Ask Lemmy

I once twisted a nerve in my shoulder by sitting down wrong in the bus.

On day 3 of a meth bender, non-stop looking at and Photoshopping porn, paralyzed my ulnar nerve by the way my arm was resting on the armrest. Yes, I sat there that long in the same position. Couldn't feel my pinkie and ring finger for a couple of years. No, I haven't done meth in 20 years.

Sliced my forearm open trying to make a small scratch to do a blood brother thing with my gf. My god, I barely got it to stop bleeding. Now I have what looks like a suicide scar. In other news, I was top-tier at sharpening pocket knives back then.

Hit a brick wall, head on, driving my motorcycle drunk, on an unfamiliar street, at night, wearing dark goggles. The bike exploded into fragments, I got a light concussion.

Broke my femur, most crippling injury to date. Knew my motorcycle brakes were far too worn, drove it anyway. Lady slammed her brakes, guy in front of me did same, I tried to do the same, rammed him from behind.

Using a non-locking pocket knife to trim a washer hose. It folded and cut me to the bone, had to have surgery to repair the extensor tendon. Also using a non-locking pocket knife to work on my motorcycle throttle cable, you guessed it, it folded and cut me to the bone. Have had nerve damage in that fingertip since.

Riding my BMX as a kid, decided to try an endo. Slammed the front brakes at speed with predictable results. Knee hit the asphalt to hard it mashed the skin off. Still got the scar, which matches the one on my other knee from swinging over a lava rock.

Got diverticulitis, 3 times, most painful events of my life. Spent years shitting too hard, developed diverticulosis (little tears/pouches in your intestine that catch food and get infected). Surgery fixed it!

Popped a lung after a night of rigorous sex. Yes, I smoked cigarettes and weed. Also, had a lawn service where I inhaled dust all day. Maybe not so much on me though. Doc said it was common among young men and I had two friends blow a lung in those years.

Lately, my feet have been all fucked up from working at Lowe's (I rage quit BTW). Got some new shoes at the thrift, like walking on clouds. Apparently been wearing a size too small for years.

Bruised/broken my ribs several times, broke my right arm twice, countless broken toes and fingers, and perhaps more than the one concussion described above. At this point in the story I've stopped counting scars.

I can keep going. No idea how I survived my 20s without permanent injury or prison time.

Burned my face while breathing fire with Everclear.

I used to work nights. When I had the next day off, I would usually stay up all day and go to sleep that evening. So, wake up around 2-4pm Friday, go to at 10pm to 6am Saturday and not sleep until Saturday evening.

This eventually caught up with me. I was riding a bicycle down a hill, just coasting and fell a sleep for a second. Down I went. Need stitches in my head ( I still have a bump), tons of road rash, and banged up my knee.

I recovered fully except for the bump on my head.

I broke my toe on a case of ramen noodles.

I was cutting a cardboard box up with a box cutter, holding the box steady with my off hand while pushing the blade downward through the cardboard. I realized that my hand was below the blade and therefore there was a risk I'd cut myself if the blade suddenly moved more quickly through the cardboard than anticipated. Safety first! So I stopped cutting, leaving the blade in the cardboard, and lifted my hand to grip the cardboard above where I was cutting instead.

Slammed my thumb right into the blade as I moved my hand, peeling a nasty slice of skin off. Took a lot of stitches to tack it back in place, still have a scar from that.

In high school I was run over by a car that I was sitting in. Buddy stopped in a parking lot, I started to get out, then he went forward and my foot was caught under the rear tire. I was pulled out of the car and my leg was run over.

Minor tear in a ligament and have a nice scar, but that's about it.

I once cut the inside of my thigh as a kid by bicycle jousting with my friends at night-time along the streets and sidewalks. Slammed into one of my friends' tires head-on, and got thrown forward into the crossbar. I was lucky I was slightly off-center, but I came away with a nasty bruise, a laceration, and a rip in my shorts.

Wanted to see what happened if I stuck my finger into a pencil sharpener. Didn't really think that one through

I had two cartoon-style injuries: stepped on a rake and fallen down the stairs, hitting my butt on every step.

I slipped a disk and pinched a nerve in my neck by sitting up to get out of bed.

Stubbed my toe on a cat condo base while running the kitchen. Didn't think much of it. Next day it hurts like crazy. Fractured it, dislocated it, and tore the ligament.

When I was about 6 years old, I had just gotten back from spending a weekend with my cousins who were like my siblings because I was an only child. We had fun running around and playing catch and riding bikes etc. and my cousin showed me monster trucks for the first time ever. So while I was alone in my room I had the tv on waiting for a new episode of monster trucks to come on and throwing a football across the room to myself, jumping onto my bed to catch it.

On what would be my last attempt, I lobbed the ball, took a couple steps and jumped forward. Unfortunately, I misjudged the distance. The next thing I know I am on the floor trying to sit up and looking around trying to figure out what happened. When I looked down I saw a stream of blood dripping onto my arm and hand. I just screamed until my parents showed up to help.

I wound up being taken to the urgent care and spending a night at the hospital because I landed face first onto the sharp wooden corner of my bed frame, shattering my nose into 6 pieces and splitting my face open requiring reconstruction and about 80 stitches. Decades later and you’d never know it happened but boy do I think back at how dumb that was lol.

Many, many moons ago. I rode my Big Wheel standing up, no hands, down hill.

Ended up crashing into a fire hydrant. Ouch. At least a broken right arm from what I remember.

I cut a good part of the way through my thumb opening a can of beans

When I was around 12 I sat crouched on the floor and was hyper focused on drawing. I must've sat there for hours with little to no movement and when I got up I couldn't lift my right foot. I severely damaged a nerve and had to go through weeks of physiotherapy.

Bad cut on my finger from a bread knife trying to cut a particularly crusty loaf of bread I baked. Only time in my life I've needed to go to the emergency room (for myself).

Slipped on the sidewalk in the rain and somehow broke an arm (clean broke it). Needed surgery and 2-night hospital stay. This after climbing multiple mountains without a scratch.

I once torn my left shoulder's rotator cuff. How? By jumping while extending my right arm to touch the ceiling 🤣

I was cutting slices out of an apple with a comically large Bowie knife.

My roommate said, “Hey, that looks pretty dangerous.”

I said, “Nah, bro, it’s perfectly safe.”

Somewhere around the middle of that sentence, the knife sliced through the apple and into my palm.

He had to drive me to the hospital for stitches.

I shattered my ankle, separated my tibia and fibula, and broke a different part of my fibula. All in one moment. How, you ask? By stepping outside. My dog pulled too hard on her leash and I stumbled and twisted my ankle in just the right way. Got a fancy Maisonneuve fracture that had to be surgically fixed.

The dumbest injury I ever had was, when I was like two or three years old, I jumped off of a chifferobe with a blue towel wrapped around my neck, thinking I could fly, and landed headfirst on an iron bed post.

Apparently I blacked out, and I walked up to my mom with the towel on my forehead, telling her I didn't feel good, and she went to take a look, and I pulled the towel away for her to see my entire face and body covered in blood.

That was the moment that inspired her to become a nurse.

My next actual memory after jumping off of the chifferobe was waking up in an ER and hearing a woman giving birth in the room behind me.

Earlier today I decided to trim my own hair. I was holding a section of hair with my free hand and snipped right into the side of my thumb. On the bright side, my hair came out nice anyway.

Shot my finger with a BB gun. Didn't think I'd pumped it and put my finger over the barrel and pulled the trigger to get the BB out of the chamber. I remember the spurt of blood arcing through the air in slow motion. Gotta love that "oh i fucked up" shift to slow motion.

I sprained my wrist in my sleep.

I'm in California. If you feel the need for a defensive weapon, the most you can get away with is a plain, wooden cane from a drugstore. Even then, if a cop thinks you don't need that cane, you'll get the shit beat out of you and the stick taken away.

Ask me how I know.

I cut the edges of the mouth lips (rightmost and leftmost zones) while shaving my beard about two months ago, and I still get microcuts because since the zone is so flexible, it tears every time I open my mouth.

It's not even visible, it's just annoying and painful and not healed yet.

i can still see scars from where a plumbers snake designed for a toilet embedded itself in my hand. it was a short snake with a metal sleeve with a slight angle in it for help getting around the toilet trap.

the widened part at the end of the snake got stuck in the sleeve and in an effort to unstick it my friend put tension on the snake while i held the sleeve. well, the snake broke free, and in such a force and fashion that it ripped the sleeve from my hands and in milliseconds had turned and screwed itself into the fleshy part of my palm by my thumb. it was in and out, looking like a loch ness monster photo.

there was still pressure on it and the only reason it stopped was due to the skin being pinched when it got to the snake part that was coiled tightly. we were probably around 12 years old, there was no pain at first because it happened instantaneously, just the pulling on the skin. i yelled out to my parents. "emergency room!" and we walked into the living room. my dad was on the phone and immediately said he had to go and hung up. he then told my friend to start untwisting the snake and the poor guy nearly passed out, weak at the knees, and told my mom he thought she had better do it. he handed it off then booked it outside and ran home.

this is when i experienced the first pain. my mom in her panicked state started to turn the snake clockwise adding more tension and trying to pierce another hole in my palm. i screamed, my dad screamed, as he was on the floor with me stabilizing my hand and the end of the snake. we both screamed out "wrong way!" and my mom just kept saying sorry over and over. she began unscrewing but the skin pinched in the snake was now preventing it from being extracted. eventually there was enough force applied to break free from my skin and I can still remember the feeling of the tip going in and out of my flesh. it didn't hurt, it was just an odd sensation.

i didn't know or expect it at the time but the real pain hadn't begun yet. we drove to the emergency room (called it) and the doctor there had some concerns, primarily that this oily metal that had been in contact with a toilet clog had been inside my body, not once but eleven times. he didn't want to risk more damage by incising each puncture to debride them, so instead my hand was soaked in a bowl of iodine for a while. then they came back and scrubbed my palm with a toothbrush for what seemed like forever. they repeated this process every 15 minutes for three hours. my palm was nearly scrubbed raw and there was still a little black dot on each wound. i had to grip the bedrail with my other hand while i clenched my teeth in agony every time the nurse came back. it was the most pain i had experienced in my life to that point.

eventually my dad convinced them it was under the skin and they weren't going to make any more progress and it was time for me to go home. i think i was given some antibiotics and sent on my way. it took about three months for the last black spot to work its way to the surface and now i just have faint white spots and a white line scar where it scratched at the end. that's been 30 years ago.

I was camping as a child, and sitting on my dad's knee around the camp fire. I tucked my knees and arms into my shirt.
My dad let go of me to scratch his head, and I, trapped within my shirt, rolled off his knee and onto a tree root.

Broke my collar bone.
Had to canoe out of the campsite the next day.

I once fell asleep with a laptop on my lap that had a horrible heat sink and would basically turn itself off every half hour. My legs were crossed when I fell asleep and my heel was right up against the vent.. Woke up with the laptop still on. Confused. And then PAIN. It has used my heel as a heat sink. MASSIVE burn, horrible pain, like four inch blister, still have the scar twenty years later. Had to wear flip flops for like a month shudder

Thought I could/should work through discomfort and then pain at the gym, supersetting overhead push-presses and triceps dips. LOL, nope, gave myself a labral tear and tore my supraspinatus. My shoulder now has an unpleasant popping feeling + significantly less strength when I'm doing anything like a bench press with my elbows properly tucked; I'll likely never be able to do narrow grip bench press or triceps dips again.

Why was this dumb? Because I was a personal trainer, and I fucking know better than to try and push through pain. But I was trying to get back into lifting seriously after losing a lot of time to the pandemic.

I was working with my hands on something and socked myself in the nuts. I think I was deburring a piece of hardened steel and the scraper slipped. It wasn't full wind up and swing but my fist with the scraper had a lot of pressure in and behind it.

I've got plenty of scars and this incident didn't leave one. Not physically. My testicles ache now thinking back on it. Makes me wonder if Mike Tyson ever punched himself in the nuths.

-freshman In Collage

• walk downhill to get food from cafeteria
• Winter in Alaska = ice city
• Spontaneous dancing
• Broken wrist.

When I was about 12 or so I had a AA battery and some copper wire I used for crafting. Out of nowhere I suddenly got really curious how good of a conductor that wire would be. So I pressed it onto both poles with my fingers. Had a nice black scorched line in my thumb for a few months because it turns out the excess energy needs to go somewhere. In this case in the form of extreme heat.

Fell off a tram on my 16th birthday and sprained my ankle. I didn't realize, so I went into the local river "for fun" and I conveniently forgot to take my clothes off. So I come home, and the next day everyone thinks I tried to kill myself. I don't think they believe the real story, even now.

In middle school, I was playing racquetball at the YMCA, pivoted to hit the ball and something in my knee popped and it hurt like hell. Turned out to be a combination of lack of cartilage and Osgood-Schlatter disease (a painful lump just below the kneecap). The lump corrected itself, as it's something weird to do with bone growth in child development, but the cartilage deficiency is still a problem today. I can't do a lot of running or jumping or even kneeling.