Pajiba

Stupid rookie doctor cutting my cast when I was in third grade. I was like "ow, you're hurting me." and he said "no...that's impossible for me to cut you."

Cast came off few weeks later.

A scar, you fucking dick.

A .....friend of mine, eh, well he got his penis caught in his zipper, it was HORRIBLE (waiting room was populated by the usual mouthbreathers). Anyway, had to wait for a couple of hours, the nurse gave me cookies.

Unfortunately, I'm a frequent visitor to the emergency room. I'm a klutz and tend to fall off of things (stairs, ladders, my bed).

My most annoying visit is when I fell down some stairs at 3 in the morning. I had obviously broken some bones in my foot so I drove myself (left foot, automatic car. It was easy). Upon my arrival, I find that the emergency room parking lot was full. Instead of trying to find help I parked at the far lot and hopped on one foot the entire way. Right as I entered the doors I fell over, landed on the broken foot and passed out in front of the door. All was well, I finally got a wheelchair and could sit down and had a cool lump on my head from passing out.

This is the story my mother tells the most when trying to explain how stubborn I am

I (fortunately or unfortunately) don't have a whole lot of ER or hospital experience...But I absolutely have to pass on a story of my mother's.

When I was wee (and when I was a child, I was always particularly petite for my age) we came across a vixen who had been hit by a car near a local bird sanctuary. She was gathered up and transported to the nearest vet, who informed us that she was a recent mother. She probably wasn't going to calm down if she didn't have her kits--and they were obviously doomed if we didn't find them.

Off we went to the bird sanctuary. My actual memories of this are non-existant, but apparently the den was located, and I was sent down to retrieve the babies (I would love to remember crawling down a fox den). Mother and children were reunited, and when she had recovered from her injuries, my mother got the honor of releasing her back where she belonged.

My younger brother and I, meanwhile, too advantage of the lake, and all of the ducks and geese. One of us did something that a goose found insulting, and my mother heard us both screaming. She looked up to see us coming up a hill with an entire flock of ducks and geese right behind, all with murder in their beady little eyes.

She ran to meet us, and meet she did--remember the part about it being a 'sanctuary'? A lot of those birds were there because they'd been injured in some way and didn't have anywhere else to go. Ducks and geese missing wings, or legs, or other bits were pretty common. One of them had gotten into some mishap or other and lost half of his beak. It didn't break off neatly, but at an angle, so there was a sharp point...which stabbed her in the right thigh.

There was no pulling the (extremely distraught) duck from her thigh. The break was jagged, so it was like trying to pull out a fish hook. I'm sure my brother and I were no help at this point. She managed to find a belt that was secured around the duck's wings to keep it from flailing around too much, and we piled into the car to head for the nearest hospital.

Did you know that duck feet are surprisingly flexible? My mom learned...while trying to drive a stick shift with a pissed off duck sticking out of her right thigh.

When we arrived, we got quite an audience. A vet had to be summoned to tranquilize the duck so it would stop thrashing around, and they actually had to cut it out.

My mom got stitches, the duck got a brand new prosthetic beak, and the doctors got another great ER story.

Duh, forgot my own story. (Nicole's been having a rough couple of weeks, kids.)

I have two; one involves me and a stiletto heel, the other involves my nephew and a coffee table.

Picture it: Irish Weekend, Jersey Shore, 2004. I have been to several bars with my cousins and am well and truly pissed when we end up at a charming establishment called "The Beach House." During an unprovoked bar fight, I sustain some sort of injury that makes me wake up the next day and say, "Ow. My foot hurts." Two days later, back in the City, my foot, which is three times its normal size and several unnatural shades of purple, green, and puce, demands to be taken to the emergency room. A few incredulous hours later (try explaining a bar fight to respectable medical staff) I learn that the stiletto heel that came down on my instep caused a stress fracture and complex contusions. I wore a most attractive boot and crutches for the next two weeks.

Now for the other:

Take one 19 month old, accident-prone child; add one round coffee table; mix. Within five minutes you will have a head wound with copious amounts of blood and screaming. Rush to emergency room of grimy urban children's hospital. Attempt to stop blood flow with 4x4s for three hours while waiting in rundown exam rooms while playing with trucks with 3 wheels and a headless GI Joe. Resort to "papoosing" said child - swaddling him like the Infant Jesus, then strapping him to a backboard like the ones used in extracting accident victims. Listen and watch as said child screams the screams of the damned and writhes while being held down by three nurses and has three sutures attempted by inept intern. View resident take over, sew the baby's head back together, and hand him triumphantly over to your blood-covered self. Do not attempt to explain that the child is not actually yours. Go home.

This happened playing hockey. I wasn't too good at stopping so I'd just use the wall to slow me down. Not the best technique because I am a really fast skater. Long story short: turning into the corner to chase the puck, wall coming up fast, I put my hand out to brace the impact. Wrist snaps aaaaalllll the way back popping the ulna (lower bone) out of my skin at the wrist, the radius (upper bone) snaps in half. My first thought was, "Oh no you did not."

While all my friends gathered to see the gruesome sight (only one single drop of blood, thank whomever), I suggested a call to 911 might be appropriate.

I have since learned the "hockey stop."

This happened playing hockey. I wasn't too good at stopping so I'd just use the wall to slow me down. Not the best technique because I am a really fast skater. Long story short: turning into the corner to chase the puck, wall coming up fast, I put my hand out to brace the impact. Wrist snaps aaaaalllll the way back popping the ulna (lower bone) out of my skin at the wrist, the radius (upper bone) snaps in half. My first thought was, "Oh no you did not."

While all my friends gathered to see the gruesome sight (only one single drop of blood, thank whomever), I suggested a call to 911 might be appropriate.

In the emergency room, nurses kept coming in to view the carnage saying it was the worst break they had ever seen. Mind you, the strip of I-95 where I live is dubbed "Devil's highway" due to the high level of accidents. Yeah, it was a bad break.

I have since learned the "hockey stop" and perform it quite well. Go Wings!

You can visit Ms. Curious Hair's blog for my too-long "heart attack"
story.

(If you've heard this one too, I apologize but I can't remember) But I also like senior year of college when I was getting dressed before class and went to get my Wedding Present shirt off a shelf in my closet by standing on a rolling, reclining chair. Back went the chair, I flailed towards the bookshelf hutch on top of my desk and only succeeded on knocking my full cup of coffee onto the wood floor.

My palms took a little impact but I still smacked my chin pretty good. I went to the bathroom mirror and saw a hole. I went back to look for the big piece of chin, but soon figured out that it was merely surface tension that had been broken and popped like a balloon. "Guess I'm goin to the hospital instead of class then".

I got back on the chair and got the damn shirt down. I put some toilet paper under my gaping wound and got in the car. While waiting on the ER's couch I realized I'd put my two-sided shirt on backwards, and I really wanted to correct this, but knew I'd get blood on it if I tried. So I just sat there feeling displeased with my oversight. It's a heather gray shirt and to this day there's a little greenish spot on the back. There's a also a speedbump to deal with when shaving my chin but I usually manage. I called my family and girlfriend after I was home and stitched, not having wanted to make a big self-important fuss, and was of course lambasted for doing the same maddening thing my dad would, and of course I proudly knew it was true. But hey, I can drive with one hand, why bother interrupting someone?

(Visiting the hot dog stand outside the English building with my chin strap bandage the next day was too inviting of comedy to pass up. The hot dog was good and the tape fell off as I contorted the bun into my mouth. Perfect)

I forgot to mention my great-grandfather. He was taken to the hospital after suffering a mild heart attack. He was fine and they were going to release him to my great-grandmother. Unfortunately, she was out of town and the old man insisted he had to be home to meet her later that day. They told him they'd send somebody to the house. He got loud. Eventually, they strapped his big ass to a bed. So he made like the Hulk, broke all the 3-inch leather straps and died right there. In retrospect, they should have just let him go home.

Ok, one more about my mom...

Some eight or nine years after the duck incident, we were living in this seriously nasty apartment complex. No matter what we did, there were roaches everywhere. Turned out the apartment down and across from us was the source, and required a literal hazmat team to clean it out when they finally got evicted.

My mother hate--absolutely despises--roaches. One day, she saw one crawling across the carpet, and she grabbed a flipflop and tried to smash the bastard. She fell forward as she slapped, and the shock when she hit actually shattered her index finger and the coresponding bone in her hand.

Off to the emergency room we went, where x-rays revealed the bones were actually in too many pieces to salvage (she has unusually brittle bones following three exciting rounds with different varieties of cancer). She ended up having to get the bones replaced, and jokes about how she's donating her skeleton to cancer, one bone at a time (a local college currently has those finger bones, one leg bone, and some pieces of skull and hip).

She would console herself with knowing that at least the fucking roach was paste--but the carpet was thick and springy in that particular apartment. She lost most of the use of her right hand...the roach lived to scuttle another day.

1. broken arm in the roller rink right after taking a turn in the big skate ride while everyone else had to get off the rink and watch. (it was my birthday)i gracefully skated towards the carpeted area but missed the step and tumbled right onto my left arm. the best scratchin EVER right after getting the cast off.

2. gash in left thumb from drunkenly trying to cut open a bagel for a late night after-bar snack. finished beer and then went to the ER. got lots of bagel slicers for christmas that year.

3. gash in right thumb from opening a can of cat food for my kitty, pepper, and cutting myself on the rim of the open can. i thought i was going to die (i was like, 8) but my mom kept telling me i have lots of blood, like as much as a lot of gatorade bottles (i also played soccer). i am still scared of opening cans to this day.

My son stuck 2 Polly Pocket shoes up his nose with a handful of rice crispies. Proud moment for a mother. Best part was the guy screaming down the hall from us while they pulled a squash out of his ass. Yes, a squash. Good times.

I broke my arm. Well, the fifth time I broke my arm, really. It was the fourth of July, and I was nine. And it was ALL MY BROTHER'S FAULT.

Problem is, on the fourth of July, the emergency room is full of burn cases, and a kid with a broken arm is low on the list of 'immediately must-sees'.

Is anybody else realizing that you've been to the ER more often than you thought?

My favorite visit was after I'd sliced up my hand washing a fragment of bottle from an old privy (yes, an outhouse, and I'm an archaeologist, so just stop already). Anyway, the best part was watching the doctor go from a dismissive SOB "Why are you in here, it's just a broken bottle," to "OMG, an old outhouse, why did you wait hours for shots?" care-giver in about 2 seconds. Grrr.

The worst part was digging the next day with a tetanus-sore shoulder. Damn, those shots hurt. I think I got injected that evening for a few other things too, but the tetanus one took the prize.

The actual injury causing my favorite ER story isn't very memorable or gross. It happened while I was in college simply playing football, taking a hard impact on my shoulder leading to a severely bruised AC joint (shoulder).

It's a shame I can't remember who that wonderful ER doctor was, because he introduced me to the fuzzy warm blanket feeling that is Percocet. God bless you, sir, wherever you are.

Only one noteworthy ER experience for me. When I was 8, I used to trail ride with a truly stupid Clydesdale draft cross. Coming down the side of a mountain on our way back to the barn, a fox ran in front of the horse's feet, and that dumbass animal decided to expend the only enthusiasm it had ever mustered bucking me off and promptly settling a shoe the size of a dinner plate onto my right elbow. Needless to say, 2000 pounds of horse does not a pleasant afternoon make. The doctor who crazyglued my arm back together told me I was lucky. After 3 wretchedly smelly casts, they cut me out. Turns out my bicep had atrophied so much, it didn't have the srength to keep my arm at my size (It swung back behind me at a bizarre angle), so I walked around for a month looking like a reject from the Bangles. Hovever the upside is the the bone never set right, so now I can bend my arm almost completely in half going the wrong direction. It's good for drink bets and interesting sex.

Oh my LORD BWeaves, that sounds so painful. I've always had an irrational fear of cutting off or losing an appendage. Something that I was this close to bringing up with two of my girlfriends during a recent discussion about fears. One of those girlfriends? Lost her entire left leg after it was cut off by a train. Biggest near foot-in-mouth moment ever.

Here's one for the ladies! (And if you can't overshare here, well then where can you?) Due to some insurance switching over stupidness I had to go to the ER for a simple yeast infection. Which meant I got the ER doc on duty in my tiny college town, who apparently was unfamiliar with the ways of the speculum. As he was finishing up I felt a horrible sharp jerk on my insides, followed by the cheerful "Oops! Grabbed your cervix!" from the doc. Die, you jackass, die! His tone clearly indicated that no one had ever tried to pull his insides out and left him curled in the fetal position, but karma's a bitch and his time will come. Oh yes, it will come.

Ok, two stories.

When I was three, the escalator in a mall tried to eat my middle finger.

The doctors discovered that it is really hard to sew a three year old's finger back on, so now I have this amazing scar down the length of my middle finger that looks like train tracks. It is pretty awesome, especially since I only remember a few select moments from that episode.

When I was a sophomore in college, and bunch of us went camping at a friend's christmas tree farm in the mountains. I, having basically grown up on a farm, was teaching my friends to drive the ATV. Well, take some dumb college kids, add beer, and top it off with dangerous heavy equipment, and it makes for a LOT of fun.

I was riding on the back (beer in hand, of course) as I coached my friend on the art of 4 wheeling. He caught the edge of a mountain and we plummeted about three stories. Then, the ATV landed on top of me, bounced off, and kept going down the hill. My friend was thrown off early, but I got caught by my fucking flip flop (I KNOW) and so was dragged.

He came to where I lay. Sticks were poking out of the front of my thighs, and I couldn't move my left leg.

He carried me to the cabin at the top of the mountain, where I proceeded to do surgery on myself, removing most of the embedded shrubbery. The ATV hand landed on the back of my pelvis (or ass, really) and had hit so hard and fast that it cut my glute muscle in half. Luckily, it did not break my pelvic girdle (now THAT would have sucked). I walked away, went to the hospital the next day (after watching blood creep down the back of my leg, under my skin; also called hemorrhaging-fun!), where I showed the admittedly young doctor my ass. She proceeded to pass the fuck out.

Good times.

I still have the dent across my ass, if anyone ever wants to see it.

Croatia last summer, one of the girls I was on holiday with stood on a nail sticking out of a plank of wood near the beach. We hobbled up to the local emergency room, which given that it was a beach town was had one doctor who was already occupied, and sat in the waiting room, where the only other patient was a young boy...who had stood on a nail sticking out of a plank of wood near the beach. Which was an odd coincidence, but we didn't think much of it - until, that is, the patient who was in with the doctor when we arrived came hobbling out, his foot covered in bandages.

"Soon, the humans will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!"

Tyburn Blossom...I am so sorry that all that happened to you and your mom and your family. But I have to tell you that those may be the funniest accident-prone stories all told in a row I have heard in a long time. It may be because they all happened to the same people.

Again...very sorry they even happened...but funny as shit in the aftermath...

Never posted before but I fit this category....

I have had over 200+ stiches....never more than a dozen at one time.

Last ER visit was forced by wifey. I had been having an abdomenal pain that grew steadily worse. She finally made me go the the ER at 10 PM on a Wednesday night. After a two hour wait they stuck me back in the catacombs and stripped me. Pee'd in the cup etc... Finally after about 4-5 hours doctor gonzolazes told me I had an infection of the seminal vesical, prescribed some anti-biotics and left. We waited and waited and waited when no one came back I started getting dressed so we could GTFO. Just as I was zipping up doctor gonzalazes comes in and informs me that he needs to check my prostrate.....WTF

Remember that line from the movie Desparado..."the biggest fucking Mexican I've ever seen...!"? That describes doctor G....fingers like fucking bratwursts. Most unpleasant.

Mine is not so much an ER story but an ambulance story. I was at MIM (Memphis In May) Beale Street Music fest 5 years ago. I was wearing flip flops as my tennis shoes were ruined the previous day in the 4 inches of rain and 12 inches of mud in Tom Lee Park. Beale street is notoriously uneven and is made of cobblestones on parts of it. So I am walking along in my flip flops when my stupid Old Navy flip flop gets caught on an uneven sidewalk, bends under my foot. The sidewalk removed all of the top layers of skin off of my big toe, which then started bleeding profusely. The car was 25 blocks away. I cannot walk for the bleeding and the fact that this is Beale and there is more than likely glass and other things in my now exposed skin.

While trying to figure out what to do, I see a cop coming towards me. I ask him, "Do you have a band-aid in your car?". He calls the frickin' ambulance. Dude, I just need something to stop the bleeding. Nope. Ambulance with sirens and lights. The paramedic washes out the wound, says "You may need stitches", which I decline as I hate needles. He gives me a band-aid and goes on his merry way. He also tells me to get a tetanus shot, which duh. It took less than 5 minutes.

The bill for one band-aid and some peroxide: $350.

Melody: Having a piece of Beale Street in your body permanently?

Priceless.

My first experience was when I was about 16. I took our German shepherd for a walk and he slipped out of his collar and jumped into a neighbor's yard and started attacking their dog, so I was pulling the German shepherd off the other dog, and the other dog thanked me by biting into my hand. Hard. I don't remember much about the ER visit, just that it took a long time and really, really hurt.
Then, just a couple weeks ago, I kept feeling as though I was going to stop breathing. I imagined trying to stab myself in the throat with a pen to open up the airway. So, when that didn't go away, I went to the ER. I expected some rare disease or a heart attack or something, based on my WebMD research, but they just told me I have the beginnings of asthma.

My most dramatic ER visit is also my most recent,
and one I'm still dealing with.

Back in March I had a bicycle accident -- my tire
hit a bad spot of pavement and I was thrown off to
left side of bicycle. After rolling a few times I
stopped on my back and looked at my left arm, and
saw that my hand was pointing off at a very
unnatural angle.

I lifted it a little and saw a decent amount of
blood and figured it was broken but good. I also
had scraped skin off my left shoulder and knee.
Passing motorists stopped and were kind enough to
direct traffic around me and call 911.

The ER itself was fairly pleasant. The nurses
and doctors were nice, and all was fine there
except for the x-ray technician, who insisted on
twisting my arm to get the shot he wanted and
nearly got me to pass out from the pain. I'll
find him one day.

Broke both radius and ulna a couple of inches
below the wrist, with the ulna breaking out of
the skin. Fortunately that part was on the
underside so I couldn't see it.

Went directly to surgery and they put me back
together with metal plates and screws and lots
of staples. Recovery was OK, although I had to
stay in the hospital a couple of days and get
IV antibiotics due to the compound break. The
first IV came out after the first day, and it
took 4 nurses, a UV machine and several hours
to replace it, and they ended up putting in the
underside of my wrist, where it hurt like hell.

The ulna has healed up well, but until last week
the radius hadn't done squat, and they were
talking about cutting me open again and bone
grafts and other fun stuff. Fortunately it
finally showed a little healing in last week's
x-rays.

Going 20 weeks not being able to lift anything
heavier than 1 pound has been frustrating.

I have two fairly decent (and traumatic stories). The one I don't really remember, but I was 2 and I was hitting a German Shepard in the face with a fly swatter for no apparent reason (and no adult supervision). Doing what any self respecting dog would do, he bit me in the face and at the same time I was sitting in a doorway above 16 stairs... I rolled down them and landed on my head on the cement floor. I was taken to the hospital because my forehead swelled up like rotten fruit. I had a blot clot, they treated me (stitching my face and checking out the clot), yelled at my mom and sent us home. And this dear friends, is why 18 year olds shouldn't have children...she got better at it--luckily.

The second time I was in Altoona, PA at my friend's grandfather's hunting cabin. After a night of 'coon huntin' we kids came back and played TV tag indoors. I ended up falling and slicing my entire hand open on sheet metal that happened to be laying on the ground. Instead of calling my parents and/or taking me to a hospital they just wrapped my hand in a washcloth...you could see tendons and bones. After everyone got showers (except me because I was bleeding and weeping my 4th grade eyes out), we finally headed home...My dad flipped shit and drove me to the hospital where I fainted from blood loss. When I came to, I was being stitched and I became incensed when the doctor wouldn't let me see what he was doing--so I did the only thing I could think of--flail like crazy and grab a syringe threatening to stab the doctor. I guess I wasn't all that intimidating, since I was hooked up to blood and I had needles and stuff sticking out of me. My dad just pulled the syringe out of my hands and told me to knock it off because "he didn't cry when he lost his arm and leg in 'Nam, and that sure as hell hurt". And so I shut up.

My most recent visit to the ER is a real fucking downer of a story, but I've been a few times on behalf of Little Pink. I'll share my "favorite".

Last year, we had to beat a hasty path down to the ER because he was screaming in pain over his arm. I had gone to pull him to his feet while playing, and somehow injured his arm. I couldn't tell what was wrong if he shoulder was dislocated or what, but any time you moved or touched his arm, he let out a howl that froze my blood.

Turns out it was nursemaid's elbow, fairly common injury. We learned this after spending almost five hours in the ER. After a horrific X-ray procedure that left Little Pink weeping and keening, we were shuffled into in a tiny exam room where we spent about three hours. Never saw a doctor once. Poor Little Pink was hungry, tired, and hurting. I was just about climbing the walls in a hysterical frenzy and it almost got to the point where I would have run down the hall shrieking in tongues. Do not mess with Momma Pink when it comes to her little boy's health and well being.

Turns out that his injury was repaired when the nurse suggested we change him from his t-shirt into a gown. Apparently, lifting the arm popped everything back into place. Only we didn't realize this until about 45 minutes later because Little Pink was so scared of the potential pain, he wouldn't move his arm.

The kicker is after all that time spent waiting, never seeing a doctor, our insurance was billed over a thousand dollars. What a bunch of shit.

Dented her ass, Goolia. Dented.

It still works fine. And I still work it. In fact, my husband happily reports that the dent works very well as a handle.

TMax, I so can't make this shit up. I mean, I can make up some pretty great stories, but I can't quite top what's really happened.

And Shadows of Dakaron, we're just a really hard to kill bunch. I didn't even scratch the surface of some of what we've been through. I mean, my dad makes knives and other assorted pointy things for fun, and also collects guns, so it's something of a miracle that there haven't been more incidents.

Come to think of it, considering how many times I've almost died, it's a miracle I don't have more ER stories myself. After I escaped the NICU at two weeks old, I haven't really spent a whole lot of time in hospitals despite broken bones, stabbings, near-drownings, car accidents, falling off of bridges, animal attacks, and other adventures.

Broke my foot cleaning my kitchen.(Yeah, so I've never cleaned the kitchen again, it's too dangerous.) Had x-rays at the ER. Doc comes in 20 min later with films.

dr- "Good news. Your ankle isn't broken!"
me- "That is good news. But my foot is still broken."
dr- "Oh, she didn't take a picture of your foot."
me- "That's because she is stupid. I have a large purple bulge on the top of my foot where it is obviously broken."
dr- "Hmm...I see. Yes, she is stupid. But back to x-ray for you!"

They finally set my broken foot with a temporary cast and sent me home with crutches. However, mr.wsapnin was out of town for 2 weeks and I had a 28lb 7 month old that I could not carry with crutches. I had to borrow a plastic sled from the neighbors and drag him around the house while I crawled until I got fitted for a boot 5 days later. Good times, good times.

My other fave ER visit was for a kidney stone. Those things hurt like a motherfucker. But aaahhh, morphin, sweet morphine. There is nothing like opiates to make it all better.

One and only visit to the ER happened after I spent my last underage New Year's eve drinking my ass off. I had begged my older sister's ID (who looks nothing like me) and gotten into the bar. Proceeded to drink to passing out at the bar, and the bar owner drove me to the hospital where I was hooked up to an IV and they called my parents.

My mom just happend to be a nurse at that hospital (fun for her I'm sure), and the nurse who was taking care of me was my friend's mother. She (illegally) told her entire family that I was in the hospital "drunk as a skunk", and almost had to get my stomach pumped. Which definitely made it around school a few times.

Oh, and it all resulted in the worst hangover ever, during which I realized I'd left my purse at the bar. The guy who picked it up held it hostage until I would agree to go out on a date with him.

Awww. I love you guys.

Random hijacking of a diversion thread (hee hee): Has anyone received their Pajiba tshirt yet?? We need to start a photo gallery. But I don't have mine. I'm getting antsy.

Fell out of a tree when I was 10 and hurt my elbow. My mother, being the compassionate nurse she is, told me if I could still bend it, it wasn't broken, even if it hurt like hell. After an hour in which my arm swelled up to three times its normal size, my dad convinced my mom that I should go to the ER.

Sure enough, it was broken. Across the growth plate, which meant there was a good chance I'd end up with one short arm. I got to undergo emergency surgery complete with insertion of pins (ever had those big ol' square bone pins removed? Yeah, that's a fun time--they just pull 'em out. No anesthetic or anything), a couple nights' stay in the hospital, and lots of obnoxious hovering from relatives.

Fortunately, my surgeon was awesome, and both my arms are the same length. I did end up with an elbow that's extremely "double jointed" and hyperextends, which is a perfect party trick to show nauseous drunks.

When I was 14 or so the south had a "blizzard" and everyone was out of school. There was a rather steep hill that led into a creek people were sledding down. I decided to do it without a sled or toboggan. About halfway down I racked myself on a tree stump pretty badly. I didn't want to sled much after that, so I went inside for lunch. In a nice twist of fate my mom made hotdogs. I took two bites before feeling sick, so I decided to go to the bathroom. I remember peeing blood and screaming like a banshee but nothing after that. Turns out I passed out from the pain and hit my head on the bathroom counter.
And that is why I lean to the left...

I've only been to the ER three times - the first was when I was 4 and I was puking clear liquid from my nose and mouth. Turned out I had a life-threatening case of pneumonia and spent two months in the hospital recuperating - AND I contracted a bacterial form of hepititis while I was there. I spent my 5th birthday in a hospital bed, completely covered by an oxygen tent. YAY!

It was about 20 years later that ER visits 2 & 3 occurred. I started having sharp pains on the right side of my chest, right under my breast. At first it was something I just dealth with, since my parents always taught me to never seek medical attention unless I was at death's door (see ER visit #1), but after a couple of weeks the pain was excruciating, to the point where I could not take a deep breath or sleep. Mr. Kolby convinced me to go to the ER, so we went, I did the whole "on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad does it hurt?" test, and then we waited for a few hours. When they finally saw me, they took x-rays and dismissed me with walking pneumonia, which I knew I did not have, but I took the prescription for antibioics anyway and went home. A week later I was back for visit #3, this time I couldn't even take shallow breaths, and I was actually close to tears, the pain was unbearable. This time during the x-rays I actually passed out and hit my head and right elbow on the floor (I tried explaining that lifting my arms above my head was murder, but they made me do it anyway), and when I woke up I was in a wheelchair covered in sweat. They then made me submit to a CT scan, complete with Xenon inhalation (how cool is that - a fricken element?!), and they still could not figure out what was wrong with me. They of course ruled out walking pneumonia, and then a pulmonary embolism. Finally one doctor theorized that perhaps I had torn a smooth muscle in my chest wall. So, satisfied they had figured me out, they sent me home with a Lortab prescription (made me vomit, I ended up living with the pain anyway). It took 3 full months to heal since my lungs were constantly stretching and reopening the tear. Fantastic. And to this day my right elbow is rather pointy and incredibly sensitive.

Visit #1 - I was learning to walk in the vicinity of my grandmother's glass coffee table. I needed stitches right between the eyes. And perhaps my scar wouldn't be so noticeable if I hadn't felt the need to rip them out. Per my mom, I walked up to her, a bleeding mess, and handed her my stitches. The sad thing is I wasn't the first or the last to have been scarred by that glass coffee table. Three other cousins have similar scars on their faces too.

Visit #2 - When I was in college I slipped on a patch of ice and my butt landed on my index finger. Apparently I was trying to cushion my fall. I probably would have walked it off, but my fingernail instantly filled with blood so I went to the campus health center. They sent me to the hospital to have my finger drained promising it would "feel so much better." Liars. I was expecting a finger soak of some sort. Yeah, right. They drilled a hole in the top of my nail. Very ouch. And to top it off I had an awesome green bruise on my behind.

Visit #3 - Four months after I got married, my mom thought it would be funny to wind up and slap me in the butt. Knowing it was coming, I tried to protect my rear by putting my left hand in front of it. Wrong move. Don't ask how it happened, but my mother ended up breaking my wedding ring finger. It swelled up instantly and my rings wouldn't come off. I drove home and soaked my hand in ice cold water, rubbed lotion and liquid soap all over it, I even (God knows where I got this idea) wrapped dental floss around it like it was damn corset - but my rings would not come off. The next morning, I went to the hospital. The Dr tried her own little brand of soap/lotion and attempted to PULL the rings off. Finally, I asked if they could just be cut off. She pulled out her little ring cutter and plied the rings off my finger. And just because I'm difficult, they said I needed X-rays and asked if I was pregnant. My husband and I were trying so I was sent to the lab for blood work just to make sure. I had to sit in the waiting room for forty-five minutes waiting for the results...it all would have been worth it if it turned out I was but alas it was negative and the X-rays showed I'd broken my finger in two places. Thanks mom. And as side note, you would not believe how aghast some women were when I said they had to cut my wedding rings off...um, they're rings people, 100% fixable, even channel set bands - my finger on the other would have been deformed for life. No thanks.

I also broke a toe the morning of my bridal shower. Awesome. However, after being told they couldn't do anything anyway, I opted to 'man up' instead of going to the hospital.

TK, almost the same thing happened to me with the bike! My sister SWEARS that I hit a mailbox with my handle bars, but I'm positive that I was in the middle of the street and that her track record as a major fucking idiot have me in the right. I got a concussion, knocked out my two front teeth (which were actually caps of my two front teeth since I had knocked them out previously - someone opened a door on my face), and if my leg wasn't broken as it wound itself into the spokes of my tire, it broke on it's way out.

My one and only visit to the ER was for an accident on the job. My summer after freshman year of college saw me lugging a year's worth of financial records to the 3rd floor attic of the administration building at my school. On my second drop-off I stepped on a no longer used trap door and fell 12 feet to the floor below.

I landed outside the president's office where a cabinet meeting was beeing held. The student VP rushed and said, "Ya know, we like to encourage students to drop in from time to time, but this.."

I sprained my shoulder, had a lump on my head the size of a lemon and required stitches on my shin. All in all, not bad for a 12 foot fall onto concrete.

Fun ER experience: accompanied a friend of mine who had a kidney stone, walked out with a date with a very cute dude who was in the ER after getting physically thrown out of a bar by a bouncer and had a fetching bruise next to his eye.

Other ER experiences: stung by about 40 wasps at a party when I was 14 (hey, cool kid!), bad car accident at 17 involving a CAT scan and all the rest. Oh, and labor - nothing, absolutely nothing, worse. I thought I was going to die.

I'm a pretty cautious (boring) person, so I don't have a good story. The closest was when I was about 5 or 6 I had to go to the ER to have a fingernail removed from my throat. I was, and still am, a chronic nail biter, but that was the only time that happened. Some long tweezers and anti-gag medication later and I was cured. My primary doc teased me about that for years.

The Mr. has a ton of good stories, but one that I accompanied him on was after a cat bite. We lived in an apartment complex where a cat named Bubba lived in the apartment above us. He was very friendly, but was easily over stimulated so after a few minutes of petting him he would suddenly turn violent on you. In only the way a cat named Bubba could. The Mr. had a moment of insanity and actually invited this cat into our apartment. The cat became ornery as usual and wouldn't leave. He picked Bubba up to toss him out and the cat got a grip on the space between his thumb and index finger and wouldn't let go. It took some shaking on his part, and a broom on my part, and the cat finally gave it up. The Mr. had some pretty wicked puncture wounds on his hand and off to the ER we went. The visit itself was pretty uneventful.

We lived in that apartment another year or so, and I spent the whole time actively trying to run down that cat with my car in the parking lot. It's the only time I've ever had the urge to kill an animal. Fucking Bubba.

Mine is recent. I went to the ER a month ago for a sinus infection, which I had never had before.

I'd thought it was a cold, but when I went to work one day, the left side of my face began to swell up, right under my ear. Scared the hell out of me because I thought it could be a cancerous lump.

So I go to the ER after work, and wait in the exam room. Everything's fine until Bitch Nurse walks in and starts asking me questions about my health. Height, weight, symptoms, basic stuff, right? So, she asks me if I'm pregnant, I tell her no. Not trying to get graphic here, but she asked about periods and the like, and I tell her that there's no way I'm pregnant.

Her response: "You're sure? How can you know when you don't even know your last period?"
Me: "I just know. I'm not avoiding anything. I'm not pregnant."
Her: "You're certain?"
Me: "Yes."
Her: "Well, I don't know."
Me: "Well, I do. I'm not pregnant."
Her: "No history of STD's?"

I didn't know how to say "Look, you arrogant bitch, I'm not fucking pregnant because I'm not fucking anybody!!!"

Stupid manners.

So, the doctor comes in, immediately recognizes sinusitis, and Bitch Nurse suddenly turns into Mary Fucking Poppins. I really think she was hoping that I was riddled with lice and syphilis.

I was more than slightly accident-prone as a kid. My worst wipeout was when I was about 12, riding my bike to a friend's house and decided to speed up and try to beat the car behind me. Didnt notice the narrow line of gravel in the middle of the road, where a pipe had been laid but not paved over yet. Flew over the handlebars landing on my knee and elbow. Luckily the car behind me was actually my friend's parents, so they drove me to my house. My older brother was there, and somehow managed to get me to the hospital (he tends to go into shock and pass out at the sight of blood, so yay for him staying conscious). Anyway, we got to the ER and I got to see the doctor immediately even though there were people waiting. I told, you accident-prone, I was there a lot and got a bit of preferential treatment. They attempted to stitch up my knee, but there was literally nothing to attach any of the flapping skin to so they smushed it over the bone the best they could (have a really odd scar now, looks kinda like Wolverine slashed at me) and sent me for an x-ray on my elbow. The doctor took a quick look at it and then sent me home saying I would be fine, just keep the multiple wounds clean and covered. I went off to camp 4 days later. 10 days after that, so 2 weeks after my accident, the camp director got a call from the hospital saying that I need to come in immediately because I had a spider fracture throughout my elbow and down my arm and any other trauma to it could have shattered the bones. I didn't go. Seriously, a kid would notice if the bones in their arm shattered. And a cast would have really ruined the rest of my camping experience. Still not sure why it took them 2 weeks to see it was fractured though...

Conrad cut off the tip of his second toe using a Garden Weasel. Apparently, the weasel proved to be a stronger tool than he.

Back when I used to bike like a fiend, I took a different route on my bike, cutting in a block earlier than usual on my way to the park (where the bike path started). Anyhoow, I looked the wrong way on a one-way, sunlight blinded me from seeing the stop sign, and I slammed into a moving car going about twenty-five miles an hour. My entire upper torso slammed into the back driver's side, my face hit the roof, and I rolled off the hood of the car and out into the street. I couldn't breathe for a good thirty seconds, and when I caught my breath and opened my eyes, all I saw was blood pouring into my lap. I took a look around for my sunglasses (prescription), and as soon as I saw them, some gawking, mouthbreathing jackass in a truck came rolling through the intersection, crushing them. I started to get up to get my shit that was both shattered and strewn across the intersection (cd player, watch, backpack, speedometer, bike lock), but my knees got all shock-wobbly and I hadda sit back down. The ambulance showed up, threw me in the back and hauled my ass to the trauma center.

These are the two best thing about the whole thing: One - right after I came out of the MRI machine, I got nauseous and horked up the Subway sandwich I had eaten about an hour earlier. As they rolled me on my side (neck brace and all) so I could puke, a random finger went straight up my ass. There was no warning, no "this might be a bit uncomfortable", no pre-insertion caress - just a finger from what I'm guessing is a burly man with large digits. I'm hoping it was a doctor... Two? The goddamed bill was through the roof, but the worst was the NINE HUNDRED DOLLAR AMBULANCE RIDE. Here's the kicker - guess how far the ambulance had to take me? TWO. FUCKING. BLOCKS.

Had they told me that in the first place, I'd have dragged myself to the ER...

When my nephew was four, he was diagnosed with leukemia (he's now six and doing awesome), so he spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. One particular day, he needed to have a lumbar puncture done and as they were putting him to sleep he told one of the nurses she had a fat vagina. I still don't know how I would have responded...

I work at a late night cookie delivery business in a college town. One of everyone's favorite tasks involves running 30-60 pounds of fresh cookie dough through an extruder (I'm sure you can already see where this is going) so that we can store the rounds in the fridge to bake them up later.

One night I was working with this girl, Tiff, who was on scooping duty with the oatmeal butterscotch chocolate chip. [[For those of you who have never seen a cookie scooping machine/extruder, let me describe it for you: there is an open stout cylindrical top with two paddles that spin horizontally. Those paddles push the dough into a hole that is flush with a heavy wheel with two round cavities. The rest of the wheel has ridges (like a dime, but MUCH bigger). After the dough travels through the magic wheel, it gets pushed and cut by a thin metal wire and dropped onto a belt where you then pick it up to put in a storage bin.]]

I was washing dishes around the corner when I hear her yell "FUCK" and double over at the waist. She presses her hands together and puts her face on one of the stainless steel work tables and can't tell us what happened, but my boss and I both knew: she stuck her finger into the area where the paddles and wheel meet.

When she finally got brave enough to let us look at it, we saw that her middle finger had been bent back at the first joint. We tried running it under water to get some of the blood off, but that just made things worse.

I raced her to the hospital in my boyfriend's shitty Honda and tried to keep her calm while the admitting (guy) nurse asked her the most ridiculous questions. I just kept thinking, this girl's finger is about to fall off... she's not really in a position to get out her insurance card! In any event, she was admitted and I went to call her parents and assure them she still had a finger.

When I came back in the ER, I asked where Tiff was and sit by here and they were like, "Oh! The cookie girl!" Yes, my friend was known as 'The Cookie Girl' for the rest of the night. And please keep in mind that this is about 12:30 in the morning... so we were among the few sober people there. The doctors come and take a look and clean her finger up with fancy stitches and cool hard-to-pronounce numb-y drugs and Tiff was good to go. She only freaked out once, when the doctor slid her entire nail out from her finger and then held it up to her face. Other than that, Tiff was out of there by 1am.

We returned to the bakery and our boss was very glad her employee still had all parts of her fingers. We decided to bring the ER guys some cookies and baked them up while Tiff recounted her story to the rest of our co-workers. After 10-12 minutes, the cookies were golden brown and delicious and we got back in the car to take the cookies to the hospital. The guys were extremely thrilled to receive fresh baked goods, but were especially wary about any of the oatmeal-type ones.

When I was about 8 or 9, I had a dangerously high fever. I remember being delirious: the soda machine in the waiting room started floating towards me, and kept asking things like, "Mom, why is the plane flying upside down?" and "You know what purple tastes like? Yellow!" To bring my fever down the doctors covered me with bags of ice and gave me an IV, but it didn't reach normal for a few hours. They feared I'd suffered brain damage, but I came out fine. I think.

My gallbladder ruptured two years ago at five o'clock in the morning. The pain was so excruciating, I couldn't breathe.I couldn't even form words. By the time I got to the hospital, I was coughing up a bit of blood. I waited for a bit, and then a male triage nurse called me back to assess my pain. He asked me all the standard questions, which my mom had to interpret from the various squeaking sounds I was able to make: rate your pain, is it dull or stabbing, etc. And then the kicker...

Male Triage Nurse: Are you sure it's not just menstrual cramps?

Me: *sits up straight after being doubled over in pain for the past two hours**through clenched teeth* I think...I know...what...those...feel like...by now...you fucking...MAN. *wipes trickle of blood off lip and chin*

Looking back at it now, I wish I'd spat on him. I think that would've gotten my point across. Especially if it was a bloody spat, which would've been way cooler. But then there was morphine, and with morphine came the unicorns and rainbows.

Aaah, gotta love my one and only emergency room visit. It was six grade, and my family still had this shitty electric can opener, and I hadn't yet mastered how to use it. I didn't manage to cut the entire lid off, so brilliant little me decided to pry the lid off with my hand. Somehow I managed to slice not the palm of my hand, but the top of it from my pointer finger to about the middle of my hand. I stared at it for a few seconds before yelling for my older sister, since my parents were (ha!) not home. Kathleen handled it like a champ, while my second older sis saw the blood and ran into her own room, slamming the door. Oh yeah, she's a trooper.
I guess I was in my pj's or something, so while Kate called my dad from work to drive me to the hospital (neither sister had a license yet,) I wrapped a kitchen towel around my hand and dressed. Poor traumatized little Erin must have been in shock because I somehow one handed-dressed myself in my bright orange long sleeve shirt with a big ol jack-o-lantern on it and some lovely navy blue wind pants. Did I mention it was nowhere near Halloween or even October?
So Dad drove me to the hospital where Mom met us, which ended up being pretty useless because she couldn't stand to be in the same room as my slashed little hand. Despite more than a few cracks about my clothes from my sisters and the doctor, the experience ended up not being a terrible one. I now have a badass scar that could be from any number of things, including getting in a knife fight in the Old Port, attacked by bears, and rescuing a box of puppies in the middle of a freeway. Oh, and I got out of writing pretty much anything for a week or two.

Grovers, you guys better figure out a way to identify who the real Grover is... because the other one is getting shot.

Grovers, you guys better figure out a way to identify who the real Grover is... because the other one is getting shot.

Posted by: jM at August 6, 2008 6:10 PM

You can sic Tila Tequila on Grover 2, thank you very much. I don't believe I've ever done anything to deserve that fate!

Boo, I am also anxiously awaiting my Pajibashirt - I was beginning to fret, but since I am not the only one whose mailbox continues to betray her, I will worry a bit less.

Grover-IL, I have also wondered about the name thing. The lovely, ass-dented Boo is a far more eloquent poster than I, and I did lurk for an awfully long time before taking the plunge and posting, but I claim the right to call myself "the other boo" based on the fact that I have been Boo since before she was born (yes, I am one of the ancient Pajibans) So far I appear to have been at least tolerated despite my impudence...

I'm loading the gun now, jM... THERE WILL BE NO BODYSNATCHERPOSTERS AROUND HERE!!!

I think "Che Grovera" kicks ass... If you don't want it I'll take it! Waitasec... nevermind. Minimus would be peeved...

Christmas eve with my fam. I gave my then fiance a pocket knife, with which he promptly slices my index finger open. My Mom and his Mom met for the first time as I got 7 stitches in my finger. So sweet! And yes, I am still married to him 16 years later!

DO NOT shoot any Grovers! God, you guys are so ridiculous! It is completely inappropriate to go around shooting people because of duplicate names. We totally need to build a cage and have a Muppet fight to the death! Holy shit this is the best day of my life! I wonder if Grovers bleed blue?

Seriously, though, you people with the duplicate names: fix that shit. How the hell do you think I ended up Sarina? Only one person in my whole life has ever called me Sarina, and he was the idiot pothead friend of my best friend's pothead boyfriend. But back in the day there were already a whole mess o' Sarahs running around here, so I became Sarina. Because I am thoughtful and generous. Okay, that's a total lie and I'm a huge bitch, but it made for way less confusion all around. Anyway, getting back to what's important: MUPPET FIGHT!!

...oh, wait. So one of 'em is Che Grovera now? No Muppet fight? Awww, goddammit.

That's a pretty sweet name, though.

Awwww...but what about the execution? *mummbles* Hmmph, I never get to murder nobody.

[folds arms, pouts, shuffles away...]

I am usually just content to read the posts and comments on this site but this Comment Diversion has given me the gumption to actually leave a comment.



Back when I was in college studying the lucrative field of acting, I was cast as Sir Toby in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." The show was being directed by a grad student that I thought was gorgeous and mostly cast with friends. Needless to say I was in a win-win kind of situation.



Without given the synopsis of the play and thereby inferring that Pajibans don't know the works of The Bard, I will cut to the quick...literally. During a fight rehearsal, my buddy Steve and I were practicing our duel with fencing rapiers.



In the fight Steve was supposed to thrust(keep your mind out of the gutters) at me with his blade and I would catch it and then spin both blades until they were crossed between us facing up. However on this fateful day, Steve decided to step forward after his thrust thereby stabbing me in my left eye....



Yeah let that marinate. I had a fricking sword stabbed in my eye!



Immediately the room goes silent. I clutch my face hoping that I can catch eye before it falls to the ground. In a moment of adrenaline infused clarity I realize that if I can still see my hand when I pull it away, then I have nothing to worry about. Of course, I also knew that if my vision was all red or was completely black then I was going to be Mr. Eye Patch for the rest of my days. I lower my hand and can see but there is blood all over my hand and someone shouts "Ah Christ!!" in the background.



I rush to the hospital and they ask me to wait in the waiting room. I was dumbfounded that the nurse could look as someone holding a hand over their eye saying that they just got stabbed in the face with a sword with such a mild expression and say "it'll be a few minutes hun."



So I sit there, paper towels from the men's bathroom helping to collect the blood coming from my ocular cavity listening to People's Court play on the television. All the while I am complaining as loudly as I dare that I might lose my eyesight so some tramp in a white uniform can smack her gum and look unenthusiastic for 20 minutes.



After seeing the doctor I found out the sword had sliced open my eyelid and had done some blunt damage(the tip was flattened on the sword) to my eyesocket. I could either get stitches or some type of ointment that I would have to put on the eyelid every few hours.



I still can't believe it. It's either one of the worst stories because I kind of over-reacted in the waiting room or one of the best because I took a sword in the eye and my eye called it a bitch.

i have two:

i used to skateboard a lot. one time i was doing some really basic stuff in my driveway while waiting for some friends to pick me up. i landed with one foot on, one foot off, which catapulted my skateboard directly into my chin. jeebus rice i've never seen so much blood. i guess all the capillaries in that part of my face were the cause. anyway, my little brother called 911 and an ambulance and fire truck came. the fire truck was necessary because of the vast quantities of blood that had to be hosed off of the driveway. i went to the hospital and got 22 stitches in my chin, including two inside my mouth since my skateboard went all the way through.

my second story is about my first time drinking (i mean really drinking). i was a sophmore in high school and hadn't done anything like that before. it was december in new england so it was cold. we went to a little league stadium (three friends and i) and split a half gallon of vodka in about half an hour. i was fine for ten minutes and i don't remember the rest. apparently, between my last memory and the hospital i tried to crawl across a major street and i peed my pants, which froze me to a bench and forced the emts to cut my clothes off. i woke up in the hospital next to my buddy, who had the same thing happen to him. we both had catheters. those things have a big ball at the end to keep them from slipping out your pee hole. they took mine out while i was conscious. that shit hurt soooooooo fucking bad.

A few years ago I was living in England and went out with my boss and new co-workers. Got smashed and ended up making out with my boss and during said make-out session, fell over, smashed my face into the bar and ended up with a concussion and stitches. Managed to puke all over the doctor and they thought I was French, for my drunken, concussed babble apparently sounded like French. Next day I had to walk home in my whore clothes from the previous night sans my underwear, which they took away from me.

NOT THE PANDAS!!!!!

They have...other uses.

I'd rather not think about any of my personal ER visits; however, during my sophomore year of college, my roommate had a wicked case of mono. Her fever hit 105 one night--the night before midterms--and we had to take her to the ER. I ended up spending the night in the ER with her while I studied for my exams. I guess that's a little insensitive, but she was unconscious and didn't even know I was there. She ended up having to leave school that semester. I made a B on the test.

The duck-in-the-leg story made me laugh my ass off. Three stories for you today.

When I was a wee one still living in England (so under 5), my mother was ironing. I decided to go pull on the cord of her iron while she was on the phone or something. Yeah, the iron landed on my hand. I don't really remember the ER visit, but I vaguely remember the bandages.

5 or 6 years later, I'm at a friend's house (we were in Canada by this point). Her dog had grabbed something we didn't want him to eat, so in my infinite wisdom, I grabbed him and pulled him up so she could pull the thing out of his mouth. Yeah, he tore my throat open. 7 stitches in the ER, but the doc told me I was very brave and that they had to sedate a girl older than me because she wouldn't stop screaming. Then, when I went to get the stitches out, the nurse told me, 'wow, an inch over and you wouldn't be here!' ... Fuck you, lady.

Another 5 years later, I'm at a horse show. Now, I was PMSing and I didn't want to be there in the first place. My instructor tried to force me into a higher-level class but I refused. So I'm in a bad mood and my horse is young and inexperienced. I was in the warm-up ring and she kept refusing this one jump. And I got so damn pissed, I forced her towards it, leaning way too far forward in my attempt to just get over the fucking thing.

Yeah, she stopped dead and I went flying face-first into the jump. I remember starting to fall, then nothing, then I was on the ground and my glasses were hanging off my face funny, so I grabbed them and threw them away (and I'm blind without them). My cheek felt all swollen, so I was touching it, and then I hear my mom going, 'I think she broke her cheekbone.' I screamed and my instructor told her to shut up. I was actually pretty calm after that though, the ambulance medic was impressed.

So we get to the ER, and I've got a neck-brace and I'm complaining because it was making my pinned-up hair dig into the back of my neck and it hurt. More than my face, actually, which just felt sort of numb/slightly burning. Go for X-rays, get asked if I'm pregnant, snort in derision.

They send me on home with some Tylenol2 and a square face. Massive bruising. A week later, I'm back to jumping. And then the doctor calls: don't ride, you've cracked three bones and jarring them could make them split!

Long story short, I have nerve damage there, a few scars along the side of my nose, and painful sinuses. Creepiest thing? I looked up at the ambulance as I was walking into the ring and thought, 'That's going to come out for somebody today.'

My next-five-years accident was probably when I thudded a knife into my finger while cutting the plastic off a hairbrush, but I refused to go to the ER for that.

Forgot to mention that I sat in the ER with blood leaking out of my throat for THREE FUCKING HOURS before my mom went and screamed at the nurse at the desk.

2nd degree burns to both boobs. I have vertical scars from the bbq that I drunkenly fell on! All my guy friends insist that I "jail" them with my rack. It`s a new move derived from motorboating.

I`m also a Canadian, Alli. Thankfully all that burn ointment was free.

When I was 20 I played on an indoor co-ed soccer team. I hadn't really played soccer before so I tried to make up for it by being really aggressive. During one game I started to go after an opponent when a teammate decided to do the same and we collided. I am 5'3" tall and was 120 pounds. He was damn near 6' and heavier than I. When we hit, I was knocked about 6 feet into the air and landed on my back. I felt a pop followed by pain shooting from my ass crack and up my back, which was then followed by numbness and shock. Not wanting to look like a bitch-ass girl, I sucked it up and played the rest of that half and all of the second. I hobbled off of the field at the end of the game and went home.
The next day when I had to roll out of bed because I couldn't sit up, I laughingly informed by cousin and aunt that I might need to go to the ER. I took a shower and we were off. ER chairs are super comfy anyway, so sitting in it with the pain I was having was magical in its sucktitude. At this point we were pretty sure that I had broken my ass, which we told the ER staff. So they decided that I should ride in a wheelchair to the exam room. A wheelchair without foot rests. So I got to ride in a wheelchair while holding my feet off of the ground with a more than likely BROKEN ASS. X-rays were equally as fun since the tech made me climb onto the table for the x-rays.
After the x-rays, my aunt and I went back into a room to wait for the doctor. They made me climb onto the bed in that room as well. Finally, the doctor comes in with an x-ray and you can clearly see that my coccyx has broken off of my tailbone. The doctor tells us this and my aunt begins laughing hysterically and yells, "You broke your butt! Can I have that x-ray? I wanna frame it and hang it in the living room!"
Another lovely aspect of this injury was that they were out of the butt-donuts you have to use and I had to use a child's pool innertube to sit on.

I was able to walk about a week later, btw, no major damage to any ligaments after MRI and such - my knee is fine now but I probably should never go into a moshpit again as it sometimes still kinda buckles... and could probaby dislocate again quite easily.

I mourn this.

I've got nothing.

Why must I always be so late to the party?

I used to say I've never been to the emergency room for myself (I accompanied my broken brother all the time), but realized I have been. When my car was hit and flipped the day before Christmas Eve, I was whooshed to the ER where I insisted I was late for my date, but willing to introduce the doctor to my friend. Or the time my dad ran over me, took me to the hospital and said he'd meet me in the cafeteria as I hopped to check myself in.

My best ER Story: Honeymooners.

The fourth day into our hasty honeymoon after eloping, I felt a little queasy as we played in the ocean. Queasy gave way to pain, nausea and dizziness. By the time we got back to the hotel, I could barely walk, but was sure I could sleep it off. Twenty minutes later, the hotel receptionist was offering to send a doctor to our room for a small fee. She offered to call 911 when I stopped screaming in pain fueled rage. 8 hours, a CAT scan, blood test and various other 'tests' later, it was determined that I had a ruptured cyst that had caused hemorrhaging. About 3 pints worth of hemorrhaging into my abdominal cavity which was putting so much pressure on my organs that I couldn't breath. I was alert enough to give the look of death to the nurse who was rubbing my new husbands arm, giggling through her bad French as she tried to sympathize with him for his ruined honeymoon. (HELLO!)

A surgery, few pints of blood, two nights at the hospital and a bottle of Vicodin later, I was a doped up, slightly anemic version of myself as I watched my husband board a plane back to France.

I stuck an un-popped popcorn kernel so far up my little brother's nose the doctor had to place his foot on the exam table for leverage.

i was walking up the stairs to my apartment. i was wearing some PJ bottems that were very similar to those worn by MC Hammer in his prime. i triped on the pant leg and landed my knee right into the edge of a step. i sat and started to rub my knee untill i realized my index finger was INSIDE my knee. i lifted my pant leg and there was huge gaping gash/hole. it looked like an alien's vagina.

I hate blood and guts and am extremely cautious, so not only do I have very few injuries to report, I can't really read this list without becoming nauseous. Here is my list:

1) As an infant, I temporarily stopped breathing. Apparently my throat was clogged with mucus.

2) Well now, this is embarrassing. Um. The only emergency room visit I can personally remember was for suicide threats. It was after a particularly nasty break-up sophomore year of college, and my brother (a senior) had to haul me in to the campus health center, then the ER, with a combination of threats and good old orders.

so does the muppet fight mean I have to fight the original Anastasia Beaverhausen, whom I did not realize existed until I read an Eloquents post which an Anastasia Beaverhausen had a quote on and I said to myself, "hm. I don't remember writing that, and I'm not really that eloquent, besides" so then I started adding Jr. to my name?

I mean, I added the Jr. as soon as I realized it... Perhaps you guys should rename me! Oh, wait, no, that's a terrible idea. Pardon me, I've had some wine...

Well, this is a bit silly and embarrassing, but... once upon a time I had a tongue piercing and over time the saliva in my mouth had stripped the wire groves that hold the balls on. I swallowed a mouthful of juice and the piercing went with it. I wasn't allowed to lay down or bend much until the metal er... passed, as they were afraid it could rupture my intestines or other vital bits and cause septic shock. Wanna guess whether or not I let that piercing grow over?

Well there's only one way to settle this Ana(s)...

[loads a single bullet into a six shooter...spins the cylinder]

Try not to stain the carpet.

So, Flannery, I see that you suffer from a similar affliction to my son's: cramming foreign objects into nasal passages. At least you were smart enough to do it to someone else rather than yourself. Hopefully this occurred when you were a child. :-)

14 years old ---caught a close-range line-drive baseball with my forehead. was wearing hat backwards. Concussion, and perfect incision above my eyebrow from the force of the ball driving the plastic strap into my head. knocked out. brought to emergency room.

18 years old ----fainting spells, and severe migraines let doc to suspect meningitis. so guess who got a SPINAL TAP for NO REASON

A concussion, a chin slashed open to the bone, and being convinced I was going to die.

But the really fun part was the accident: while I was riding my bike, a car ahead of me stopped abruptly, and I crashed into the back. The driver, who was A NURSE IN UNIFORM threw my twisted bike and me into her car, dumped me on my parents doorstep, and floored it. No name given, of course.

I'm convinced that if my parents hadn't been home, she would have left me there, alone.

And I know that has nothing to do with me being in the emergency room in the first place, but it's just a...uh, rank story, not interesting, just gross.

I'm struck by the recurring theme in these stories of the indestructibility of little brothers. Had I known this fact sooner he might have endured less suffering...or more, since I tend not to back down from a challenge.

And now for something completely different.

Embrace yer new handle, Anna von Beaverplatzhausen-jr-in-defer...-what-the-hell?! The natives are restless in these here parts, ya see, and the ones they call Slim and jM are real twitchy-like.

Tracer this is a little late but yes, my dad used the lost arm and leg in 'Nam all the freaking time. At one point in my life I had a broken ankle, a broken wrist and a broken thumb (so the cast went over my thumb and I couldn't hold the crutches)...my dad said, "Crawl...that's what I did in the jungle". I had a very rough childhood, I never got away with anything just because my father was blown up by a land mine.

PS. Pajibans, I just found out I'm having a baby boy! I know there are a ton of other expecting ladies on here, do you know what you're having yet?

Congrats Melina! We just found out on Monday that my wife is expecting again. It was her birthday, too. Awww.

Tyburn Blossom that reminds me (sort of) about those Canadian accident prevention commercials that were so controversial. Where the girl in the kitchen slips on some grease carrying a huge pot of boiling water and you see her flesh sloughing off her face. Man I love those twisted commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN2gpRcFKAQ&NR=1

Made me jump the first time I watched it. The construction worker one is good too, but not as shocking.

I see that, Che Grovera... thanks for the warning.

No need for the bullets, jM! I've been graced with a new name (thanks for that, lordhelmet)! There'll be no carpet stains today! Oh, well, there probably will be, but not from my splattered brains, thankyouverymuch.

Sadly, I have no ER stories. There was one time my little brother ([keeping with the theme] not so little at 6' and a couple hundred pounds; he must have been around 16 at the time) had a broken leg, plaster cast from ankle to thigh, and stepped on a nail which went completely through his OTHER foot. It was a big nail, too, sticking out of both the top and the bottom of his foot. Naturally, he was upstairs when he did this, so my 5', 100 pound mother and I (5'7", around 125 at the time) are attempting to carry this giant boy and his incredibly heavy cast down 2 flights of stairs, since he can't put any weight on either foot, and out to the car. He wound up having to sit on the steps, lifting himself down each one at a time using his arms, with me & mom each holding up a leg until we got him to the bottom. Godtopus, that took a long time. Then we had to take all the kitchen chairs and put them in a row through the house, out the door, to the driveway, moving each one to the end as we went. Yikes. That poor kid was so sweaty and pale by the time we got him in the car, I thought he was going to pass out.We didn't go to the ER, though, we went to the pediatrician. They pretty much just yanked out the nail and gave him a tetanus shot and a band-aid. He was a trooper, though, making with the jokes the whole way.

Oh, and Mara, I'm totally feeling you with the double ear infection. I had that last fall (complained the whole time, "Who gets an ear infection past the age of 6!?") and I thought I was going to die. That was, in fact, most unpleasant. I vowed to never be angry with a screaming child again. It worked for about 6 months.

My own ER experiences have thankfully been few and far between--one car accident (folks, don't let your senile old grandma drive, no matter how much it hurts her feelings) and one work accident. I was working in a lab with glassware that tended to fuse together and require force to separate, but was also very fragile. A piece broke off, punctured my clear glove and then my palm. It really wasn't too bad, except that as soon as a drop of blood hit the glove, it spread over the entire surface, giving my hand a gruesome appearance. My easily panicked coworker ran screaming to get my boss who insisted on escorting me to the ER. He felt for some reason that we should keep the glove on. And because the hospital was so close, we walked. Startled heads kept swiveling in our direction, and people crossed the street to avoid us. I felt like a walking freak show. The cut didn't even need stitches.

Lolly--dear God. I grimaced and clutched my pelvis when reading your story. "Oops!" indeed. I don't know how you refrained from kicking him in the face.

I made a mistake.

I had friends visiting on a Friday night and sliced my finger open on a kukri knife (don't ask). It couldn't stop the bleeding, so one friend went with me to the ER on a Friday night at 10:30pm and it was empty. We were processed right away, taken into a room and my finger shot up with Lidocane, and within minutes a doctor was getting ready with the needle.

And I said, "Wow, I can't believe how quiet you are for a Friday night."

Both the doctor and my friend (who works in operating rooms calibrating pacemakers) said in unison, "Don't say that!"

Too late. The howls of MULTIPLE ambulances suddenly filled the air as the results of a 4 car accident rolled in. It took them so long to get back to me that I needed another shot of lidocane when they did the job at 4:30am.

So, yeah, don't tempt fate in the ER.

High fevers? Both times I have went to the ER I was running at least a temp of 104.5 F. The best was when I went in with a UTI, a fever of 105F, chills, and a blanket wrapped around me in August in the deep south.

ER Nurse: Do you have a fever?
Me: Cold....so very cold....
ER Nurse: Let's take your temp....
.....
ER Nurse: That's not right...It says 106.5....Let's try that again.
.....
ER Nurse: Hmmm...now it says 106...Have you taken anything?
Me: NO...Give me pain meds.
ER Nurse: *touches my forehead, which is apparently hot enough to fry things on*
Hmmm...How about we get that fever down and then we will talk about the pain?
Me: Let's get me something so that I can sit upright or at least another way other than in the fetal position.

Needless to say, I only got Tylenol and meds. The pain was fairly substantial.

The other time was with a reaction to penicillin. I was very small and apparently melted tubs of ice because I was so hot to the touch.

Lesson to be learned: If your skin is hot to the touch and you are wrapped up in a blanket in the middle of summer, you tend to get waited on fairly efficiently.

Uuuhm, first visit aged...I was three, I'm told, and while waiting for my older brother and sister to be picked up from school, I was swinging on some gate.
The thing fell on me and sliced through the skin beside my eye leaving approximately a milimetre of skin between the actual edge of my eye and the cut.
I was rushed to the hospital and given temporary butterfly stitches while the plasitc surgeon was called and apparently relaxed enough (I am WEIRD with injuries, I freak out at first if its painful but then totally chill out after about fifteen minutes) that I was contededly crawling around on the floor when the dude finally arrived. He had a look and decided any surgery or proper stitches would basically ruin me and he actually said I was such a beautiful wee girl he didnt want to do that. Which was sweet.
My family has a tradition for eye injuries actually, my oldest brother cut his eye with a borken toy gun, my sister has a scar on her eyelid from falling into a thorn bush and my other brother has one from being thrown against a sink by an unruly friend.
Only the twelve year old 'baby' of the family has no eye scar...but we'll get him.

Second ER visit, I waaaaaas....eleven, twelve, and had been walking horses for a local stable.
I hadn't been around horses for about six months and in that time developed an allergy to them, apparently.
My whole left side of my face swelled up, my eye completely closed, so my dad took me to the hospital where we waited for, pfft...six hours to be given an antihistamine and told to ice it.
Fuckers.
I WAS told that had I touched my mouth with this horsie stuff, my throat would have swelled closed in the same time as my eye did(a matter of minutes) and I would be deader than disco. Which was why they kept me waiting six hours to be seen.
I think thats it, I'm pretty lucky with inuries, I have freakishly tough bones.
Though as I say that, I'm nursing a painfully sprained wrist that a week on from the the actual fall that caused it,still hurts like a sonofabitch.

Which is nice.

*Melina*

I'm expecting a baby girl around Christmas :o)

Okay, guys, I am SO sorry but I'm....I'm laughing at your pain.

Tyburn Blosson, god DAMN...there's literally nothing I can say about those stories other than I apoligise, profusely, for laughing quite so hard( the visual of a teeny children being chased down a hill by a hoard of marauding, mangled, fowl? Is incredible)

I have told my stories of my own visits, I have thought of a few more that are not mine but are impressive

My baby brother, the eye-scarless twelve year old, was and is the sweetest of my third generation but not really since we married into more Irish family, we're all hard partying, hard fighting drinkers and brawlers, he's a little sweetheart with the cutest face, ever.
Any way, we have dishwashers with the pull down door, so it sits horizontal to the ground, and incidentally, our oven door does the same. Just keep that in mind.

So Sheamus, thats my little brother, he had this habit of, when ever a load of dishes was done, and the door was laying flat, he would run and lay on the door, because it would still be warm and he liked to lay on it.
And we'd let him because it was about the only thing he did that could be arguably called 'naughty' even though it wasn't naughty at all.
So one fine summer day, my mum had used our oven to cook a roast, which meant the thing had been on for several hours, and was hot as fucking hell to even walk past.
My mum, with Shea running around the kitchen nearby being generally beautiful and adorable all over the place, opens the oven to remove the roast and Shea see's an open, flat door and thinks its the same as the dish washer.
He goes haring over and throws himself on this searingly hot oven door and promplty STICKS, screaming blue murder all the while, while my poor mother who cant bear to see any of us in pain ever, has to peel him off. He burnes the palm and wrist of one hand and a long strop across the bottom of his belly but thank god there was no infection or anything. The scars where gnarly as but have long since faded but it was his first big hospital visit and he was in so much obvious pain he was seen to in record time.

Then there is my other little brother(I'm the middle of five) who as a toddler was with my grandmother (got one about her) at a beach in Tenerife and was paddling in the rock pools, even sitting down in them and soaking his nappy(diaper)
He started crying and screaming that his bottom was sore so grandma took him home, then later to the doctor, when she saw the vibrant WHITE rash and raised skin on his bum cheeks.
The doctor was gobsmacked and said Joel had sat down on an incredibly poisonus type of sea weed that given his size and weight would have probably killed him, had he been wearing actual trunks, or had been bare arsed. Only his nappy saved his life!

Grandma May, this woman had the worst luck when it came to injuries, she fell off a bus a week before we where due to go on holiday and had a lump on her leg so big and painful that she had to have a wheelchair the entire vacation.
And yes, you'll be glad to know my siblings and I suffered more than a few bruises thanks to dicking around in the chair.
Well one other summer, she was in a patio bar having a drink and sat down in her chair, which was dangerously close to the edge of the step. The chair moved that inch as she sat down and fell right off the step sending this seventy four year old woman tumbling to the ground. Her arm audubly and visibly broke but being harder than a coffin nail my Grandmother toughed it out for three days before she could find some one to take care of the kids( she was there with my other siblings while my parents where at home with those of us still at school...the UK has weird holiday systems) so she could go and spend the day at the hospital.

She also had a knack for slicing her fingers the FUCK open when cutting food, a knack I've inherited; Just a few weeks ago I just about sliced the top of my thumb off. My mum slapped a band aid on it and said I'd be fine. It bled for five days but eventually closed and all thats left is a faint scar.

But the ER Queen is my best friend Jay, she's so accident prone I think she may be suicidal.
When she was, pfft, eight or nine, she was on holiday in Lanzarote and waiting in line to ride a swing thing at a water park. Long story short she was bumped by some other kid and fell awkwardly on her elbow, breaking it.
But breaking it is so easy a word to use...when she got back to her feet(she also bumped her head, more on that later), her elbow had BENT THE WRONG WAY so she was touching her own shoulder from behind. Being in shock, and so numb, Jay grabbed the limb and snapped it back into place, prompting the shattered bone to yes, bend back its right way, but also burst through the skin of her elbow/upper arm joint area.
That's about when she lost her wick and started freaking out.

You know that film about the kid who breaks his shoulder and has it strapped up like he's always waving hello to people? Her arm was like that for months.

The Scar is EPIC and she cant even watch ME touch MY OWN elbow, let alone have people go near the scar.
Then four years later, she and her family are living in Spain for a year for her dads work and she's in the shower one day. She collapses and has an epileptic fit and is told later she was found by her then six year old (but emotionally four year old) little brother, who actually had the sense to sit under her violently shaking head and keep her from braining her self on the bathroom floor. She was how ever, nude, and was taken to the hospital unconcious, and nude, was examined, nude, and woke up wearing a tissue thin gown, remembering only that she'd been in the shower and was now here, so at some point had been seen and moved, nude.
She was diagnosed as epileptic, they THINK caused by that elbow destroying fall, a minor, un noticed brain injury that over the years caused the illness!!
She's also prone to slicing her fingers open, a trait we share.

I once sliced off a chunk of my little finger on a broken pool light, so deeply i could actually see bone. My mother, again, told me I was fine and sent me on my way. The scar is cool as fuck.

And...that might be oh no wait.

My mum once fell down our, at the time, uncarpeted stairs, her whole weight(at about eleven and half stone) landing repeatedly on her upper bum/lower back, coxix tailbone area.
She ended up, (I'm giggling even as I type this) splayed out on her bed, face down, in terrible pain.

It was funny at the time but resulted in a pinched nerve in her back that left her bed ridden for two and half months is sickeing pain and to this day gives her gyp.

But at the time? Hilarious.

I once got a call from my (now ex) boyfriend saying that he had a sudden sharp pain in his side and that something had "broken" inside of him and he needed to go to the emergency room. So I headed over there at midnight, took him to the ER and slept there until about 5 or so only to have them send him home with nothing but an injection of pain meds and the sneaking suspicion that I had stayed out all night for what was probably a gas bubble or a pinched nerve.

He always was a wuss.

Two years ago, after having visited my husband's family in the West Bank (yes, the West Bank), we were preparing to cross the brige to Jordan in order to return to Canada. As we were waiting in the bus to approach Israeli security at Jericho, we heard loud booms and could see smoke coming from the centre of the city. After waiting on the bus in the desert heat for about 2 hours, we were bussed back to the Palestinian municipal building in Jericho to wait for passage. My son (then 3) had been slightly ill from travelling, food, etc., but my 10 month old daughter started to become feverish. After about 3 hours in the building in Jericho with two sickly kids and increasingly loud explosions, we found out that the Israelis were attacking the Palestinian prison in Jericho in order to capture one of the prisoners there. With the assistance of a very kind municipal official, we were taken to a hotel and tried to bed down for the night while the bombing continued intermittently. At about 3 in the morning both of my kids had raging fevers (about 102 degrees) that would not go down with conventional medicine. So we had to take a conspicuous target - an ambulance - into the centre of the city, past the bombed out prison, to the hospital. It was fine - the bombing had ceased some hours earlier - but I think I got several new grey hairs that night.

Being an art student (this is at RISD), I've been surrounded by spectacular and horrific injuries. I've thusfar managed to avoid them myself, knock on wood, but I've seen some greats...

The most common injury, of course, is slicing off the tip of your finger with an exacto-knife. The Rhode Island ERs always know when it's time for finals when you see yet another raving, bloodshot-eyed Architecture major who's been awake for three days, and possibly on coke, who's more pissed about the fact that he got blood on his foamcore model than the fact that he's missing a chunk of his finger.

The BEST injury is from my freshman-year roommate she got while taking Into to Glass-Blowing.

You'd think that the kind of injury you'd get from glass-blowing would be horrible burns from molten glass, right? Well, in this case you'd be right about the horrible burns part but not about it being from molten glass.

The class had been making plaster molds of everyday objects to then use to cast replicas in glass. Well, my roommate decides to ignore the teacher's very specific instructions TO NOT USE THE PLASTER TO CAST BODY PARTS. She figures she knows better, and sticks her hand deep into a bucket of plaster.

Bad idea.

Most plaster heats as it sets. It's a chemical reaction, and the kinds of things you do use to cast body parts-- like algenate-- are very different. So by the time my roommate realizes the plaster is starting to feel too hot to handle, the fucking thing has set around her hand and she can't pull it out.

Cue to her having a panic attack and attempting to beat the bucket of plaster off her hand. Pretty soon the entire class noticed what was happening, but it took them twenty agonizing minutes to chisel her hand out while it cooked.

By the time her hand was free, she had second-degree burns and the kinds of blisters that'd give you nightmares. One was over an inch long. Barf.

The ER just shakes their heads at us.

Tati, I SAT on a exacto knife. Stone sober.

And by "prove" I actually mean "disprove".

Stupid studying for Federal Court of Appeals making me stooopider.

Picture it if you will...

General geek type gets it into his head to start a collection of asian weaponry. He buys a samurai sword (an actual one, not a replica cause it has to be, you know, real) dropping a ton of cash in the process.

Receives said sword and suddenly convinces himself that he is indeed a samurai because it is the owning of the weapon that makes you one. Waves it around like and idiot and then takes the classic stance for sheathing the sword. He was feeling pretty good about himself until he sheathed his sword through his thigh and not into the scabbard.

Priceless 'oh no' face before the panic sets in - try convincing someone with a sword through their leg that they should remain immobile and just wait for the ambulance to arrive so as not to sever the femoral artery - missed the femoral artery by a mile BTW - lucky for him. Lots of 'you idiot' faces later and some sutures...all fixed.

Dandabelle, that would totally be me, except with a machete.

I've only been to the ER I think once, and it was because I twisted my ankle. Fun fact? I was wearing bright green Christmas socks and a gym uniform because I happened to twist it during one of our "powerwalks" led by the menopausal bitch of a gym teacher.

Also, that day was the day that my mom and stepfather had seen Napoleon Dynamite for the first time, and were spewing "GOSH!" and "FRIGGIN IDIOT!"s at me.

We take the Casualty to it's inevatable conclusion in the UK, you all have ER, the TV show?

We've had the TV show Casualty for near enough thirty years it seems like

as for being hit by cars;

I was never taken to the hospital but my mum once reversed the SUV into me and knocked me on my ass pretty hard

knocked the wind our of me, but I lived, I'm pleased to say