awning has broken
i now have a healthy fear of windy days. i didn't always.

why?

because windy days mean flying debris and on one such day i was an unwitting casualty.

i would regularly walk down a laneway to get my lunch and this laneway had a building festooned with dirty yellow awnings about 2m x 3m, made of a sturdy metal frame and attached by screws whose best years were 1986-94.

the wind was gusting at a breathtaking rate on this particular day and the laneway created an excellent wind tunnel - the perfect storm if you will.

cue me strolling along minding my own business when a mighty gust tears an awning from its building, sends it soaring in the air where gravity then takes over causing said awning to land square on my head.

i was floored.

it got hazy at this point but i recall pushing the awning off me, putting my hand to my head and feeling something distinctly hot and wet and then being surrounded by a pack of strangers who kindly sat me down on a chair, gave me a teatowel to staunch the bleeding and who called the ambulance. i also recall things getting a bit dark around the edges and fighting not to pass out.

when i got to emergency they put 10 staples in my head, dosed me up good and proper and showed me the photos they took of the awning.

on the crossbar where i was struck was a perfect semi-circular spray of blood. honestly, it was almost beautiful.

i wear a helmet most days now.
(randomscrub, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 8:13, Reply)

not so much pain as discomfort.
Laying on the table having my vaesectomy and the doc says "Oops".
"What do you mean oops?"
"The thread has snapped and the tube has gone back inside. I just need to get it. You won't feel any pain, just a bit of pressure."
In he dives, no pain. But it did feel like a herd of elephants were trampling about in my sack and trying to tunnel their way out through my bumhole.
Result: no more babies, but 6 months of infections from his exploration of my scrote.
Those were the days before suing people.
(Captain Spacker I lick windows, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 7:37, 2 replies)

19-hour flight...
From Los Angeles to Sydney...
In economy...
With a hemorrhoid...
( difficultchild, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 7:30, 1 reply)

A young Chinaman
Was a member of the local Boys Brigade. Not the coolest thing ever, but quite fun for a young lad - football, horse-vaulting, hikes, etc. And I was also quite the metaller, even at the age of eleven. The first album I'd got was "Appetite For Destruction", quickly followed up by some choice Motley Crue, WASP and Poison. Yeah!

So one night, combining these two youthful pleasures, I was cycling home after an evening with the BBs and listening to some metal album on my crappy personal stereo, the kind that all-too-soon played your cassettes all woozily, like a drunkard trying to have sex. I was singing along ("Woh-man!") and thinking how great it would be to live in LA and have a Les Paul Strat and have fast women and drink Jack Daniels and fast cars... yeah!

I was near home, and away to pass some lockup garages where boy racers kept their Novas and XR2s. I took the corner tight, maybe doing a quick spot of air-guitar, filled with a rock-stravaganza of metal adrenaline, and....BAM!

...I came to, some unknown time later, still somehow on my bike, and my first thought was "I can hear someone screaming..." Yup, it was me, howling like a banshee in the night. The door on the nearest garage had been up, and I'd cycyled right into it. I got it right in the nose, bursting it like an overripe tomato. I helplessly yowled and howled, blood spurting out of my nostrils and all over my face.

Goddamn that was sore.
(McChinaman banned, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 6:33, Reply)

Does mental anguish count?
My daughter at roughly the age of 8, was balancing on top of the low stone wall next to a chain link fence. Her carer told her, 'get down, you might fall' which to an 8 year old's ears was a primal challenge.
She did get down though after tripping and falling.
To catch herself, she clamped her left arm down on the top of the fence with all her weight. Just one problem: the top of the fence wasn't blunted. It was a collection of razor sharp spikes and tore her upper arm completely open.
When I met her at the doc's office (stupid insurance rules dictated she had to be seen by a doctor before they would pay for a trip to A&E) the carers had wrapped her arm in yards of gauze. The doc unwrapping it had a split second glimpse of the damage, yelped "Whoa!" and wrapped it back up. He offered he "might take a stab at repairing it if we were in backcountry Alaska" but the A&E was prolly a better choice. So we wasted an hour delaying treatment in order to satisfy my corporate masters.

In all its gory glory at hospital, I almost fainted. It looked like a bear had tried to eat her and partially succeeded. The muscles were chopped and hanging open, I could see the glistening surface of her bone, skin was a savaged blue-purple and gobbets of fat were falling to the floor. And the blood! And all the while my brave little girl kept it together with trembling lip.

She broke my heart. For some reason she has a fear and horror of medical things and was begging me to "sew me up at home! I just want to go home!"* She gagged when she saw her arm in the reflection of the doc's aviator style glasses. When she understood she would have to have a LOT of stitches, she cried. I would have gladly ripped my arm open myself to spare her but that's not how it works.
To add insult to injury, the doc tried to palm off her care on a third year med student: "My colleague is a fully trained M3 and will sew up your child's injury". I refused, told him I knew what an M3 was and he'd better get the attending to stitch and a plastics guy to close it cause I wasn't having my daughter's arm be a learning experience.

Amazingly enough, that is what happened. He did his job and I shut up per the unspoken agreement.

She was so frightened while he worked on her, I made her look in my eyes while I told her a story. It took over an hour and I talked the entire time, telling C.S. Lewis' "The Silver Chair" from memory. The staff was enthralled and hung on my every word. The plastic surgeon finished before I reached the end and when I stopped talking, the junior nurse exclaimed "Oh, tell us what happened!" They thought I had been making the story up on the fly, right out of my own head.

She had over 120 stitches (I lost count)inside the arm and 65 minute, teeny tiny plastic surgery stitches to close the skin. I saw every one put in. The big jagged scar must be over a foot long and has healed to an almost invisible silver.
I have never suffered such anguish as that day. I don't know how people lose children and still go on living. Seeing her in pain, mutilated, whimpering yet trying to be a brave girl for Mommy and Daddy made me feel like I'd been kicked in the chest.


*Two years before, she wanted me to set her broken arm so get out of going to hospital.
Four years before, she ripped open the armpit down to the capsule on the same arm. Because she didn't want to miss swimming, she merely balled up her T shirt and stuffed it in the wound. We found it almost too late to repair without undergoing general anesthesia. My woo-woo friend says she must have been a Roman centurion in a previous life.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 6:26, 6 replies)

You're twisting my melons (balls) man
So when I was about 13-14ish I was suffering from a recurring (every couple of weeks or so) swelling and subsequent agony in my ballsack. Always the same side, tender and painful to touch, but always went away again after a few hours so I was fairly sure it wasn't cancer or anything horrible like that.

It was very unpleasant nonetheless, particularly for a (at that time) painfully shy me and it took me ages to actually tell my parents after a particularly sore and uncomfortable day.

My dad took me to Casualty and of course the swelling (and thus pain) had gone away by that point, but it was eventually diagnosed as a twisting ball which was causing a build up of fluid, blood I guess.

In fact I've just googled it for the first time ever and apparently it's called 'torsion of the testicle or testis' and is "a very common pediatric urologic emergency". Go me. Looks like I'm a little lucky it didn't twist itself to death.

Anyway, I digress. I had surgery on it to staple it down, painful, woke up with a big bloody patch under my balls (worse thing to wake up to?) and had to wear some sort of cod piece thingy for a few days but all healed and working well since.

My abiding memory of the whole episode is not the pain or the discomfort, or indeed the bloody mess my balls looked when I woke up. It's when a male nurse came in to see me as I was waiting for the surgery and asked if I needed any help "shaving my scrotum".

Um, no. I'll be ok thanks...
(Zutroy started without you, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 3:57, Reply)

On the subject of teeth.
A few years back I had an abscess in one of my lower back teeth. I couldn't get a dentist appointment until the following week (yay NHS!) So had to alternate with painkillers and booze to numb the agony. I'd discovered that beer worked a treat after 2 or 3, but initially made the pain considerably worse for about 20 minutes before the effects kicked in, so one evening when it was particularly agonizing I figured I'd cut out the middle man and neck a double brandy before I started on the beer to get the initial 'holy fuck this hurts' stage over with in about 5 minutes. How wrong could I be. I spent half an hour, maybe more lying on my bed kicking the wall in the worst pain I have ever experienced before it finally eased off, seriously it made that bloke getting ripped apart in Hellraiser seem like a gentle wank in a meadow full of breasts. Came near to blacking out at one stage. Fuck teeth.
(Darramouss Powered by Monster Munch and hate., Fri 30 Jul 2010, 3:25, 1 reply)

Two words that still make me shiver:
Testicular Torsion.

Rewritten.

And let it be said once again: I was a massive idiot about it and I'm lucky to still have anything at all.

I rolled out of bed one morning and caught one of the nuts on the way over between my legs. It twisted (well, I didn't know that part). It didn't even hurt that much, but similar squeezes had occured before so I thought nothing of it. Then during the day I got a massive headache, and my balls didn't really hurt, I was more delirious because of the headache so the doctor didn't even think to ask me for a urine sample or anything because, well, I was complaining about the headache.

Eventually though, the pain down there started. I say down there, but it actually felt like my balls had a mass of six kilos (by this time they'd certainly swollen up to that point, I'd say tennis-ball sized) and my kidneys were attached to them. But I had to fly to uni that day! So I flew.

Doctor there takes a urine sample, there's blood in it so he sends me for an appointment to the urogolist. the next day!

So in all it had been 3 and a half days and the urologist, after a quick ultrasound scan of course knew exactly what was up. He told me in no uncertain terms that due to waiting so long (you're supposed to operate as soon as it occurs, basically) I was probably going to lose both. Devastated, I burst into tears - freshers week, my first year of uni and not to mention the rest of my life were ruined; I'd never have (my own) kids, sex would be a lie, he explained I'd need to take testosterone treatment or something... memories of what he told me from then on are fairly hazy because I was busy thinking that I'd have fake nuts...

I was immediately sent to hospital and had emergency surgery on my left bollock to untwist it, where luckily only a tiny little bit had died and had to be cut off - the rest was fine, the right one untouched. I remember being rolled into the operating theatre on a bed in tears and, unusually, praying.

I was lucky (or, well, God intervened on my behalf): it had only half-twisted, so there was still some blood flowing.

As soon as I woke up the surgeon was there, his face as straight as ever as he told me I was without a doubt the luckiest testicular torsion patient he'd ever had, considering the circumstances, and that he'd saved them. I thanked him profusely.

I was in hospital for another 5 days to recover a little and received a kind of jockstrap for them to rest in (I wasn't supposed to take it off), and during that time I was visited by medicine students twice (women had to wait outside, thankfully). It was fun seeing their faces when they saw the massive, still very red stitches.

6 weeks later I was flailing around on top of what is still my girlfriend 3 and a half years on!

moral of the story: Feel a pinch down there? Swelling? Go straight to A&E.

length? Not affected in the slightest
( morrybyte made a subtle namechange at, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 2:58, 3 replies)

A few:
1) Stripping the wallpaper on a set of ancient stepladders and the 2nd rung snapping and my ankle fell through, removing a huge sliver of flesh from my shin. It didn't hurt until i saw the chunk of meat dangling freely from my leg.

2) Showing off with a set of nunchaka, I was (or least i thought i was) fairly adept at the weapon, until i mis-calculated and the weighted end smashed into my funny bone and knocked me unconscious for a few seconds.

3) Falling off a rented scooter in India (without a helmet) and then smashing and grinding into the ground at roughly 25mph in nothing but shorts and t-shirt, and then spending the rest of the next few days pulling gravel and stones out of my hip, shins, leg and elbow.

4) Mountain hiking in the lake district, spent a night on the mountain and then descended said mountain in the morning (but forgetting i still had my comfy trainers on as opposed to my hiking boots, which were in my rucksack) and losing my grip, slowly running at a fair pace down the hill, slipping and sliding with no grip... and watching the ground vanish from beneath my feet, falling in a complete somersault head over heels and LUCKILY landing on my rucksack about twelve feet below, smashing both my heels into a rock and winding myself..... About half an hour later i electrocuted myself on an electric fence too.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 2:53, Reply)

Teeth. I hate them.
'twas a lovely summers day, spent in the gym as per. Sparring with a friend, all is lovely until I take a belter of a hook to the jaw. "Ouch" thinks I, then nothing of it.
Fast forward a few weeks, the areas a little bit tender and swollen. nothing serious.
Couple of days later, absolute agony, swellings gone though. Go through 3 days of this before another 4 days of heavy painkiller use to numb it, the mindset being "leave it and itll go away" until I finally complain to the mother and she books me a dental appointment. (Cheek swollen massively, but I didnt realise.)
Day of the dentist comes, im still off my face on the strongest painkillers I can find and taking more than I should. Dentist goes to work.
The hook had knocked my tooth ever so slightly out of place, the root doing something to a nerve making it hurt like fuck. And where the little gap where the root was became a lovely little abcess.
Root Canal needed - painkiller prescription to get me to the day of the root canal. Dentist gives me a pat on the back for the 3 days of pain tolerance and im "more man" than him back when I was 15.
Day of the Root Canal rolls around - Syringe. Right into the fucking abcess. Im not sure how it happened, but I ended up rabbit punching the dentist on the chin, as he was causing me the most pain ive ever been in.
He took it well and still did the work though, god bless the man.
(bredstkcriminal, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 2:52, 3 replies)

Pea alert
My wisdom tooth became inflamed having had the indecency to get trapped under the cusp of one of the other lumps of calcium in my mouth. Went to dentist expecting some painkillers and referral for surgery...oh no...'We'll pop that out now for you if you like?' Two and a half hours later amid much blood and screaming like a girl out came the last fragments of my very much defunct wisdom tooth. It refused to budge when he wiggled the screwdriver under it, the pliers were not much more effective, the drilling to clear a path was pointless. He had to take a break because his arm was too tired! Put it this way after innumerable numbers of anaesthetic jabs which had all now basically worn off I felt the scalpel slice through my gum and the drilling below the gumline, I felt the tooth shatter, I felt each piece being individually wrenched out of my incredibly sore mouth and I felt the needle go in and out for both stitches. They even had to cancel two appointments after mine and shut the door so no-one else could hear me while I was pinned down to get enough leverage.

It was not a good day. On the up side I am going under a general to have the other one out.

UPDATE: The other three were removed surgically with nary a problem amongst them.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Fri 30 Jul 2010, 2:43, Reply)

I take no credit at all for this story
I just think it's absolute genius. And since my first reaction to this week's QOTW was overwhelmingly "Childbirth" I felt it deserved a pearost.

Original credit goes to BewilderedMum over at Bad Mother's Club.

After ds1 was born, I needed stitches. They removed the top half of the bed, and put me at the bottom half, with my feet in stirrups. It was a very small delivery room - in part cos I don't think they thought I was EVER going to give birth

Soo - am there, feet in stirrups, occupying the bottom half of the bed. The doctor was perched on a wheely stool thing, in this tiny delivery room, awaiting the passive arrival of my torn min-min, for his ministrations...

Aaanyway, cos of syntocinon drip, I was still honking like a good 'un, so some bright spark, propped me up on pillows , and raised the bottom part of the bed, so I didn't choke....

Unfortunately, because I am incredibly supple (tae kwon do) and had an epidural, which meant I had no feeling or control (or so I sez )

I SLID down the delivery table, past the end, past the stirrups - my feet stayed where they were in the stiruups, but the rest of me carried on..) and into the face of the waiting doctor.

Cos it was a small delivery room, he was PINNED to the wall, by my savaged min-min - honest to god, it was in his face. he shouted "HELP" in quite a distressed tone of voice, but the midwives and dh were busy with the baby..

After 38 hours of labour, and a severe sense of humour failure throughout - it suddenly returned..

The Doctor looked SO panicked - like I was wielding a sub machine gun, not a savaged min-min.

I remarked to him "I bet you didn't think you'd spend your saturday night like THIS did you!!" Then I LITERALLY pissed myself laughing - in his face...

Dh turned to me, with some irritation, and said "FGS sober up - you're a mother now!" - which made me laugh even more!! and the midwives ran to oik me up the bed - but the doctor looked distinctly nervous - he did a FABULOUS job of my stitches - afterwards, I hardly knew they were there -

mind you - by this point, he was prolly so freaked out by my min-min, that he thought if he didn't do a good job, my min would find out where he lived, and would come and burn his house down....
(Marmite Omelette ...but I feel better having screamed, don't you?, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:46, 9 replies)

Another?
My first girlfriend I ever "did" anything with was sexually abused when she was younger. That led to her being very scared of giving oral pleasure. She cried when I mentioned it.
One day, or night, she decided she was up for it. Of course I didn't hesitate, so she started up. She was a wee bit apprehensive and I was trying to be encouraging. Then her teeth raked my not too impressive member.
That hurt, but was not the PAIN. The PAIN came after I hissed from said scraping.
The hiss scared her so she just froze. And in freezing, bit down hard.
Her teeth clacked with my dick between them.

Lots of blood, she looked like a vampire with a mouth full of blood and it gushing down her chin and all over her chest. I was screaming, she was screaming, blood was everywhere. Her dad had to drive us to the ER, and he was just laughing the whole way. He kept calling her dickbiter.
I had 7 stitches on my penis and was pissing blood for a month. The scars are very visible. But I'm sure her scars are worse.

Length? Blood was squirting at least a foot out at first.
And no matter that my penis looked black for a day or two, it didn't get any bigger.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:42, Reply)

Morning Glory
Face it guys, we've all experienced it. You wake up, only to find out that your todger got up before you. Not really a problem, usually.
However, I'd been circumcised the day before. I woke up in severe pain. I managed to pee the cause of the problem away, then removed the bandages to discover that my morning wake up call had resulted in four stitches having torn out.
(Captain Coffee Break, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:39, 1 reply)

Stairway to Heaven....
What seems like an awfully long time ago now, I was sharing a house with some good friends in the areshole of the South-West of England, more commonly known as Swindon.

As it was a late Victorian terraced house, it had an incredibly steep stairway, which at the top had the 2 main bedrooms to the left and right. This meant that the first 3 steps out of my bedroom in the morning were a little precarious at the best of times, and bloody dangerous most of the time. Couple this with the fact that I was 19, and enjoyed a lifestyle which revolved mostly around getting horrendously drunk from Thursday to Sunday, and there is a latent recipe for huge damage to be caused to a person. This is one of several tales about that potential being realised.

The short version is "Drunken idiot falls down stairs.", but I feel like writing a bit, so here's the long version:

It had been a particularly successful Saturday night. Beer had flowed freely, and my friends and I had enjoyed the many fine sights, sounds and smells that Swindon had to offer (the endless procession of Chavette's and Rudeboys looking for meaningful 1 night relationships with their mating calls of "Oi! Whatchoo farkin lookin at, roight? I'll farkin 'av you!", combined with the smell of fetid urine and open sewers, it was truly an exciting time to be young and reckless.)and I was now firmly headed back to my abode to enjoy a nightcap with a few of my friends, before ending the night with a few rounds on Gran Turismo 3.

As we arrived, the talk had turned into embarking upon one of the endurance races on said game in shifts, carrying over into the morning. Truly, we were the most happening and exciting people in town.

The console was duly powered up, the fridge opened and cans of beer extracted, and we began to discuss which challenge that we should dominate as a team.

By this point, it was about 3am and I had decided that I was probably going to end up sleeping in the living room, and that it would be an awfully good idea to acquire my duvet so that when it happened, I would at least be warm when I passed out on the sofa. I duly made my way up the stairway and grabbed my duvet, rolling it into a ball and carrying it in front of me as I went to make my way down the stairs.

I didn't realise it at the time, but one of the corners of the duvet had worked its way out of the bundle, and now presented an extreme tripping hazard. I realised it fully though, when I took my first step back down the stairs.

With a wail of "OHBLOODYFUCK!" I successfully vaulted the remaining 23 steps and cannoned into the radiator at the bottom of the stairs with my head, neck, and right shoulder bearing the brunt of the damage. I don't remember making contact, mercifully, I was rendered unconscious immediately.

When I awoke several hours later, my first thought was "how did I get to the bottom of the stairs?", but it was closely followed by "Ouch!" as pain blossomed across the right side of my upper body. I rolled around on the floor for a few minutes, trying to get myself into something resembling a seated position with only half of my body functioning. Eventually I managed to struggle onto the bottom stair, and leaned the good side of my head against the wall. My duvet, which had ended up under me, had a liberal smattering of blood on it, which upon inspection had originated from my right ear, which had been effectively 'ground zero' of this incident. The hangover was also creeping into play now, which merely exacerbated the pain that I was experiencing.

The humming in my ears gave way to the unmistakable sound of console games being played next door, and so I stood, only to immediately trip over my duvet again and have a very good go at opening the door to the living room with the other side of my face.

Sliding slowly down the door, face first, to my knees, I began to gently sob at the pain and silliness of my situation, which had been brought on entirely by myself. It was roughly at this time that one of my aforementioned friends decided that they would open the door to the living room, resulting in me faceplanting onto the cold floor of the living room. Broken as I now was, my friends picked me up and lay me on the sofa, covering me with my bloodstained duvet before continuing with the marathon race session that had begun some hours previously.

The end result was me turning up to work on Monday looking like I had spent the entire weekend fighting. I had bruised a large amount of my head, neck, and shoulder, and I had to pay to get the radiator fixed. I was, however, remarkably lucky and didn’t die.

Don’t mix beer, duvets and stairways. It’s bad. Real bad.

Longest ever “Got drunk, fell over” story?
(Ryushin, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:39, 1 reply)

Karma
I am generally a fairly good and honest person. I try to do right by people and (mostly) tell the truth. My most painful moment was caused from the one and only time I've ever pulled a sickie off work and how it came back to bite me.

I was on a gap year between school and uni and was working for a pretty boring company in Croydon (exotic use of a gap year, huh?). My friends and I decided to all collectively pull a sickie on a Friday and spend the day doing as much as we could. We had planned off-road mountain biking, golf and an epic piss-up. I never made it past the mountain biking.

One friend had a proper bike with fancy suspension and all sorts, the other two of us just had fairly plain mountain bikes. After a bit of a gentle warm up around a few tracks the two of us with the simple bikes were encouraged to have a go on a dual descender course and have a race. We started off neck and neck going up and down over the hills. Then I started to edge ahead and was boldened by the feeling of speed and leaving the gournd slightly over the hills. I started to properly sprint. This is where things went wrong.

I launched myself over the top of a jump and got so much 'air' (as the kids say) that I cleared the plateau at the top of the hill and landed on the downslope on the other side. The problem was when I hit the ground the handlebar sheared clean off on one side, sending me over the top of the bike and off down the steepest and most gravelly section of the course. As I slid down on my side, removing a fair amount of exposed skin as I went, I though I was never going to stop. When I finally came to a halt I sort of sat up a bit shocked only then to have the bike which had been bouncing down the hill after me crack me right in the back of my head.

Thanks to my friends who picked me and my bike up and to my sister who did a creditable job at patching me up. I'm told I looked quite white and shaky and they were worried I was going to be sick in the car. I don't remember a lot of that day. I had to tell work on the Monday that I felt a lot better on the Sunday and that's where I picked up my injuries as I limped around the office.

I've never pulled a sickie again.
(bigjonnydynamite, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:38, Reply)

Quick pearoast...
Brought to mind by nimrodihnio's earlier mention of similar injuries.

Dry Ski Slope, West Midlands, about 1989. I am seven years old, and my parents have forced me out on a rainy Saturday to repeatedly snow-plough down about 100m of dirty carpet. I'm going with them to Italy a week later on only my second ski trip, and they want me to get some practice.

Much as I liked skiing, this was not my idea of fun as I was soaked through and would far rather have been at home. So there I am, mind elsewhere, when I let slip one of my ski-poles.

Just in case you aren't aware, the surface of dry ski slopes is made of a sort of grid, like this

www.farminguk.com/images/news/4282_1.jpg

The pole fell forward, the handle lodged neatly into one of the holes, the tip end flicked up in the air just right for me to slide straight onto it, with the handle braced in the hole providing resistance, and the jagged tip drove into my tender young testicles with an awful lot of oomph..

I managed to rip open my scrotum. It felt pretty much like you'd expect it to feel. Bad.

My mum thought I was just moaning because I wanted to go home and made me do another couple of runs before I pulled out my trousers to show her that my pants had turned red and, in fact, the blood was running copiously down my leg. She relented and took me to hospital, where I waited in pain for 45 minutes before a very tired and nonchalant looking Doctor stitched my ballbag closed again.

I think I've mentioned already that it hurt, but the worst bit was the salt-baths I had to take for weeks afterwards, which really, really hurt too. Plus the fact you don't get many opportunities to show off the fairly cool scar (the most memorable exception being the Doctor I later had a fling with, who stopped mid fellatio to commend the quality of the stitching).

As I get older, I just hope they still work. I haven't yet tested this.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:36, 1 reply)

At least I was up to date with my tetanus shot
I live in a neighborhood, divided into 20 or so smaller subdivisions, that is one giant circle. It takes about an hour to walk all the way around and is perfect for a stroll when the weather isn't disgustingly humid which is rare in Orlando. At the halfway point is a baseball field that has a lot of chain link fencing around it. One Saturday evening I was walking along the border of the field and tripped over a pretty small branch and fell into the fence...that turned out to be cut...and ripped a bit of my arm open.

I was 30 minutes away from my apartment with no phone so I had to clamp my left hand on the wound and walk as quickly as possible towards home telling myself loudly that everything was okay, all the while hoping that no one else would be out at the time to witness a speed-walking-almost-crying girl with blood running down her arm while pretty much yelling that everything would be fine.

It hurt at the time and still hurts now, a year later, because the skin healed too tightly and when I stretch my arm it feels like it's going to explode open again.
(Ingrid Leinhard is not a real thing, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:28, 3 replies)

Once I decided to show off in front of a friend...
my plan was to cycle as fast as I could down a walk path, and brake hard at the end over the rubbly-dusty bit at the bottom of the hill, disappearing into a cloud, and pulling a 180. In my head, this would look awesome.

I turned to my friend, said "watch this!", and sped off. Predictably, once I'd got as fast as I dared, I applied the brakes to no avail, and ploughed into a barbed wire fence.

The next thing I remember, I was folded over the top of the fence, doubled up, looking back through my legs to see my friend pissing himself, thinking that's exactly what I intended to do.

And, probably 10 years later, I tried the exact same thing while drunk. I borrowed my friend's quite expensive bike and took a quick ride up the road and back, and thought I'd try skidding in again. This time the new-fangled disc brakes stopped me so quickly I found myself completely stationary, and just tipped over.
( guffguff fuckes your gradeds balls!, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:04, 1 reply)

One of my earliest memories...
When I was a nipper (about 4'ish), I was too short to reach the light switch for the bathroom, which was rather conveniently positioned at the top of the stairs. Fortunately, my sister, who was about 5 at the time, showed me the smart way to reach the switch; she would put her foot on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, step up and flick the switch. Ooh, I thought - that's clever. The next time I wanted to go to the bathroom, I tried this new trick.
I put my foot onto the bottom shelf of the bookcase, stepped up and flicked the switch. Hurrah, I thought to myself. It was at this point I discovered that my father had not fixed the bookcase to the wall. Oh dear, I remember thinking, as the bookcase tipped slowly backwards - this is probably going to smart a bit.
As the bookcase hit the floor, I was launched down the stairs, along with an avalanche of books from the top shelf. To make matters worse, our stairs had thin sisal carpets which scratched every part of my body as I flailed down the stairs head over heels. At the bottom of the stairs, the final 3 steps turn right, which I tumbled round and landed with a winding thump on the floor. As I lay there gasping for breath, several heavy tomes completed the journey to the bottom of the stairs by crashing onto various parts of my prostrate body.
Worse was to come, though. The bookcase, seeing all the books having a nice tumble down the stairs, decided to join them. I was alerted to this fact by the large thumping steps as it made its way down the stairs. I lay there waiting for the impact, but the steps stopped. Oh joy, I thought - at least the bookcase didn't hit me. Of course, the bookcase was only resting on the final few steps. As I rolled over and looked up, the bookcase was tipping over from the bottom couple of steps, whereupon it landed square on my chest, almost flattening me.

After a couple of minutes, my parents discovered my dazed and crumpled body, and I was rushed to hospital. Miraculously, I had no serious injuries; I did, however, develop an unhealthy fear of bookcases.
And I learned to go to the toilet in the dark from then on.
(eukaryote, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 23:55, Reply)

A medical tale I've been longing to get off my chest...
Gentlemen, brace yourselves:

For as long as I can remember I've had a small cyst. Nothing that really concerned me, just a small pea sized white lump-by the time I realised it wasn't meant to be there I reckoned if it was going to cause harm I'd know by now. The only problem was its situation-right on the end of my foreskin, just where the frenulum joins. Now, there are certain "situations" where that can cause pain, and having read tales of banjo-string snapping, I decided to get it looked at. By a doctor, I mean.
So, next time I was down at the doctors, I wound up waving my willy at a lady who agreed it wasn't in a great place. There then followed another appointment at the hospital, where a nurse and a surgeon prodded it. As I was seeing a young lady who worked for the NHS as well, I was on the verge of involuntarily dropping my trousers every time our beloved health service was mentioned. Could have gotten embarrassing when watching Dr Who (though for Amy Pond...Mmmm!)
Finally, the day of the operation dawned. Having not ate or drank for the required 3 weeks beforehand, I wasn't feeling great. I'm pretty rubbish at mornings too, and I seriously dislike needles. Despite nearly fainting before I'd even got undressed, I was finally wheeled down the corridor. The anaesthetic is a strange thing, I remember wearing the mask, tasting the gas, thinking "When...........will they take me i-oh, I'm awake!"
Now the real pain started. Instead of the cyst, which had given me next to no trouble until recently, I had 5 stitches and some dried up blood. That hurt constantly. It wasn't helped that I had to have the 'skin pulled back, so by now my purple helmet had the texture of old leather. I have immense sympathy for the circumcised!
Eventually I was able to put everything back where it belongs, which bought to light a new problem. Disolvable sutures, once dried out, have similar properties to barbed wire. Never mind, the doctor said they'd fall out in a week or so...
4 weeks later, I finally picked the last bits out. June was a pretty mixed month, in which I went to the funeral of a mate and won a CNC turning competition. All against the backdrop of major discomfort on my man-meat. I even got an infection begin in the wound, which swelled up meaning the slightest wrong move yanked the stitches. Urination was a nightmare, and I was beginning to wish for compulsory bhurka-wearing-I couldn't even think about thinking about that sort of thing.
It is healed up OK now, I just hope I never have anything wrong like that again!
( Greenbat, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 23:47, 2 replies)

not-so-fun house
partial pea
if you ever went to blackpool funhouse before it burned down, chances are you'll remember the death slide. it was about 30 feet high, but to a kid, it seemed like a hundred. i loved that slide.
one particularly hot summer's day, my parents had taken us kids to blackpool for a day trip. we'd been to the sandcastle and, as it was so blisteringly hot, mum let us keep our swimming costumes on when we went to the fair.
as i always did at the fair, i went straight on the monster, then into the funhouse and headed for the slide.
for the love of mother theresa's sainted clopper, NEVER try to go down an almost-vertical wooden slide in a swimming costume. within the first 5 feet, i'd realised my mistake and stood up, which was mistake number 2. i tried to run down the slide, fell, skidded on my face all the way to the bottom, then crashed into the side and felt my little toe go *crunch*
i went home that day with a goodish-sized piece of skin missing from each arsecheek, a broken toe and a skinned nose and chin.
as if that wasn't bad enough, when the funhouse burned, that fucking clown outside survived.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 23:40, 11 replies)

Mild ouchies and much tooth-based pain
Aged 13 I was told I needed braces - would have a removable brace for a year, then train tracks for a year then I'd be fine.

Until they checked the X-rays, and discovered I had an impacted canine which would need to be dragged down via train tracks. Cue the surgery under local anaesthetic (there was a 14-month waiting list to have it under general) - cutting open the gum, attacking one of the blocks they use when you have train tracks, tying some wire around it and then sewing it back up, for the wire to be used to drag it down via the train tracks. This was okay - incredibly nerve-wracking, lying there having had six injections in the roof of your mouth, eyes tight shut hearing someone asking the nurse for 'scalpel... scissors...' My mum was in the room to reassure me, and when they were sewing up the impacted canine she was telling me "it's okay, it's nearly over."

Until they started on the other side. I was not expecting that. Six more injections, more cutting it open and me informing them the anaesthetic wasn't strong enough by means of extensive tears.

Had to go back an hour later as the wires had become untangled and I couldn't close my mouth.

For some reason that obviously made perfect sense to 13-year-old Epinephrine I took a couple of photos, which I stumbled across on the old computer a couple of years ago and gave me a start, as they looked like something out of a horror movie :/
(epinephrine, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 23:33, Reply)

Impatience is not a virtue.
One night, back in my student days, I used to twat about on my friend's farm. I'd known him since I was a wee boy, and his dad thought nothing of letting us loose with the farm equipment, as we'd often help out.

One day, we were indulging in some home-made cider (not the shit you get in packets these days, Lord only knows the strength) in the barn. There was absolutely nothing in it except some rusty red tractor.

After a few glasses (maybe 6) we decided we'd best get home to sleep it off for some coursework due in soon. I stood up, in almost pitch black, and instantly wobbled backwards. Straight onto the tractor. I heard a nice crunch, something that sounded like a louder version of the ever-satisfying back crunch. I fell down, drunk as a skunk, and sat there giggling for a bit.

The adrenaline wore off, and I realised that I couldn't feel my legs. I'd only gone and broken my bloody back!

A few weeks (6) of boring hospital food later, I staggered out of the hellhole with a few stitches and a bit of metal in my back. All was well, though, and the crutches helped me walk, alongside physio.

Not even a week after I was off the crutches, but still with a sore back, I was waiting in the Post Office queue for something or another. I was reading a book whilst in the queue as the blue rinse brigade often took ages in there. I obviously wasn't quick enough to move forward to fill a ONE PERSON space in said queue, nd some old biddy poked me right on the sore bit.

The poor woman nearly had a heart attack when I dropped to the floor and swore enough to make a sailor blush. THAT fucking hurt.
(Iggy Pop's Teeth, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 23:32, Reply)

My other half...
Often manages to injure himself in new and interesting ways.

He went on a helter skelter once. Happily zooming down when suddenly, there is a lot of pain, an blood gushing from one side. Because, it would appear, some little scrote had embedded a razor blade in the ride, and he's ripped open his arm.

Then there was the time he was working in a package return place, opening up the parcels, extracting the contents and moving them to where they need to be. One day, he gets a long cardboard tube parcel, and sets about his task. Opens the sellotape and everything with his penknife, plunges his arm in to get the contents... And is about to remove the arm when the realisation kicks in that he'd rested his other arm, complete with hand and penknife, on the edge of the tube, and sliced open his arm. Again.

This seems to be something of a running gag.
(Kitimariana, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 23:02, Reply)

Sneezing
Now, sneezing really shouldn't hurt. In fact it's quite a pleasurable thing in most circumstances. However one sneeze reduced me to a crying ball of girliness, sobbing curled up on the floor in front of several nurses despite my hunky beardy manliness.
It was the day after I'd had two cervical discs removed and replaced with bone harvested from my right hip, together with a plate bolted to three vertebrae to hold the lot together while the bone fused in.
To perform this operation the surgeon goes in from the front, hauls the trachea and oesophagus out of the way and does his bit with drills and chisels etc. This leaves you with a severe sore throat, coupled with lots of bruising and clips etc holding the bloody great hole in your neck together.

I'd been awake for about three hours and was actually feeling quite chipper (probably due to the vast amounts of morphine in my bloodstream and the lingering effects of general anaesthetic) and was chatting to the nurses when I hopped out of bed and threw the curtains wide open. The sunlight caused the sneeze and I immediately hit the floor, overwhelmed by the pain in my neck, throat and both arms (nerve swelling). Once I'd been helped back to bed, sobbing like a four-year-old, they went out. I felt better that they'd left as I was somewhat embarrassed by my girliness, but they came back, each of them wearing a very fetching plastic apron and rubber gloves. I asked them why?
Apparently I needed a bedbath and a change of clothes because I'd shit myself.

So much for dignity.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 22:58, 1 reply)

Scrotal Probe
several years back I had a persistant dull ache in a testicle - something I didn't want to linger. Cue one trip to the doctor's, where the initial diagnosis involved have my nuts gently felt up by a female doctor.

As she felt it needed a more thorough examination I was sent to the Western General Hospital, where a male Urologist gave me a second assessment. I felt as if my nuts had been used as chinese stress balls. Still none the wiser they decided an emergency scrotal probe was required.

The probe requires a quick shave followed by a 1 inch incision below the base of the penis. post op relief was provided by a morphine drip with codeine based chasers for the next week. The fun part was trying to walk - the only comfortable way was to imitate a cowboy's shoot out stance.
(trainee mad doctor is currently trying to build a secret laboratory, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 22:58, Reply)

Mmmmm Currency
I accidentally swallowed a ten pence piece in primary school

Feeling those little ridges roll down my oesophagus was one of the most painfull feelings I have felt ever in the history of my everness

Next to "passing" it a few days after we got it unlodged from my throat.
( Trogdos The Raging Cuntmuffin, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 22:48, 3 replies)

Another
Years ago, I went with my then girlfriend to see Scream at the movies. Were sitting there, awkwardly holding hands(we were all of 15).
Very scary part, I don't remember which, and everyone screamed, only my scream lasted a bit longer and was a tiny bit louder.
She squeezed my hand so hard she broke my finger.
And I was dumb enough to sit there the rest of the movie.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 22:47, Reply)

Pissed up Mrs at my cousins wedding....
...she was 2 and a half bottles of wine in after 3 hours. Just after the speeches I took her back to the hotel room in the hope of her going for a snooze but she flew into a rage spouting "we're never going to get married, they have only been together 5 minutes, you don't love me...." ect. She stormed off into the bathroom but didn't turn the light on, went to sit on the toilet but sat on the bidet. The spout on the tap of bidet went straight up her arse and broke her coccyx. I found her face down in her makup bag sobbing the words "the toilet bit me". She couldn't sit down for 4 weeks.
( The only Dave is pushing things forward, Thu 29 Jul 2010, 22:45, 4 replies)