I had a tooth abscess
And for five years, I'd been offered a root canal. I'd heard shit loads about them, how they hurt like buggery and DO NOT HAVE ONE.

So, after 4 years of piercing every abscess on the gum with a body piercing (crescent shaped shitter) needle, I finally had one done.

Apparently, after said five years, everything in the tooth had died, and therefore I didn't even need anaesthetic to get the root canal done.

RESULT.
(Iggy Pop's Teeth, Sat 22 Jan 2011, 2:08, 6 replies)

Two words.
Medicinal Rum.


The first step on the road to recovery from pretty much anything.

Except maybe alcohol poisoning.
(Woodlouse say it with flowers. Send her a Triffid, Sat 22 Jan 2011, 1:48, Reply)

A friend of mine had a heart attack
fortunately, as he'd taken a course in First Aid, he was able to self-administer CPR for the amount of time it took him to run to the post office around the corner, kick in the casing of the defibrillator attached to the wall, and shock himself back to life.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Sat 22 Jan 2011, 0:49, 3 replies)

The NHS are our saviours
A while back when diesel prices hit a high I thought fuck this for a game of soldiers, I am going to make biodiesel. All went according to plan for a while, got lots of waste oil and the old Discovery ran like the proverbial sewing machine on the stuff. Anyway, I digress....

My secret 'still' was in a barn of a local farmer. Now, I am not saying the guy was an accident waiting to happen but his idea of a 13 amp plug was three wires loosley pushed at random into a mains socket.

I needed to cut the top off a steel drum so picked up an angle grinder. I should have known better. As soon as I plugged it in it span into life, twisted and proceeded to grind a nice deep inch long gouge out of my left hand thumb knuckle. Farmer Phil, bless him, had hard wired the power switch in the on position 'for my convenience'.

Anyway, after the shock of seeing my bone had set in, I drove to the local minor injury unit. God bless the NHS after 20 years of taxpaying, the nurse tersely informed me they were closed, could I drive 30 miles to A&E and please piss off out of their reception as I was bleeding profusely on the floor.

By now I was really pissed off. Butterfly plaster made of sellotape, half a bottle of vodka, 20 silk cut and an early night. Job done.

8 years at uni for a medical degree? Fuck that.
(Mong The Merciless Older not wiser, Sat 22 Jan 2011, 0:48, 1 reply)

Self Dentistry is for Kings
My lower jaw is tiny. All my lower teeth actually fit inside my upper teeth... My face is the complete reverse of an Orc's you might say. The problem with this is that my front two teeth on my lower jaw kept getting chipped. Eventually they got so jagged and gnarly looking that I could have passed for an inbred from the fens - so I went to the dentist. His genius idea was to build my teeth back up with that hot white enamel stuff. Less than 15 minutes after leaving the dentist it chipped off, so I went back in and he reapplied it. It chipped off again, and he reapplied it - again. The last time it chipped off I decided that my dentist was a twat that didn't know what he was doing, so I went home, got out my Dremel multi drill with a stone file attachment, propped myself up in front of a mirror with a glass of water and ground my front teeth down. It got rather hot a couple of times, but eventually I smoothed out the bumps and to this day I have never had any problems. Take that Dentists of the world! All you need are DIY tools and no common sense!
(Biromunch, Sat 22 Jan 2011, 0:21, Reply)

Machete
Sadly not the film...

In Jamaica they say that you don't really know how to use a machete till you've hurt yourself with one.

I thought this was just one of those things people said, but my mate reckoned it was true. He'd cut the tip of his thumb off with one whilst trying to open a jelly coconut, whilst stoned, at night and in a dark garden.
His thumb was gone from halfway up the nail, which turned out to be lucky. The nail grew back to its normal length and made it look like his thumb was ok (unless you looked closely).
He said after that happened, he never once fucked about with a machete and was very very careful with it.

Anyway, one day I was helping out on one of the farms, chopping dead wood off tree's etc.
I had my own machete that I'd sharpened myself (when you buy a machete in Jamaica it is as blunt as a ruler).
I'd been pissing about with it for weeks, cutting down tree's or just generally chopping stuff up and posing with it. There is nothing to bring out the boy in you quite like having your own machete.

Back to the qotw - this day I was trimming some branches off the trees. A good hard whack with the blade was enough for most of them, no matter how thick.
I got ready to start on a thick, low branch and (as it was so thick) hit the fucker as hard as I could.
Unlucky for me, it was a dead branch and the machete cut through it like butter. The blade swung down and chopped straight into my ankle.

The pain wasnt as bad as the shock, then the panic. I was about two miles from the house, which itself was about 10 miles from the nearest town.
I gently pulled the blade out expecting to see blood everywhere. The wound was oddly dry and only about an inch long, but the skin on both sides was kinda forced down into the wound itself (I presume from the impact).

I took off my tshirt, cut off one of the sleeves and used this as a tight makeshift bandage. Then I limped off home trying not to blubber.

One of the things I'd chucked into my first aid kit when I went over there was some tea tree oil, so I used that to clean it.
Over the next couple of weeks it healed well, but I needed a tight bandage around it as I was worried it might open up and get infected.
I cleaned it with the tea tree oil everyday and now swear by the stuff.

So, every time I look at the scar I remember how I got my new found respect for the machete and that I will never, ever again hit anything with it 'as hard as I fucking like' cos really, that's kinda stupid when u think of it.
(EvilMeister, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 23:33, 2 replies)

When I were a lad
I had a wart on the knuckle of my ring finger. One day, whilst under the influence of Broon, I bit it out. It bled like fuck for a couple of hours but never came back.

Another time, I got a metal splinter in my finger, it wasn't a big one, but it was fucking annoying and I couldn't get at it with a needle. After leaving it for a week or so it was driving me menkal, so I got a Stanley knife blade and sliced the skin away till I could get my teeth onto it and pull the fucker out.
( His Popiness the Hole Invaded Poland on, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 23:33, Reply)

I had a spot...
...which turned out to be a boil. In my groin. It eventually burst (green pus, yay!) and formed a blood clot which I stabbed with a craft knife one morning.

The pressure that builds up in those things is amazing.

After mopping up, I cleaned it out and it seemed to heal nicely. A couple of weeks later, however, it was back just as bad as before. This time I made sure to pop it in the shower.

I never once considered going to the doctor. :/
( Biggus Dickus , it was like that when I found it, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 22:17, 1 reply)

I used to have chronic halitosis that not even medication could shift.
Then one day I had the bright idea of switching my mouthwash with Milton sterilising fluid. Gargling it hurt like hell, it completely bleached the inside of my mouth and I spat out a load of blood along with the usual sputum, but I'm such a double-hard bastard that I took it in my stride without even blinking and carried on my daily routine as usual. YEEEEEEEEAH! [cue CSI music]

My doctor (huh! Health professionals, what do they know about anything?) reckons I've now got mouth ulcers and acute chlorine poisoning, but at least I don't have bad breath any more!
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 22:13, 12 replies)

Self butchery
2 things

I got a bit of 16inch steel wire in my hand had to go in after it cus it healed in - that hurt

I had a blood blister under a callous in my finger which needed to go, my solution involved nail scissors and vodka for sterilising it after (stings like funt but does the job)
(imgunnabesick rawr ^ \_/ ^, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 21:59, Reply)

Whilst working at Menwith Hill
The very small roll pin punch i was using had bent. I gripped the handle with my right hand and tried to bend it straight using my left thumb (without any sort of hand protection)

Unfortunately the punch snapped clean off and the force i had been exerting resulted in me slicing my thumb down to the bone. The wound was about an inch long.

As i was working in the secure part of the site, as a contractor i had to be escorted at all times. And as the base is mainly populated by 'Merkins' my escort was also of this nationality.

His advice was to smear superglue into the wound, which i did, and to my amazement it worked! no stitches, no bandages, no pain(apart from that caused by the initial injury) no infection and its healed perfectly and left a nice neat scar.

I have since learned that superglue was in fact 'invented'(?) for sticking soldiers back together during the Vietnam war. Kinda explains why its so good at sticking your fingers together.
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 20:32, 3 replies)

I've just built a lifesize model of the host of BBC's Troubleshooter / I'll show them who's boss.....
Does this count as (a) DIY Sir Gerry?


I'll get my coat.....
(stonersmurf stuckin' foned, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 19:35, Reply)

not exactly surgery
but i had the odd habit as a child of sewing my feet and hands. i would use an ordinary needle and thread to sew patterns on the hard skin of my heels, then rip the cotton out, giving me plenty of bits of dead/hard skin to peel off.
in the case of my hands, i'd sew the fingertips together and pretend i had webbed hands. fingertips are surprisingly resilient and will easily take a needle through the first few layers of skin with no pain whatsoever.
i know it's a weird thing to do, but my brother and sister did it, too.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 19:15, 19 replies)

Nothing impressive, but I'll share
When I was younger, I suffered terribly from Athletes foot which would not stop it's relentless itching, so I'd often squirt deodorant in the raw flesh and to have a severe burning sensation which would make me really grimace. The pain lasted for seconds, the itching would stop for hours.

But my favourite was self lancing my infected thumb. After peeling off a nail, I inevitably tore it off past the part where skin and nail meet. This lead to a rather nasty infection which was unbelievably tender to touch and ballooned like a red grape. A trip to the doctor was necessary I thought as it was only seeming to get worse. Which the doctor decided to treat this with a course of antibiotics as opposed to lancing to relieve the pressure.
A couple of days later my swollen thumb was not subsided. I sat on the bus on my way to college, with my index and thumb from my other hand holding onto the swollen digit. A jolt on the bus caused me to squeeze rather hard and a stream of pus, the colour which can only be describer as "Head and Shoulders lime" jetted out onto the chair in front of me. I felt a snap in my thumb as the delicate skin finally broke from the pressure.

I was so happy that day.
(Jon_LTD Treat the world like a head!, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 18:47, Reply)

Blessings of alcohol, chapter 1247
Some 15 years ago i spent an afternoon at the lido. A very slightly scruffy one. That same evening, something started itching between two toes of my left foot. The colour changed in a beautiful way, but the itching started to annoy. By next morning, the experience was enhanced by the skin drooling some liquid. (Didn't hurt, though.) Oh, and it stank unlike anything my feet ever produced.
This was clearly a new surgery project! First attempt: Pour some grain alcohol over it. This made me sing and dance for a few minutes, but it felt good afterwards in a way an emptied bladder feels well.
After repeating this a dozen times over three days, everything looked, felt and smelled fine! Alcohol made my day (externally applied). Yay!
(timbolator successfully hiding from the authorities on, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 18:33, Reply)

Accessory Anus
As a first year medical student, I lived in halls with a bunch of guys who would regularly come to my very small room to play tekken 3. There were often up to 8 of us in a room the size of a broom cupboard and it could get pretty rowdy.
At the end of term I was trying to clear up my room whilst there were a few guys in my room on the playstation. I had chucked a bunch of stuff on my bed which had then been pushed into a pile by the others. My turn to take the controller came round and seeing the pile of stuff on my bed was the only clear seat, I leapt on top of it. I stood back up very quickly and shrieked. My friends watched as a large bright red spot appeared on my shorts and began to spread rapidly.
I had sat down on my dissection kit and the blade, which had 2 days before been inside a dead bloke and was still covered in bits of formaldehyde-preserved tissue, entered my right buttock, 6inches away from my arsehole. My only choice was to put a couple of sutures in to stop it bleeding. I did this myself in front of the barroom mirror. It fucking hurt.
In the union that evening I had at least 150 slaps on the arse and spent the whole night answering questions like 'is your arse still bleeding?' and 'can you shit out the second hole then?'. How kind of my friends to keep that embarrassing injury quiet.
( MrUppity, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 17:06, Reply)

Cut finger?
A piece of kitchen towel + electrical tape = job done.
( Haku Orange Whip? Orange Whip? Three Orange Whips., Fri 21 Jan 2011, 16:55, Reply)

It took Linda,
Then it came after me, it got into my hand and it went bad, so I lopped it off at the wrist.
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 16:54, 8 replies)

Unwise wisdom tooth surgery
When my wisdom teeth were carving their way through my jaw bones one of the bottom ones left a tag of skin like a vestigal tail that went from the back of the tooth to halfway across it. It was the only bit of gum that the tooth had looked at and decided it didn't want to rip it away.

I thought the little flap would just shrink back and leave me with a normal tooth hole, with neat little edges all the way around my new toothy peg. I couldn't have been more wrongerer. It just stayed there, like a stubby tail, trapping food underneath it, catching itself on the sharp bits of tooth, bending backwards when I ate (fuck me that hurt!) and inflaming itself.

As I wasn't registered with a dentist, and being a skint student, I decided to take care of it myself after a month of it and the tooth inflaming the back of my jaw and fucking with my eustachian tubes (i used to get a lot of earaches). I got a pen knife, sterilised it in the flame of a lighter, and then looking in the mirror i held my cake hole open and started to saw through the back of the skin flap. It was pretty awkward to get at, I had to use the tip of the knife instead of the flatter cutting edge.

There was a fair bit of blood, but once it'd stopped flowing the relief my DIY flapenectomy gave me was pretty instant. Worked like a charm. The gum settled down, no more trapped food, no more ear aches. Gum healed up nicely and all was well.

Dentisty, surgery... there isn't much to it really, it's just like being a mechanic but with squidgy things.
( Draconacticus Reject shampoo. Demand real poo!, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 16:29, 1 reply)

Makes me feel a bit faint, just thinking about it...
I suffer from skin tags around my neck. Nothing serious, just looks like I'm wearing a necklace of moles and sticky-out bits of skin, sometimes. So once, I had a big one that was getting on my tits - it was rubbing against my collar, and catching when I took my top off. This has to go, thought I.

Given that I couldn't be bothered to go to the doctor for such a piffling trifle, I decided to do it myself. The method of tying string around it didn't work - it just slipped off and irritated it even more. Then, whilst cutting my toenails, I had a marvellous idea.

A pair of toenail clippers have sharp blades, upon which quite a lot of pressure can be exerted. Enough, I can guarantee, to cut off a skin tag from one's neck. It didn't hurt too much - a bit of a nip, and it was gone.

However, what I hadn't banked on was the amount of blood that would then pour from the wound. I had to sit down on the bed. My missus had to do likewise, because the sight of me looking like I'd been necking with Dracula was making her feel woozy too.

Eventually I managed to get up and get a tissue, but by this time there was quite a bit blood stain on the bed. A couple of plasters soon stemmed the flow, but I'd learnt my lesson. Now I just wait for them to die and fall off naturally - they look a bit like tiny raisins, or dried out bogies after a night on the snuff.
( CaptainCrackerjack live trout, slow motion, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:54, 9 replies)

I lost my hand to a maniac with a circular-saw.
Unfortunately that hand happened to be holding onto the side of a very tall building so I took a hell of a tumble.
Managed to fix up my stump with some crushed plaster and a fluorescent anti-coagulant I carry round with me.
I swear to God you could hear my scream ten blocks away. My dreds were literally shaking with fury.
Still, shit happens.
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:52, 2 replies)

My combined answer to the QOTW's for the year so far.
My girlfriend is a stunning brunette with massive norks who could be a model in Nuts or Zoo only she is too classy for that so she’s a nurse. Anyway, she has a habit of bringing a clean uniform home and wearing it around the house when her equally attractive and busty French cousin, who is a maid, would come and stay with us as a guest.

Only last week her busty cousin was staying with us at our penthouse mansion in 1960’s Dallas. The missus was wearing her nurse uniform and her cousin was wearing her French maid uniform and they were both cooking my dinner whilst I was writing a workable peace plan for the middle east whilst simultaneously solving the Goldbach conjecture.

Anyway, we had steak, egg and chips with little corn on the cob things and mushrooms. It was really nice especially the steak. I had mustard on mine.

The next day the girlfriend was complaining of feeling constipated from eating too much steak the night before. Being the shy type she didn’t want to go to the chemist so asked me if I knew a home cure.
I had a good think about it and came to the conclusion that if I shagged her hard enough up the Gary then that would loosen her up and make her feel better.

My girlfriend, who is a nurse, then remembered reading something similar during her medical studies so she hitched up her uniform and I went in dry so to make less mess, as she had already washed the sheets that week.

30 minutes later and I was done so I Zorro'd on her tits then hit a couple of last runs up her shoot to make sure. This fixed her nicely and she then happily went off for a poo.

I needed a wee after my Herculean lovemaking so scurried off to the other bathroom. Whilst there I had trouble pissing, looking down I noticed a bit of sweetcorn stuck up my jappy!

I called to the missus and told her about the corn and she told me to go see her cousin as she had a cracking pair of pipes and could probably suck it out.
So I toddled off in the nip to see her cousin. When I got there I found her diddling herself whilst looking at photographs of me winning the world cup.
I explained my problem and she readily agreed to help and started to slobber down expertly on my nob. 40 minutes later I spuffed really hard shooting the piece of cob out of the window and hitting some bloke sat in the back of a convertible in the head. I don’t think he was happy about that!

Anyway, I turned back to the French cousin and splooged another line across her pendulous jugs, slapped her on the arse and went off to watch the cricket.
( Dervel OTBC, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:47, 10 replies)

I had a wart on my hand once too.
I was more manly and bit it off. It disappeared within a couple of weeks.
(Blythy Pop Quiz Hotshot..., Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:27, 2 replies)

Before i went backpacking round India - My Dad gave me a first aid kit.
Just aswell, three days into my India trip, I decided to crash a scooter wearing nothing but shorts and t-shirt.

There's nothing quite like pulling bits of gravel out of your skin with tweezers and spraying anti-septic into the flaps of skin that hang off your hip and knees and then spending the next three weeks limping on bruised and battered legs as you persuade yourself it's not worth visiting the hospital.

The Marajuana helped too.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:26, Reply)

My brother...
...and I had just got back to La Paz after a week hiking in the Yungas and were rewading our healthy endevour with an I-shit-you-not one metre pizza. Being young and foolish, he used to have a tongue piercing and part way through our eupeptic excellence, he gulped and looked a bit worried before realising that he'd swallowed the top stud fom his piercing. Whilst it's not much of an issue in itself, he was pretty keen on his stud and didn't want the hole closing up while we were out there. Despite being a fantastic city, we hadn't managed to find a tatt shop that wasn't staffed exclusively by people who appeared to be in the latter stages of tuberculosis, so we emptied out our meagre (and frankly rather unpleasnt) kit to see if we could improvise any sort of replacement and managed to bodge a temporary solution using a safety pin.

Should any of you be in any doubt, holding your brother's tongue is exactly as creepy as it sounds. And pushing pins through it for him is an even more disturbing experience.
(luckybluecoat, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:19, Reply)

A failed attempt at DIY orthopedics
I might have mentioned this before, but I can't be arsed to check.

As a young single man, my mate's dad had a motorbike and as it was a hot day, went for a spin. He was speeding along and taking a bend when his bike did that thing where the front wheel sort of trips over itself and the rider gets thrown over the handlebars. You see it quite often in MotorGP. Anyway, he hit the road with a thud and sort of tumbled along to a halt.

He looked down and noticed that his knee was not where it ought to be. The reason being was that his femur had snapped in half and the lower half had pushed up through the flesh and his jeans and was sticking out into the open air for all to see. Search on Google Images for compound fractures for extra gore.

He told me that he didn't really feel it and found it most curious. The sharp edge of it had scraped the road surface and had actually collected a small amount of the hot tarmac which was now hanging off the bone like a bit of chewing-gum scraped off the pavement with a lolly-stick.

Still not really feeling anything, he reached down and started picking it off and then decided to try and fix it by pushing against the foot with his good leg in a bid to stretch his leg back out. That was when the pain kicked in and he blacked out, waking up in hospital with his leg up in traction.
Years later, he still walks with a limp as one leg is ever so slightly shorter than the other.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:04, 3 replies)

Another gumboil story/dental abscess story
My brother had a huge festering lump on his gum, which I assume was a dental abscess under a tooth.

I'm not sure why he didn't see a dentist, but his method was quick enough.

Mad with pain, he grabbed a dart - an old-fashioned, blunt, brass pub-type dart - out of the family dartboard, looked in the mirror, bared his teeth and stuck the dart into the lump in his gum.

Pus and blood exploded everywhere. Bro says the relief was immediate, but messy.

Dunno how he avoided a nasty infection but he did and all was well.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 15:01, 2 replies)

Lump
I've had a lump on the top of my head for a while now. Was thinking of getting it lanced but reading this QOTW has inspired me to whack it with a hardback copy of "Tommy Walsh's DIY Survival" my ex gave me as a present several years ago.

Wait...
(bashes book against head until it connects with the lump)

What do you know - no lump now. Excellent!

Thanks QOTW for saving me a trip to the docs and finally finding a use for this f*cking book my venomous bitch of an ex gave to me.
(ed-z, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 14:59, 3 replies)

My friend Alister
Was riding his Suzuki GSX1100R around the coastal roads of Gwithian and Godrevy in Cornwall. There's this little left hand bend followed almost immediately by a very small humpback bridge only wide enough for one car. It's a 60 limit road and it's very common for bikers to get a bit of air going over the bridge. Unfortunately for Alister on that day there was a car coming the other way. Alister tried to turn out of the way but his wheels weren't touching the floor. His foot clipped the car, result was one smashed up foot, one written of bike and a car with a slight boot scuff on it.

A week or so later Alister was getting a nasty itch in his foot he was scratching away when he felt a pointy hard bit sticking out of his foot. Alister decides the grab it with a pair of pliers and decides to pull out the 3 inch piece of metal that was pinning his toes together. He had no idea it was there. He didn't even bother going back to the hospital to tell them.
( Peej, Fri 21 Jan 2011, 14:38, 6 replies)