How to get admitted into hospital in the most manly way possible
I didn't think I'd have any stories for this QotW until I experienced the unfortunate event of slicing through half my thumb with a knife sharper than Groucho Marx's tongue. Curiously enough, I was testing it through an array of foods just to see what the £15 chef knife could handle, and it turns out it does layers of skin, muscle and bone for no extra charge.

Anyway, after underestimating the length of the knife, I managed to slice along about 90% of the width of my right thumb, leaving me with a blood spraying flap and slight tingling feeling.

I'm probably the last person in the world to address pain by bench pressing my Y chromosone. I bitch about having man-flu a good 3 or 4 times a month and have had insomnia since I was a lad. I'm pretty much a whining hypochondric, and while most people would follow the rational, overdramatic approach of screaming like a teenage girl at a James Blunt gig over such a predicament as the one I was facing, the combination of shock and nerve damage sought otherwise. And so I present the manly alternative to hospitalisation, a feat that gives me the masculine prowess to impregnate any Mrs FoxyBadger I seek from over 50 yards at a time while assembling a Ford Mustang from parts using only my biceps and a monkey wrench:

Step 1: After receiving the wound

- Common Approach: Run frantically, shouting for the nearest person to wrap anything less bloody than blood around the wound and dial an ambulance
- Manly alternative: Inform your screaming flatmate that the chop 'kinda feels weird', and proceed to put pressure on the wound with your other fingers while you go back into the living room with a cup of tea to watch Top Gear on Dave

Step 2: Treating the wound

- Common approach: Dial 999, ask for an ambulance. Wait.
- Manly alternative: Realise after 20 minutes of Clarkson that you're getting hungry and your flatmate won't stop wailing at you to go outside and do something about the blood trickling from yourself. Proceed to walk to hospital, but only because there's a chippy nearby

Step 3: Admission

- Common approach: Stagger in. Faint. Wake up confused and crying for Mummy
- Manly alternative: Stroll in with a box of chips in your spare hand, inform the lass at reception of your wound, personal details, and that you'll be outside eating should they choose to help you. Spray the glass panel with blood when she doesn't believe that anyone with such an injury could be so calm and demands to see the cut. Proceed to watch Fifth Gear and Britain's Strongest Man whilst eating food, secretly knowing that you've gone one up on them in manliness.

Step 4: Treatment

- Common Approach: Be excitable, demanding the least painful treatment under the Sun. Immediately.
- Manly alternative: Eventually get seen too by the hottest nurse this side of Berkshire. Inform her that despite being injected with polio shots and getting the wound dabbed in pure alcohol you can't feel jack shit. Watch as she impales your hand with a pair of scissors to see if you're human.

So after losing a good pint or so of blood between over my house, the mile long road to the hospital and the reception desk I was eventually patched up and told to stay off my face on painkillers for a week or so. My thumb's now swollen, greenish blue and flapping, but I can't half feel smug about it. I spent 3 hours holding myself together and not once did I do so much as raise my voice.

Apologies for length
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Sat 9 Aug 2008, 21:10, 1 reply)

This was about average for my overly macho father:
My old dad once put a nail completely through his hand with a professional-grade air-powered nailgun, wrapped the wounded hand in a shop towel, drove himself home with one hand, walked into the house, calmly informed my youngest sibling and her (frightened) friend that he'd had a bit of a mishap, took a shower (would have been impolite to go to the hospital a stinky, sawdust-y mess!), and then drove himself to the hospital (again one-handed) to have the nail removed and the wound treated.

Old Dad was a hard one.
(herbivorous, Mon 11 Aug 2008, 22:35, closed)