Seriously Ouch!

[Chicken Manny]

After hearing Klink's great ski story I thought it was an interesting idea to share a funny, if not disturbing story.

When I was in college I worked for a carpenter. The perfect job for a college guy just out of the military: no stress and immense satisfaction. I’m always in awe when I realize that I can actually do something new.

This particular week is New Construction. We start with a hole in the ground and in a few months we have a house. The proud homeowners framed in their new front door, all four waving as we carpenters drive off into the sunset… another job well done, Kemo Sabe. Not really, but they generally seem happy when we leave.

New Construction is back-breaking labor, and involves a lot of heavy lifting and awkward materials. This morning I dropped a sixteen foot, two-by-twelve, pressure-treated board on my ring finger. You can imagine the dimensions of such a piece of lumber, and take my word for it: pressure-treated (the green boards that don’t rot) are much heavier than the regular old boards. In the simplest terms, it is a very heavy board. Really. Very heavy. Imagine this long, unwieldy, ponderous piece of wood. Now imagine your finger resting – lazy and unaware – on the corner of a concrete foundation. Add a bit of clumsiness, a dash of gravity, and you’ve got a recipe for comedy!

The worst part is that it doesn’t hurt right away. I watch my fingernail meld from a healthy pink into a radiant magenta, and the pain hasn’t hit yet, twenty seconds… 40 seconds… a minute and a half… I’m nervous in anticipation of the real pain… there’s a dull ache, and the color is changing into an interesting shade of purple… my fingernail is obviously adjusting to its new state of being, and is just gathering breath into its lungs before really letting loose with a horrific scream of pain.

The pain finally comes, and it’s about as bad as I expected. But right now it’s a curiosity, and I show it to my boss with a “see how stupid I amâ€

 

[barst]

Nice right up dude.

I heated a paperclip held by needle nose pliers with a blowtorch and melted its way through the top of my fingernail before. It might have been a little more sterile, but I hear you about wanting to do anything to relieve the pain.

 

[erd04056]

Been there, done that. But...I didn't use a power drill. Just rotated a 1/16 bit with my "good" fingers, until it created a hole for the pressure release. Morbidly satisfiying, in a demented kind of way. Really descriptive narration though.....I feel your pain buddy!

 

[onexchef]

LMAO! That is so funny, well not really. Man that had to hurt!

I have a similar story. A few years back while I was working as a line cook in a restaurant. I cliped the very tip of my finger off with a knife. Not that bad really but it wouldn't stop bleeding. The chef tells me to press the tip of my finger onto the flat grill and it would more or less cauterize it. So stupid me I do it, then he starts laughing his ass off saying he was just joking. Man I was pissed, but it did stop the bleeding. Kinda gross I guess.

 

[Bigshooter]

LMAO ! Thats the funniest thing I've read for quite awhile, sorry about your pain but thanks for sharing it.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Man that sounds rough, drilling your own fingernail. I can understand though, I bashed my finger good working the night shift at UPS during school a few years ago. Didn't think it was that bad. The pain was not really strong at any point, but it remained constant the entire night and I couldn't sleep a wink. I thought maybe I broke my finger. I went to my Doctor's office the next day, they used a little battery operated tool that heats a small coil red hot kind of like a toaster on a tiny scale and it burned right through the fingernail like nothing. The blood running out provided instant relief. Went right home and got some sleep.

 

[pugwash]

After hearing Klink's great ski story I thought it was an interesting idea to share a funny, if not disturbing story.

As I said on another forum, I just love the fact that at no point did he consider any form of qualified medical advice. Excellent story, dude.

 

[Roeod4]

That had me squirming through every sentence. If you don't write, you should start. Great story!

You have inspired me to share my own worst pain.

The only thing I can compare to that pain is the time I crashed on my skate board when I was 15. I really loved to skate when I was younger. My friends and I would travel from neighborhood to neighborhood to ride all the different hills and ramps. My parents hated this and thought it was too dangerous. After ending up the ER with a pretty serious concussion one time, my mother warned me that I was through if anything like this ever happened again. So, from then on I kept every single injury to myself. One of my friend’s sisters wanted to be a nurse and she had some basic medical training, so she would fix me up when things happened.

This particular time I was skating home and riding down a pretty steep hill. I had removed all my pads and left them at a friends because he was planning to go ramp riding the next day. This hill was probably at a 40 degree angle to the flat ground below and roughly ¾ of a mile long (some of this may be a little off, it was over 15 years ago). So here I am traveling down this huge hill at a pretty high rate of speed when my board starts to wobble (for those of you who don’t know, this means you are starting to shift a little back and forth from left to right). I realize at this speed I am going to quickly lose control and crash. I ran through my options in my mind and the only one that made any sense was to try and jump off and run it out. This turned out to be the wrong choice.

I stepped off the board and started to run, trying like hell to keep my body up to the same speed I had been traveling. I couldn’t do it and I tripped. I landed on my knees first and then began to roll. After several rolls I ended up on my back. Still skidding down this hill. My shirt was ripped open and I could feel the skin being shredded off.

When I finally came to a stop, I looked like a car or motorcycle crash victim. My knees had no skin left on them as far as I could see. They were both a shredded mess of pulpy meat and blood, with some asphalt peppered in for color. My back….dear God my back. I could not see what had happened, all I could do is feel the pain and the wetness from the blood. Each gust of wind felt like a thousand paper cuts on my back.

I sat there for what felt like an eternity and tried to collect myself. My first instinct of course was to go home, but I remembered my mother and knew that I would not be allowed to skate ever again. At this point in my life, that would have killed. I remembered Keri, my friend’s sister, and knew that she could help me. So I got up and started the ¼ mile walk the their house, praying the whole time that she would be there.

Walking presented a problem as that every time I put any weight on my legs my knees would explode in intense pain and try to buckle under me. This would in turn cause me to flinch and jerk, which only made me bend my back and bending my back made me want to pass out. So there I am walking down the side of the road, covered in blood and flinching, twitching and jerking as I moved, dragging my skateboard behind me. I had about ten cars pass me and not a single person stopped or even slowed down, at the time I was just glad none of them knew my parents. After about an hour of walk/flinch/twitching down the road I reached my friends house and rang the bell. His sister answered the door, thank God, and screamed.

I was quickly ushered/dragged into the house and into one of the bathrooms. Two of her other nurse school friends came in and they all helped cut off my clothes. They looked me over and asked me what happened. I explained everything and how my parents could not find out. They agreed, but were not sure the best action to take. They discussed it for a few minutes and then left the room. When they returned, they had a box of medical supplies and a Polaroid camera. They began to take pictures of my back and legs.

When I actually saw my back I came very close to puking and passing out. From my shoulder blades to my waste, there was almost nothing there. The skin was almost completely gone. There were small sections of my lower back that still had some, but not much. The fact that everything was covered in blood and that the girls picture taking skills where horrible only made it worse. One of the first pictures I looked at showed a thin white line down the middle of my back, which must have been a glare or something, but I believed to be my spine. The whole thing looked like a mass of raw bloody hamburger.

At this point they decided it would be best to clean my back with water and then clean it again to make to more sterile. So they turned on the shower. I can not really describe this pain. I have no words. I will only ask if you have ever been in the shower with an open fresh cut? It stings a little right? Now imagine that over your whole body, that is pretty close to the feeling. Once, they stopped the water they got out a bottle. I didn’t see what it said, but one of the girls said they didn’t believe it would be enough and they would look for more. At this point I heard the cap unscrew and hit the floor, then I felt something incredibly cold hit my back and begin to burn. Then the pain really started. I don’t remember passing out, but I do remember that one of the last things I saw was the third girl returning and setting down a bottle on the counter marked Rubbing Alcohol.

When I woke up, I was laying on bed and Keri was by my side. I heard a sort of “pingâ€

 

[Chicken Manny]

Great story! I still have a 'trick' wrist from a 'speed wobble' experience when I was about 14 but it was nowhere as bad as yours. I can totally see you walking/jerking down the street pulling your skateboard and leaving a slight blood trail. Ha! Not to laugh at your pain but you paint a great visual.

Good for you for getting back on the board. You are a greater man than I.

Cheers,
CM