So far, so good.
I've been quite lucky so far in terms of injuries received; nothing too serious or permanent.

One that sticks in my mind though occurred at a birthday party at someone's house when I was about six or seven years old. In those days (and perhaps in these days) you could send a card to the television people and they'd read out a birthday greeting in the bits between programmes. This kid's parents had done this, and when the appointed time came around we all dashed to the television.

I crashed to my knees to watch, and found a nail in the carpet that hadn't been smacked fully home. There it was, standing an impressive half inch proud of the floorboards, lurking concealed in the shag pile. I found it with my left knee, and at speed.

In my memory I could actually hear the CRUNCH as the head of the nail stabbed deeply in just below the kneecap. I could certainly feel it, and the wave of shock that washed over me just prior to the pain starting actually makes me feel a bit cold even now. The father of the birthday kid had to prise me off it, because I was frozen in horror and completely incapable of moving off it myself.

I'm delighted to report that there were what seemed to be gallons of blood everywhere, and it occurs to me to wonder now whether the frantic twitterings of his wife were because of anxiety about me or about the carpet.

Still. If the most painful thing that springs to mind happened over 30 years ago, then I guess I've been lucky.
(richardm, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 14:19, 2 replies)

Aged 14 - Summer Holidays
I was sat on the window sill of my brothers bedroom, watching as he leapt off his bed onto an inflatable bed which was on the floor. As he landed on one end of the air bed, our mate Jake, positioned strategically at the other end, would fly a good couple of feet into the air before landing in a heap on the floor. We got a lot of amusement out of this (although my mum was beginning to get slightly pissed off with all the noise we were making).

Things progressed and my brother went from a standing jump off of his bed, to a few-bounces-on-the-matress-then-leap technique. We found that this made Jake go even higher. What we hadn’t accounted for though, was my brothers bed breaking. As he prepared himself for the biggest jump yet, propelling himself higher and higher off his mattress, the bed suddenly gave way. My brother fell backwards towards me and I instinctively reached out to push him away. As I moved my arms outwards, I felt myself lean backwards slightly, and began circling my arms manically trying to regain my balance.

By this point, my back was at a 45 degree angle to my legs and I was shouting ‘SHIT,SHIT, SHIT’ as I knew what was about to happen. My last attempt at saving myself was to grab hold of one of the curtains. I stopped falling momentarily, and then felt myself go once more as the curtain pole gave way. Now, my face was covered by a curtain and I knew the landing was sure to hurt. I braced myself.

My brother slowed the speed at which I was falling by grabbing my foot, but he didn’t have the strength to save me – my slipper came off in his hand. I landed with an almighty crash onto the garage roof below the window and felt pain instantly. I removed the curtain from my head and surveyed my body. A few grazes to my hands and knees, nothing too bad. Then I felt a warm trickle on my ear. I felt the back of my head with my hand, and I had a deep gouge which was filled with grit and moss and was pissing blood. I looked at my hand; it was completely covered in head blood. It was at this point that the pain got worse.

My mum thundered up the stairs ready to tell us off about the noise, only to find me peering up through the open window, saying, “Get me a towel you fat knacker”, to my brother, who was stood dumfounded with slipper in hand. When I saw the look on her face, I knew that my head was in a bad way.
12 stitches later and we were bouncing off the mattress again, only this time, we had the window shut.
(Monkey the Chicken Twitter: death_stairs, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 14:13, Reply)

A bit of forward planning
In my first year at secondary school, a friend of mine managed to run down a corridor, trip over his own feet and fly at speed into and partially through a glass door, breaking his wrist in the process.

He started screaming before he actually hit the door because, as he said, "I knew it was going to hurt" which argues admirable presence of mind.
(richardm, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 14:08, Reply)

I'll do anything to win a race!
Picture the scene if you will. Its mid-afternoon, it’s a sunny summers day, the trees are a swayin’ the birds are a chirpin’ and an 8 year old me is having a race against my 11 year old sister.

We both heard my dads car pull into the driveway at the same time and both decided to run around the side of the house and meet him by the back gate. As we had come to this decision at the same time, things took a dangerous turn. One of us had to get there first, and it was bloody gonna be me! I leapt from the sofa with all the cunning precision of a leapy cat and raced around to the back door. Legs pumping arms flailing I threw the door open and tore around the side of the house. The alleyway leading upto the gate was narrow and I knew my sister wouldn’t be able to overtake me, I'd won, I'd bloody done it! Basking in my victory I threw a glance over my shoulder, ready to give the winners grin when WHAM! Ah yes, I was supposed to open the gate! Ricocheting off the wooden gate I grabbed at the air to break my fall, sadly all I encountered was a brick wall and scrapped down alongside it with my elbow before crashing into the concrete… and that was my welcome home to my dad.

After regaining consciousness on the kitchen floor I looked up to see my mother flapping around the kitchen in the ‘medical box’ looking for the TCP and other ghastly creams to administer to my pretty impressive injury list. My loving sister affectionately called me a dope and fucked off while my mum fussed and covered me in plasters.

Now you’re probably thinking, Flim, we all fall down when we’re kids, its what we do, this doesn’t seem all that ouchy to me, well… read on.

All seemed fine until a day or two later when it was time for the plasters to come off, that’s where I encountered a small problem… they wouldn’t come off. My darling mother had brought some new and weird plasters where instead of sticking fabric side down on the cut, you would actually stick a shiny sticker side down on the cut… so as she got it the wrong way around the fabric from the plaster had intertwined with my scabs on my elbow, upper arm and knee and wasn’t budging. After gently peeling at the plasters for about 2 hours, I was in a lot of pain and no closer to getting them off me… roll on the ouchy part. My mum soaked each of the plasters in water, got my dad to hold me down and ripped each of the three massive plasters off my skin in a whirlwind of scabs and blood while I screamed and squirmed like someone getting stoved in with a very sharp, but very small and pointy hammer! To this day I have never known pain like it, I also still have the scars on my arm and when I am drunk I tend to thrust in my mums face and shout (not dramatically at all I might add) ‘remember when you did this to meeeee’!

I still won the bloody race though. *nods head*
(Flim-Flam the Magnificent "You is talking loco and I like it!", Fri 30 Jul 2010, 14:03, Reply)

where to start, really...
1) Got kicked off a climbing frame as a kid (eight foot up with lovely safe tarmac under it - got to love that state primary school!). Face first onto the bolt-plate holding it to the ground. Six teeth smashed out and hanging out by the nerve endings, concussion, cracked jaw, bone lost from my chin, blood everywhere....oh, and five years of orthodontistry to repair the damage.

2) dislocated kneecap, torn ligaments and about three years of on-off physio after a nice rugby incident (I could bend my knee forward at that point).

3) put my clavicle bone through the cup of my shoulder whilst snowboarding. Healed it well enough, then got thrown over the handlebars of my mountain bike and hit a tree. Same again, so can now no longer swing a golf club (injury plus having to sell £1000 of clubs for £250).

4) hit the top of a doorframe with my head at full run. Whiplash, split head open and permanent scars on my head - the blood went about 30 foot down the corridor as my head snapped forwards.

5) Sliced a lump off of my thumb when a scalpel blade broke when making a model kit - I was about 8 at the time and I can still see the divot of missing flesh...

It's amazing I am still here, really!
(Chad, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:54, 2 replies)

Broken wrist
Low speed spill on motorcycle after finding mud on road from building site. I touched the brakes, bike went from under me and I carried on, to land, hands first, on the road. Left wrist swollen to twice the size, fracture suspected. Susprisingly, it didn't really hurt that much, so that's not the ouch.

Trip to A&E confirmed the wrist was broken. To fix the break and reduce the chances of me losing movement in my wrist, surgeons fitted an external fixator, something like this...

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/External_Fixator.JPG

That didn't hurt too much either, so that's not the ouch.

Nor was the ouch when I fell asleep in front of the fire, with the fixator very close to the flame, waking to find it had become heated quite uncomfortably, transferring quite a lot of heat into my forearm and making it feel like it was being slowly cooked from the inside.

The ouch came several weeks later when they had to remove the pins. The first pin was removed, using a tool somewhat similar to the chuck on a drill, fitted with a T-bar, tightened to the squared off top of the pin. No painkiller offered, it was just screwed out. Apart from some mildly uncomfortable pressure in my hand, it wasn't that bad, so they carried on to the second pin. As soon as the nurse started to turn the pin it felt like my body was going to explode. The pin site must have been over a nerve-ending, because I simultaneously felt every possible sensation at full volume. It's quite confusing getting hot/cold/pain/pleasure, all in one very distressing instant. I was so overwhelmed that other than tensing every muscle in my body and groaning loudly, I didn't have the presence of mind to tell them to stop until large amounts of painkilling drugs were applied. Instead, the nurse called over three colleagues to hold me down, while she repeated the process, except this time accompanied by far more groaning and yelling from me.

The remaining two pins were as uneventful as the first, and then no longer needed to hold me down as I was concentrating very hard on keeping my head in one of those little cardboard bowls they give you to vomit in. As the three extra nurses wandered away, one of them quipped "bit of luck it wasn't childbirth, he'd have been rubbish"
(lardyboy Next stop, Fissplap Central, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:54, 2 replies)

First of many and lots of words
About 10-12 years ago I was at a party in Belfast on a very cold November night. The night was ok, we went to a place called the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, we got drunk, we laughed...I failed to pull....they all laughed more. But it was a good night.

Outside at about 1am we were waiting for our mini-bus to take us back to the sticks, when a group of 3 lads, who we seen inside the club, came up and asked one of our mates for a light. "No problem" he said and reached into his pocket. Cut to my point of view a few feet away and I see one of the three lads lunge forward and headbutt my mate so hard he flies back into the wall and falls like a rag doll. The other two pick on the rest of my mates but soon realise that they are outmatched and all three run off after a slight scuffle. My mate then wakes up about 3 min later in a rage demanding we go find them, we decide not to as our bus has arrived and we all get on and document the injuries. Where was I during this fight you ask? I had fucked off round the corner to watch...I can't fight and back then I was over 6ft and weighed 10 stone, so I would have snapped under a strong breeze.

On the bus we see that my mates head is swelling up like a balloon, another has glass in his cheek, one has a twisted ankle and other have general bumps and bruises, so they all decide to go to the local casualty department. I of course get the piss taken out of me for not joining in the fight but I have the last laugh as I am the only one going home to a nice warm bed.

As I walk up the road to my nice warm bed, I walk on the road as it has been gritted, it was about -4C that night and the footpath was thick with black ice. I'm only 30 seconds from my front door when I put my foot on the pavement (private road, no gritting service) and I go down faster than a shot of buckfast. I hear a loud hollow *THOCK* and my left elbow starts buzzing like its been hit on the funny bone by Chuck Norris, I fear I have dislocated it, so I attempt to pop the funny lumpy bit back in, no luck. It starts to go cold so I run to my house, my keys are in my left pocket so i have to reach in with this arm that is getting more painful by the minute. I get inside and collapse.

To cut an already very long story short, I have snapped my elbow joint. As I was pulling my house keys from my pocket, I must have snapped the last bit of sinew holding it together. It would no longer bend, I had no elbow joint :(

I was taken to casualty and yes...you guessed it my mates were still there and erupted in laughter. They all go the all clear to go home, I ended up there overnight.

The doctors looked at my x-ray at about 4am and after some discussion they turned around and said

"yeah, we have no idea how to fix this, none whatsoever"

I started to feel the blood drain from my face as the doctor proceeded to explain how I had no joint and the muscles had pulled the remnants of the joint further apart. The rest of the night was pretty hazy but I woke up at about 9am in a hospital bed with a plaster cast on my arm and shoulder to limit movement.

I had to wait a week until a solution was found where I spent a week on morphine and thanks to my skinny frame the metal pins holding my bones together could be seen through as large bumps poking through my skin. Had to have another op to fix it completely.

So the moral of the story kids:

Always jump in fists first and don't run from violence...karma will catch you
( Bamboo Steamer, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:50, Reply)

Typing it out makes it hurt all over again
I dislocated my shoulder with an aggressive yawn work. It was very painful.

Once i got it back in and had surgery to make it all better i dislocated the other one by throwing a sock at someone.

And I've also done it climbing a wall, riding a mini skateboard and sleeping. There's plenty more times but i can't bring myself to live through the mental torture or remembering them
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:40, 3 replies)

A few ouchy moments
The other day I litterally chopped the top of my thumb off. That was a big surprise at the time, top half an inch including nail and bone while changing a head gasket.

Crushing the middle finger of my right had. I left it in the adjuster thingy on a diving board just as someone adjusted it. The "lifeguard" ran in the opposite direction when I presented her with it.

Cutting my head open on an exposed metal beam.

Gout.
(Croque Monsieur, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:32, 1 reply)

Saved son, broke toes
One a recent holiday in Egypt I was sunning myself by laying on an inflatable rubber ring in the pool, it was our first full day there. The Egyptians are clearly not overly concerned with comfort as the floor of the pool seemed to be laid with what I can only describe as coarse sandpaper.

Mrs BinDipper decides to wade out with our son and sit him in my lap. Two year old boys are not know for their stillness and he and I both capsize immediately. In my eagerness to save my son from drowning, I pushed my feet to the floor with too much force, cracking the toes of my left foot and then dragging them along the surface trying to haul him back up.

My son is saved, but the pain in my foot is more than I've ever experienced in my life. I look down and can't see my feet because of the volume of blood. Imagine the scene from Pirahna.

Back on dry land, I'm terrified to look at the remains of me toes and Mrs BinDipper is too squeamish to examine me. There's no way I'm going to the doctor because the bill will me massive, so I do what any stiff-upper-lip brit would do and close my eyes, put a sock on and try and ignore the pain.

Later that day I work up the courage to take a look. 3 missing toe nails, the other two cracked to pieces, huge pieces of skin missing and suspected 3 broken toes (2 eventually confirmed).

Never known pain like it, but 5 days later I was scuba diving with flippers on and everything.
(BinDipper, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:31, 3 replies)

I had an abcess on my tooth.
Oh dear Christ.

Neurofen Plus - upon which one could walk on bloodied stumps after a defooting - didn't even touch the sides.

When telling the story, my dad's mate, who has survived cancer three times, and had all the treatments, concured that there is no pain like extreme dental pain.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:28, 5 replies)

The mole
When I was fifteen I had a large mole just under my right armpit. This mole was rather uncomfotable, especially during the Summer, but it did not cross my mind that it could be removed. That is until my older sister suggested I make an appointment with the GP to have it out. The appointment with Dr Cox was made and I duly appeared on time. Dr Cox proceeded to placate me with the usual platitudes to allay any fear I had of the procedure. After injecting me in a number of places around the mole with a local anesthetic, he produced a fearsome set of cutting implements. All was fine with the world as he merrily started to slice me up, that is until he hit a spot that wasn't anesthetised. I was quickly confronted with a sharp searing pain which chafed to say the least. 'Oh dear, it looks like that bit wasn't anesthetised' was all the good doctor could say. More chemical was applied and the procedure was finished, with the required amount of stitchage applied. 'Come back in a few days and we'll have those out'. Were the last words I heard from him as I was sent to reception with a note to book the stitch removal session with the nurse.

All well and good you might think, but it gets more gruesome. The next few days came and went without incident and the procedure to have the stitches out was quick and painless. I merrily wove my way home. The next morning I was woken by my mother screaming at me and shaking me awake. When I looked down I was lying in a pool of my own blood upon claret-soaked sheets.

Time seemed to stand still as I was duly driven to Dr Cox's surgery only to be met with his calm assertion: 'hmm, it must have been under a bit of tension, you'll have to let it heal like a burn. Keep it as dry as you can, no showers until its fully healed'. Under tension. No shit Sherlock.

(The mole was like an iceberg, with three quarters of its volume 'under water'. It was strangely fascinating and I couldn't keep it either as the good doctor insisted it was sent off for tests.)
(mersault, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:26, Reply)

Mastitis
My wife says that this hurt more than childbirth. She went through the whole of labour without any pain relief except for a TENS machine. So when she says something hurts I believe her.
(flimflam_machine, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:22, Reply)

split head
I split my head open and gave myself a few skull fractures in the process when I was young. Rushed to hospital with frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel clamped on my head by dear old mum. Doctors decided that anesthetic was a no go as they didnt want it dripping into my now slightly exposed brain, so proceeded to sew me back up without any at all and hope that, in true 1980s north east style, the skull would grow without the need to put plates in.

It hurt. A lot.

Still have a massive scar which causes people to inform me my hairdresser messed up whenever I get short back n sides, as well as a huge fracture ridge going from my right eye socket up to the top of the skull.
(shamen Geekius Maximus, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:22, Reply)

A list of injuries from head to toe...
Broken nose - happened in a fight at school, kid grabbed hold of my rucksack, yanked me back, I pulled forward, he let go and I ended up with my nose distributed across my face after ending up face first on a concrete slab.

Dislocated shoulder - jumped for a header in a football match at college, fell over the opposition player, landed on my right shoulder. Managed to put it back in Lethal Weapon style. Got collected by my mum in the car, she then proceeded to tell me she'd found my porn stash. Double plus bad.

Popped disc 1 - in a scrum for the school rugby team, on the front row - scrum collapsed, so did my back. Went into shock on the touchline but for some reason wasn't taken to hospital.

Popped disc 2 - fell down stairs with baby brother in my arms, not more than about 3 months after popped disc 1. He was fine but I couldn't sit down for a week.

Broken wrist and elbow - just came back from doing my paper round, flying round a corner on my mountain bike, hit some gravel, bike went from underneath me, all bodyweight on left arm and it ended up in bits.

Scratched scrotum - one night stand with some 'street dance' type, she thought the way to drive me to the height of ecstasy was to tug really hard on my nads with her well manicured nails. It wasn't.

Twisted hip - when you start skiing, they normally set your skis so if you fall they'll come off pretty easily to help prevent injury. I fell on a tight red slope bend, the skis stayed attached and my body ended up like a Twister ice lolly. Henceforth I had to sit out the rest of the week.

Skewered shin - first time ice skating at Doncaster Dome, I was gingerly proceeding around the rink when this silly bint crashed into me at full pelt. Came around to see the rear of my one of my skates had impaled itself into my shin. Blood pissing everywhere.

My mum says I'm clumsy. I'm inclined to agree.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:12, 2 replies)

Little
Wong is on holiday during the early seventies. This being the early seventies, the house the family has rented for a couple of weeks is festooned with rubber plants and cacti. Young Wong, being but a few years old, has never actually seen a cactus in real life, and is familiar with them only from westerns and Desperate Dan. However, the ones he's seen usually have huge spines like darning needles, whereas the ones around the house have little delicate ones like angel hair. So obviously they can't hurt, right? Especially if you just give them a little tap with a couple of fingertips. Whatever my parents' plans for the holiday may have been, they quickly transformed into "find a way to stop this six-year-old screaming".
(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:12, Reply)

Never touch a cat that's been rolling in bleach
Whilst settled in front of the TV one evening, I smelled bleach coming from somewhere in the living room. I found this rather odd so I decided to investigate. I eventually found it to be coming from my cat Stirfry. Thinking "Oh crap! He's got at the bleach and is covered in it" I rush to my beloved kitty's aid. Big mistake. Stirfry savaged my right hand, biting and clawing it into a huge bloody mess.

If you've ever been bitten or scratched by a cat, you'll know that it hurts. Having your hand savaged is excruciating. It was also very, very quick. One minute, my hand was fine. The next, it was red and throbbing with pain.

Ex-Mr Cupcake rushed into the room to see what was going on, as he had heard a high-pitched "AAAAHHH!" He found me clutching my bloodied hand in agony and a very unhappy kitty hissing in the corner. We (somehow) managed to get him to the vet to get checked over. I can't really remember how as I think I was in shock. After Stirfry was given the OK, I was then taken to casualty and it turned out that I required stitches and a shot.

The mystery of the bleach-covered kitty was easily solved, as Ex-Mr Cupcake revealed that he had put some cleaner down the plughole in the bathroom sink, but hadn't shut the door properly. Stirfry had managed to open the bathroom door and had climbed into the sink to have a kip (as he was prone to do) and in doing so had got the bleach on his kitty form.

Stirfry was fine. There was no permanent damage. He was back to his usual playful self a couple of days later, and to this day I still have several scars on my hand from the kitty savaging.
(Happy Little Cupcake desires macaroni pictures., Fri 30 Jul 2010, 13:03, 1 reply)

Two hypodermic needles in my eyeball
Weilded by a grumpy doctor trying to dig out a shard of rusty metal that had embedded itself in there and started to rust in place within my eyeball.

Remember kids - always wear goggles when using angle grinders on your best mate's brother's rusty piece of shit car.
(fridgefreezer inserted a topical reference into his sig on, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:50, 1 reply)

Don't know about you guys
but being in hot countries makes me horny. There's all the invigorating swimming in the life-affirming sun and the disinhibiting booze and acres of exposed flesh. Yum.

I remember one holiday in my mid-teens, Portugal as it happens, when I was horny as hell but too inexperienced and fearful to actually seduce anybody. So basically I spent the entire two weeks wanking like a Bonobo chimp.

A few days in and standard masturbation was not enough to sate my lust. I wondered how it would be if I were to shave my genitalia perfectly smooth...

Well, it made my cock look bigger which was a bonus. And it gave my continuing self-abuse an added thrill for a while. But as soon as my scrotum, in particular, began to re-sprout hairs (or in effect stubble) things went very wrong.

The heat made my balls swing low, a burning chariot that scraped maddeningly at my inner thighs, causing me to walk with a bow-legged limp. Along with the sweat and the heat and the endless scratching, my groin was soon an infected, bloody mess.

I, of course, panicked and informed my mother. There was a shame-filled visit to a bemused local doctor, some sort of cream that eventually did the trick and the searing memory of the baffled - and ever so briefly repulsed - expression that crossed my mother's face when she first bore witness to my missing pubes. She never did ask me why.
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:44, 2 replies)

Fighting with my older sister as 7/8 year old kids
She grabbed me 'round the waist from behind.

So I leaned forward, and brought my head back with full force.

Claret everywhere, screams, crying, Dad called.

How her nose didn't break I don't know.

I won.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:22, Reply)

Stubbing me little toe on the side of a unit or something
It's like my little toe is a divining rod for table and chair legs. I walk past one bare-footed and my toe will suddenly lean out from my foot and attempt to latch onto something closeby. It does this especially more frequently if you are in a rush to go somewhere or get ready for something.

It hurts. ALOT.

Instant grown man dropping to the ground holding his little toe like a squealing little baby.

That sharp whimpering pain, which no-one is meant to feel. At least if I got my toe severed off it would only hurt like that the once. Not once every fucking month or so.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:21, 3 replies)

Red wine. Stairs. Head. Blood. Ambulance. Stiches.
That is all
( SauronWibble I'll hold it, you lick it..., Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:19, Reply)

Why is it that
If you stub your toe, you tread on it with the other foot to ease the pain?
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:16, 6 replies)

i too would have been curios.
a friend of mine was a holiday rep and a bit of a male slut. he was often bragging about his nightly encounters with the holidaying drunk ladies.

while he was working out in tunisia, he experienced what he described as a broken cock during intercourse. apparently something went badly wrong and his old tonker developed a massive swelling before finally popping blood everywhere. By all accounts, the hospitals of northern tunisia arent that fussed about anaesthetic so he had to have the full wound on his shaft stitched up without any pain relief.

the really funny bit (for us anyway). He awoke from his surgery in a daze to find someone lifting up his sheet and examining his grotesque appendage. He fell back to sleep just thinking it was a doc checking up. Later when fully conscious he discovered the chap was actually a patient sitting a few beds up who i guess just wanted to see what a mangled winky really looked like.
(chiff_chiff, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:13, Reply)

I stepped on an upturned plug once

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 12:00, 9 replies)

Trapped Nerve
.. what the Germans call a "Hexenschuss". Somehow, in the middle of making the two-backed beast, I managed to trap a nerve in my spine. This nerve is, apparently, in control of one of the muscles on the left-hand side of your back. And didn't I fucking know it. The pain feels like someone stabbing you with a giant needle, and the muscle doesn't help by spasming every time you make a wrong move. One visit to the weekend surgery and an injection of cortizone later, some relief was obtained. Unfortunately, the injection wore off before bedtime and I was reduced to a shrieking wreck, who had to sleep propped upright on the sofa, as the slightest move stimulated an extremely painful spasm of this muscle.

Did I mention this was right in the middle of the World Cup? It was, and the other half (Her Maj) wasn't going to cancel the viewing party she'd so carefully planned. Cue four germans leaping up and down on the sofa, whilst one pale expat Englander in a cold sweat grimly bites down on a spare cushion.

Finally, Monday, after two agony-filled sleepless nights, I go to the Chiropractor, who X-rays me, and then rolls me into a ball and trys to bend my legs in directions they don't normally go. There follows a loud "CRACK!" from the base of my spine, instant relief, and, shortly after, a 15-hour hibernation, the ability to put socks on without screaming, and a short course of the sort of painkillers that did for Michael Jackson.

Be kind to your spine, folks, because the alternative isn't fun.
( Stevedix http://www.stevedix.de/blog, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 11:50, Reply)

Ouch
I was in the middle of a quite enjoyable trip down Africa on my KTM. Good times. Anyway, was cruising along in Zambia on one of the first bits of tar when suddenly a bicycle burst out of the roadside vegetation. I did my best to take evasive action but unfortunately went straight into the cyclist. I’ll never forget the look in the kid’s eyes as I slammed into him at 70mph. Chilling…

I went over the top of him, and slammed into the ground. As I hit the ground I shattered my sternum and broke 3 ribs. I then rolled up the road and proceeded to break my ankle, a few toes, and fracture 2 vertabrae. I also tore cartilage in both knees, both shoulders and got some fantastic looking cuts and bruises.

The kid was ok btw, well he had a broken leg but luckily I had managed to avoid most of him, and take out his bicycle.

I flagged down a truck who took him to a clinic, and then waited a while for a police car to pop along and pick me (and the remains of the bike) up.

That’s where is got painful. I wont bore you with the details, but the clinic had no pain killers or anaesthetic. When I arrived, the most obvious wound was my foot. So they used a brush dipped in petrol to scrub the gravel etc out of the wound. Then, placing me on a makeshift table, 3 male nurses held me down while the doctor operated on my foot. Watching him get the scalpel ready (as I realised what was about to happen) was one of the most sobering experiences of my life. They reset my foot, and stitched it back together. They tried hard, and I do appreciate it, though I did have to have 2 more operations when back in SA to get it fixed up.

Still, got left with some cool scars and met some lovely people.
( zulu eh?, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 11:31, 2 replies)

Wear flip-flops
My 20th birthday - we all dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early (11ish - well, we were students), and set off to Bournemouth for the day. Spirits were high, an early beer was consumed - and off we went to the beach. Towels were raised, trunks were donned, and into the sea we splashed. I'd gone about ten feet when I met this fella:



It's a Weever Fish, and the little fucker got his spines in right at the base of my toes. I didn't think so at first - my immediate thought was 'oh, I've stepped on an upturned broken bottle, that smarts a little' - but then it got worse. Much worse. As in, curled up in a ball, sweating, shivering, my foot a crumpled, cramped little club of agony, unable to do much other than curse the cruel whims of a vindictive Mother Nature. All things considered, it wasn't my favourite birthday.

When people moan about pollution, ignore them. If there's any hope of it killing even a single weever fish, everything else is irrelevent collateral damage. And also, wear flipflops when paddling. Not only are they devastatingly stylish, but they'll enable you to stomp the little bastards with impunity.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 11:28, 9 replies)

For all their worthy claims of pregnancy and periods, girls will never, ever quite understand what it's like
To be kicked in the balls.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 11:27, 9 replies)