to (!) I realised that I was quite literally seeing red.

When our kid had been dropped to the floor, he'd landed on some of the smashed glass, slicing open his arm. For some reason the blood pissed out of his arm like the scenes in Kill Bill, spraying the audience with 'claret' and giving a whole new meaning to the word bloodbath. All this was going on whilst the band were still trying to knock out their indie rock numbers, despite the fact that they were witnessing something akin to a West Ham V Chelsea hooligan riot in the 1970's.

After giving the thug, still in my grasp, a final warning* - me, my mates J, T and C, carried our kid out of the place. We were all covered.

Now, if any of you know Sheffield, the place where we were was just off The Wicker. Not a nice place by any stretch.

If you can come up with a better story how four blokes covered in blood carrying a dazed and bruised lad weren't up to anything dodgy to the worried looking taxi driver, then give me a reply!

* - I never actually hit the kid, for the record. I just made it pretty clear that I wasn't a happy bunny.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:57, 1 reply)

I used to have a.....
small lump on my chest, look like a large red pimple. Turns out it was what the doctor called a 'blood lump', basically it's a vein that is attached to the skin and over time the pressure forms a lump and well you get the idea. Anyway, it never caused much of a problem, my dad has had one all his life.

I had a rather cruel PE teacher in school who the week before had told me to 'Fuck off out of his sight' and called me several other lovely names...so I fucked off and told my parents. The next week my parents were up at school shouting at the headmaster, accusing them of verbal abuse against their son, which they denied saying they took the best care of all pupils and would never allow anything bad to happen to their son.

Cue a knock at the door, the headmaster opens it and there I am in a pristine school uniform with a bright red shirt, a bright red dripping shirt.....

I had been at PE class when the lump had burst, what was the teachers reaction? "It's not serious...sit down!"...when I turned a funny shade of white he did panic and finally sent me off to get checked, only after the blood spurted at him. I lost the guts of a pint (maybe not much but i was seriously skinny and anemic to boot) through it and did walk to the school nurse like something out of night of the living dead.

The next week I was at a new school.
( Bamboo Steamer, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:46, Reply)

I'll talk! I'll talk! Please don't hit me...
This is very long and like many such things will read somewhat like bullshit. I can assure you, gentle reader, that the tale is true in it’s entirety (to my shame) and that the payoff is hopefully worth the lengthy read.

The first shameful fact to report was that at the time this story dates from, I was a ticket inspector on London Underground (Boo! Hiss! &c, &c).

A sad state of affairs I’ll agree, but one that derives from having studied an arts degree during a recession in the late 1980s/early 90s. (During said recession, finding that there were no particular employment opportunities for experts on the ‘Survival of Byzantine political and social infrastructure models in the Eastern Mediterranean lands following the Arab Conquests, through to the Crusader Era’ ™, I became a Tube Monkey. Current students take note, especially the business studies ones, you’re so fucked in the present economic climate). Anyway, I digress…

So by the mid 1990s, after several jobs I found myself a Ticket Inspector for London Underground (except we had the exciting title of ‘Revenue Control Inspector’ (RCI)). This generally meant patrolling bits of the Underground network in uniform, inspecting tickets and getting hit in the face by drunks from time to time. It was comparatively well paid but it failed the Playmobil test of public sector work in that small children will not be clamouring for RCI action figures for Christmas anytime soon.*

Sometimes, we worked plain clothes duties, mostly I now believe as an attempt to make the job seem more exciting (no, really). In plain clothes, amongst other things, we waited at stations for people to double up through the barriers and then nicked them (Curiously, tube ticket inspectors are able to caution and question under PACE (Police And Criminal Evidence act) and have limited and very specific powers of arrest (based on the Regulation of the Railways Act 1889, as amended by the Transport Act 1980, sections 5(3)a-c). What this means is that semi-skilled idiots (such as I was) get to question you under caution and then take you to court. This wasn’t generally considered a perk. I still have my old notebooks: “Why did you not buy a ticket for your journey?” “Because you’re all old crates, fuck off, Hahahahahahahahah”. That’s a genuine Q&A just to show you exactly how boring the job was. I still don’t know what he meant either.

So, with all this in mind, I and my work (but not life) partner, Seamus were on plain clothes duty one day at King’s Cross station ‘looking for trouble’ (tea, bacon sandwiches from Big Dell’s Café** and an easy life).

At one point I spotted a likely lad waiting to double up behind someone and got ready to stop him when he barged through. Back then, King’s Cross was effectively two different stations, this meant that even if you had a single ticket, the gates would always return your ticket on exit in case you were continuing your journey via the other ticket hall and tube line. This meant that it was an awful lot easier to prove and/or get the punter to admit guilt. So when the guy pushed through, I was moving forward, showing my ID and trying to stop him. He shoulder charged me, barging me aside, then quickly swung his carrier bag of junk at Seamus who was swiftly moving in to intercept.

This was a big mistake. Seamus was half Irish and half German. He had the subtle wit of the Germans and the gentle disposition of the Irish (his dad, although an Irish national, for some reason joined the British Army in his youth, then while stationed in Germany married a German girl, hence Seamus’ mixed parentage and demeanour). On being whacked lightly in the face by a carrier bag, Seamus said “That’s assault!” and quickly smacked our assailant to the ground, bursting his nose on impact (see, relevance finally).

We took him back through the barrier, bleeding all the while, to the British Transport Police (BTP) interview and mess room that we were allowed to use to question all such people. It was my turn to ask the questions, so I made my way through the list of standard queries while Mr-by-now-very-subdued-Scrote bled on the table, wiping his bloody hands and face on the roller towel adjacent to the table (it was a very small room). I got to the end of the interview and had to ask him to sign my notebook to endorse that what I had written was a true record of our conversation. Only thing was, he was still bleeding profusely and left bloody fingerprints and drips on my notebook as he signed. At this point I was seriously hoping that the case would never see court as the defence have the right to view your notes if you refer to them in evidence (“So RCI Weasel, can you explain the bloodstains on your notebook under my clients endorsement of his confession?”).

Having dealt with this poor individual, we took him to the barrier and let him out of the station, still bleeding all the while. Immediately after letting him go we stopped another punter jumping the barrier so Seamus and I grabbed him and took him back to the interview room for questioning.

The still very bloodstained interview room that we hadn’t had a chance to clean up after the last guy. He looked at the blood all over the table, the completely bloodstained roller towel, looked at the pair of us and said “I’ll talk, I’ll talk!”

Gets you right there doesn’t it?


* Apologies to Christopher Brookmyre

** Sadly gone with the redevelopment of St Pancras/British Library etc. Trust me, this was the uber Greasy Spoon of which all other Greasy Spoons are mere pale shadows.
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:39, 7 replies)

Cleaning up after nasty people
I recently spent a month and a half cleaning a hotel. I now know what a bed looks like after period sex.

Yet another bad memory to haunt me.
(Mmm Zebalicious is wondering..., Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:29, 4 replies)

Back in the day...
I was in the US Navy and setting up for a really cool casualty drill when I noticed in the bottom of the moulage kit a rather large packet of imitation blood mix. Needless to say, I couldn't resist the urge to mix up about a gallon of the stuff. It really is amazing how much area of the inside of a submarine you can turn red with such a concoction. The old man (captain) said that while he appreciated my enthusiasm, having so many (5) casualty respondents become ill simply wouldn’t do. (Note: The language he used was not nearly as calm as my paraphrased report.) Were the hours spent cleaning up afterward worth it? You bet! I became a legend that day.
(Right-Sequitur follows along rightly, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:24, Reply)

Needles
Not strictly on topic, but recently I've been diagnosed with a condition which requires me to receive regular intramuscular injections and me, being me , decided that I would take it upon myself to administer them.

I arrived at the clinic for the tutorial,
I was met by a nice female doctor who offered to "show me the ropes".

I was shown how to prepare for the injection and fill the needle with the drug.

I was then told that the best place on my body to start learning with is a muscle called the "Vastus lateralis" which is in the thigh.

After sterilising the area, we arrived at the point were I was holding the needle over my leg with one hand, and gripping it (to expose more muscle) with the other.

It was at this stage where the appeal of the procedure was suddenly lost on me as I realised I was at the point where I had to jab myself with a bloody great needle (21g if you are interested) which was an inch long (to penetrate the muscle tissue) and rather thick looking. There was no going back.

"Hold it like a dart" she said, "throw it into your thigh like you would throw a dart, it's all in the wrist".

I must confess I was never good at darts but nonetheless I was under medical supervision and she would be there to take the blame if anything went wrong, right?

Nervously, I threw the needle into my leg, expecting it to be stupidly painful, what I /actually/ felt was far worse.

As it hit the skin , piercing the epidermal and dermal layers and then the (subcutanoeus) fat layer, I must confess I couldn't feel a thing, it was like a knife through butter, this surprised me somewhat.

When it hit the muscle layer however, my astonishment turned to distress, there is nothing quite like the feel of a silicon coated needle inside your muscle tissue, muscles are made of lots of "fibres" and the needle parts them where it can.
I can only describe it as a "weakening" of the muscle tissue, it goes from a solid piece of muscle you can tense and control, to a lump of pathetic jelly.
Now the needle was all the way in (a whole inch of it), the thought of accidentally knocking it and having it move was making me quite sick.

I looked up at the doc and waited for a prompt as to what to do next, she told me that now I was "in", I would have to "aspirate" (I believe the technical term is) which is to pull back on the plunger to look for blood, if I had the end of the needle inside a blood vessel (and there were many in my leg) I couldn't continue and would have to pull out (the drugs are not designed to go direct into the blood like that).

I did this and was surprised to find... nothing.. nothing at all... I was actually pulling back what seemed to be a vacuum, I could feel the resistance on the plunger as it wanted to be pulled back in, there was a vacuum inside my muscle!!

After confirming there was no blood, I continued to press the plunger in, the feeling of jelly became worse as the solution pushed apart my muscle fibres further, there was no going back.

Finally, I'd finished. I removed the needle which felt odder coming out than it did on the way in. Instantly I saw the clear drug leaking out of the hole I just made, trying to attain its freedom, followed closely by blood from the vessels I'd punctured on the way down.

For this I was simply told to apply pressure and it would stop by itself.

The whole experience gave me a funny sensation in the leg all day and still does to this day.




Length? 1 inch and rather deep.
(lochii, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:24, 4 replies)

Powertools...
Always good fun to play with, big belt sanders being no exception. Sadly on occasion mistakes will be made that do ruin the fun slightly, like that of which a friend of mine made while at work in a machine shop one day...

He was merrily sanding away, letting his mind wonder until the piece he was working on slipped from his hand, leaving only the end of his finger pressed to the rather quickly spinning sanding drum...

In actual fact the event itself wasn't that bad, the 'oh no' second of realisation, then the moment of surprise that the finger that used to be a centimetre longer than it is now doesn't actually seem to be bleeding, bit of a mess though, so off to a sink to give it a clean and see what damage he has done.
It was when he started washing the muck off his finger that he realised that the sander was moving quick enough and was hot enough after being in use that it cauterised the wound and stopped it bleeding, and that sadly the act of cleaning off the muck also cleaned off what was holding back the blood...

One quick visit to casualty later and a nice big bandage and everything was pretty much alright, albeit slightly shorter than previously.
(442, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:23, 1 reply)

note to self
drinking a bottle of aftershock to yourself will make you paraletic.

waking the folks up by clattering through the front door and falling unconscious will inevitably piss them off.

proceeding to spew 'red, red horror' on to their new cream carpet will completely freak them out.

racing to hospital in a wail of blue lights and sirens is shit if you are trying to sleep.

if do you find yourself in this position again make sure you bribe the doctor before he informs your parents that their son was not vomiting pints of blood and that it was in fact red aftershock.

parents revenge is always sweet. they will refuse allowing your stomach to be pumped as they will derive as much satisfaction as is sadistically possible out of your impending hangover from hell.
(babyjak, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:18, Reply)

the horror
i get awful nose bleeds and when i was a kid i regularly woke looking like a murder victim however once i had a friend staying who didnt know so he woke up and started screaming that ide been killed he didnt back after that

more recently a now ex girlfriend liked a poking when she was in the red usually ide refuse but i gave it a go once becuase we were away from home in poland(big metal/punk scene out their) it was our last night so we gave it a go sufficed to say the cleaning staff must have hated us when it came time to make ready for the next guests
(imgunnabesick rawr ^ \_/ ^, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:09, 1 reply)

Hey, funny story;
pregnancy and mainly the giving birth part is fucking horrible. Whoever said that it's a beautiful thing to witness or be a part of must've been so drugged up on gas and air at the time that they probably tried to hold the nurse instead during the labour while shouting "It's a boy!", instead of actually witnessing the gorefest which was coming from the pissflaps instead.

Me wife had a long(ish) 38 or so hour labour. It was full of her suffering and in pain whilst waiting for our "little visitor", so I enjoyed this immensely. When she was starving and waiting for our daughter to turn up I sat right next to her eating a sandwich, taking my time to chew the bread as loudly and as long as possible while she sat there legs akimbo fucking starving herself on doctor's orders. God I'm a cunt. Mrs Jeccy wasn't that uncomfortable through this as she was epiduralled through her back and upto her tits on drugs, so she was sitting there mostly being examined from time to time by docs checking her progress.

We get to the point where the docs aren't happy about the baby taking the scenic route (ie taking her time, not via the colon) and out come the stirrups. Legs go even higher akimbo and Mrs Jeccy's in a bit of pain bless :p After some rapid pushing techniques, which coincidentally resembles a German Shiester flick (apparently) the doc goes in with a medical plunger and pulls our daughter free. The nurses quickly wipe her off, cleaning all the blood and making sure our Nell is ok, which she was considering they just plumbered her out of a cunt. They pass her to me and she's very pale in colour but is crying as they all do. Definately her mother's then :p
Now things start going to shit. I pass her over to her mum who tries to breastfeed her. Within 2 seconds Mrs Jeccy turns yellow and cock-eyed, while dropping Nell off her chest. I literally catch my daughter who'se on mid-slide towards the floor and then hear the doc shout "I NEED A HAND HERE!". I glance over to where he is, which is glaring up the missus's bloodied love gusset as blood fountains out towards him. Nell's taken off me as literally 6-7 nurses all run in and I'm ushered out, stepping in her blood as I walk out. Woah, ummmmm, oh dear?

I take a deep breath and go outside to meet me mum and sis, who are informed of the baby as good and Mrs Jeccy as bad so I urge them to stay outside for a minute, then I come back inside to see what's going on. Now there's 10+ nurses in the same room with the doc and the missus is delirious on the bed shouting "Jeccy, I'm not going to die am I?" before I get ushered out again. I run back outside for a minute and let me mum know again what's happening then after 2 minutes go back inside.

Now we get to the blood bit.

I walk back into the room and the first thing I notice is the silence. There is hardly any sound at all in the room, all except for Nell who makes a quick crying gurgle in the corner. I then realize there's no nurses there, no doc, no Mrs Jeccy or her bed in the room. They're all gone, except for a giant puddle of blood in the centre of the room. I've never seen a puddle of real blood like this in my entire life; it spanned almost the width of the room and was a crimson red. To the left of this pond sat a placenta in a tray on top of a unit and to the right sat my daughter in a small incubator tray. My brain could not deal with this. It hadn't helped that a few nights earlier I'd converted "Silent Hill" to play on my PSP and it had a level with lots of blood and babies in it. This just fucking freaked me well out. After about 20 seconds of me staring around this John Carpenter scene I did kinda shout a bit loud "WHAT THE FUCK?????" to which a nurse in the next room heard and come in. She told me that the wife had been rushed to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to stop her from bleeding to death. She's taken a serious tare in her womb when the placenta come out and was bleeding like a pig in a butchers.

Mrs Jeccy obviously survived this, although it turned out that she lost over 4 units of blood during the bleed. The doc managed to stitch her up internally (that would make one hell of a Scout's badge btw -"I earned my "Internal-cunt sewing badge") and after a good transfusion she was able to hold the baby the next day.

The moral of this story btw is if you want a woman to bleed, stab 'em in the cunt.....no wait, no matter how much blood you see they can still survive it. It looks messier and more than it really is, although it's murder getting it out of rape victims. Apparently.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:06, 5 replies)

So a few years back...
... I went what the diplomatic among us might call a little bit peculiar. I got quite depressed, and then quite paranoid, and then I started to hallucinate more or less constantly. I was under the care of a couple of doctors at this point, but I wasn't taking the medication. I ground it up and dissolved it in water to see if it would kill a pot plant. I'm not totally sure about the reasoning behind that part.

I kept on with uni and didn't really talk about the fact that I was batshit crazy. I could have long conversations with my family while dead people laughed and laughed, and I never mentioned it. I felt like the only thing worse than living this would be telling anyone about it.

Where this story becomes relevant was a few months after my first psychotic break. I woke up one morning and the depression was utterly gone. I had the energy and will to get out of bed, which was a change. I also knew that god was giving me a message, and I had tasks to complete. These were somewhat arbitrary tasks, like alphabetising my cds and and hoovering the flat, but the last thing on the list was killing myself.

I was totally okay with the whole thing. In fact I was utterly euphoric the whole morning. I can remember just about everything up to the point when I had to get down to business, as it were. And then there's a gap. The fixture that I was hanging myself from came off, and I sort of woke up on the floor, clicking back on into awareness.

And good lord, the whole place was covered in blood. The bedsheets, my clothes, my face and hair. There was blood on the walls and floor and ceiling. The desk was covered in the scalpels that I had presumably been plunging into my arms in a carefree manner.
It took a few minutes before I realised the blood was actually coming from me, and that was because I made the mistake of looking in the mirror. If you've never seen your own face with blood smeared all over it, allow me to recommend against it. It was disturbing, to say the least, but it woke me up enough to do an inventory of myself to find the damage.

My happy mood had vanished into the ether, and my sanish self was back in command. Mostly I just felt exceedingly embarrassed, but there was a kind of wonder there- like, holy fuck, how did I get blood on the ceiling?
Anyway, I wrapped towels around my arms and walked into casualty, which was just over the road. They stitched me up, and did all kinds of x-rays and ct scans and things.

I ended up being stuck in a psych ward for some time, under rather intense supervision. It was about a year before the hallucinations stopped, but I eventually reached a place where I was willing to live. I still have the odd bad day when the voices show up, and I still see things that other people don't, but I'm back at uni and I'm fitting my life back together. I'm very lucky in that there's only a little nerve damage to my left arm, and I have full mobility in both hands.

Moral of the story: If you or someone you care about has a mental illness- don't pretend it isn't happening. It is, and it will get worse before it gets better. Also, if you leave blood to set on carpet, it will never really come out. But you'll have an interesting story if people ask about the stains.
(yes_slash_no, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 23:00, 3 replies)

Childhood Trauma
Good things about my Mum: Resourcefulness. When an epic nosebleed broke out just before school she found the obvious solution and gave me a tampon to wedge up my nose.

Bad things about my Mum: an inability to consider the effect on a 12 year-old boy when his schoolfriends realise he has a tampon up his nose. Specifically, when his schoolfriends realise that he has a tampon up his nose because she didn't think to cut the bloody string off...
(psd eats stuff. Often., Thu 7 Aug 2008, 22:42, 1 reply)

Ah, shit...
The current boyfriend and I have been attempting the long-distance relationship thing. So after not seeing each other for a month, I go visit and within five minutes the obvious is going down. Until, of course, he suddenly stops and loses his... uh... "momentum," says "oh SHIT" and jumps up to grab some tissues. Note: "oh SHIT" is not the most comforting thing to hear during sex, especially once I noticed the drops of blood on the sheets.

Lovely timing, like a total nerd he went and got a gusher of a nosebleed. Once he stopped the flow he was kind enough to bring me a tissue to clean up the back of my thigh, which he had also bled all over. He was absolutely mortified, especially since I've been considerate enough to never surprise him with a period or anything.

The laughing and pointing on my part was probably a tad emasculating...
(Exempt OH WOW, VICODIN, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 22:13, Reply)