Grrl Power #1372 – Benefoot Arnpod
This admittedly jarring transition does sort of back-flow into the previous scene eventually. Trust me.
Frix did ask Peggy if she wanted to close up the scars on her face and fix her ear, and she said that she’d have to agonize over it for a few weeks before making a decision.
Living with something like a lost limb for years would take a minute to adjust to if you suddenly… found the limb, so to speak. That said, I think your brain would probably adjust pretty quickly to it being back. Depending on how long it was gone and what age you were when you lost it/got it back.
Back in high school, I jammed up my big toe real good (I won’t go into details as I don’t want to give everyone a terminal case of the willies) Suffice to say, I wound up with an ingrowing toenail that I really hoped would self correct, but I wound up having to deal with it eventually. It involved, as I recall, using a cotton swab with some acid on it to kill part of the root of the nail so it wouldn’t grow back wrong like an unattended beaver tooth. The toe was anesthetized and the worst part of the experience was getting a cramp in my hip while the doctor was doing his thing. But I still lived with a painful ingrown toenail for like… I don’t recall… a year, maybe? At the time, I knew I would never forget the daily pain and limping, but today, like… 35 years later? I honestly don’t remember which foot it was. You’d think one of my toenails would be slightly narrower, but I guess the root actually did eventually recover, just not as a dummkopf pointing in the wrong direction.
I guess that points to the plasticity of the (relatively young) brain. Also a year spent limping is different than multiple years of not having a leg, so it will probably take Peggy a little while to adjust.
Everyone share your grievous bodily injury stories! Yes, Opus the Poet. You have mentioned getting run over by a truck, but feel free to regale us again. It is possible you “win” at… you know, things-that-should-have-killed-me-but-didn’t stories.
I think the toe thing is my worst one. I’ve never broken a bone. I used to drink about half a gallon of milk a day when I was a teenager. I think that was the only thing I drank at the time. Oh, you know, I say I’ve never broken a bone, but there was a time when I was trying to unwind a swingset swing in a playground, and I jumped up to swat at it, and my foot came down right on the edge of the trench that gets scooped out under the swing, and my foot went 90° sideways. The bottom of my foot was facing the side of the other foot, basically. I’m pretty sure the underside of my ankle came into direct contact with the ground. That was in college, and like a dumbass, I never went and got it looked at. I just limped my way to class the next day. I don’t know if I broke a bone, but I definitely snapped some tendons or ligaments. That ankle is still a little bit misshapen to this day. Though during my peak gym rat days, I was still able to do the full 300lb stack of the standing calf machine, plus another 180 from 45 lb plates hanging somewhat precariously off the hand grips. Like a full set, not a 1 rep max. So it sort of healed up okay. That ankle isn’t that stable with lateral movement though, if I’m honest. Good thing I don’t have a gender driven expectation or desire to wear high heels.
I also stepped on something living in Galveston that left a centimeter barbed… quill? Spine? Something, right in the center of the ball of my foot. That was the only time I ever got stitches besides getting my wisdom teeth out and after shoulder surgery from fucking up my shoulders in the gym. Man, come to think of it my feet have had a hard time.
The vote incentive is finally done!
The update to the TWC image is pretty minor, but the Patreon version has the bonus comic as well as nude versions. I will strive to make the next one more timely.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Well, the pain receptors work. Yay?
That is a good thing. The alarm system is well integrated, so she is immediately aware when something goes wrong. A malfunctioning alarm system, such as with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis (CIPA), would not properly alert you that you have been injured. Be glad, pain is telling you that you have a problem that should be dealt with.
I think I would prefer a small flashing red indicator in the upper left corner of my sight, which I could focus on to gain more detailed information about the problem.
Although if pain is necessary, I would at least prefer the amount of pain directly correlate to the damage incurred, so that a stubbed toe doesn’t feel more painful than a genuinely severe injury.
An interrupt signal should INTERRUPT. If you can easily ignore it it’s not doing its job.
Exactly. Ignoring that stuff is what adrenaline is for.
I’ve had enough experience playing video games to be able to say for certain that if I merely had a small flashing red indicator in a corner of my sight which I could focus on to get more detailed information about the problem, I’d probably be dead by now.
I do not feel like I’m competent to address the relative pain thing other than to say I think I survived a few of my injuries because after the initial pain, the injury went numb, letting me function well enough to get to safety. Which, thinking about it, was a little like that indicator thing you were talking about, but not tied to a separate sensation system and didn’t potentially depend on me having some kind of language function.
I broke my leg last month. After the paramedics put me back on my feet I got my breakfast as usual walking around the kitchen. After breakfast I remembered I left my phone on the nightstand in the bedroom on the other end of the house and walked to get it and when I got it I pivoted the exact wrong way on the broken leg and down I went. fortunately I had broken the fibula and not the tibia or femur, but that usually take major blunt force trauma to break those, something like a truck going 60 MPH.
That’s also how leprosy does damage. It doesn’t directly cause body parts to fall off, but it kills nerves where the temperature isn’t very high, so basically the extremities, so you don’t notice injuries.
I had crushed two vertebra in a car accident and had to relearn how to walk. I have spotty feeling in my legs at best. I don’t feel pain, just a mild burning sensation that tells me to check my legs. My lower legs are covered in scars from (mostly) minor injuries over the years. When our cat brushes against one of my legs, I don’t feel like like normal, think big ants crawling… kinda creepy to be honest. I had also shattered a bone in my foot during the same accident and I don’t know it until the doctor came in to put a cast on, the bone was pretty much gone, the doctor told me he lost count at 33 pieces in the x-ray.
A former girlfriend was numb from the shoulders on down due to a case of spina bifida when she was young. She said she would not realize when she got cut until she happened to notice the blood dripping. Although she sure seemed to feel it just fine whenever I touched her in various places. :-{>
It was the start of a long and bitter rivalry
pinky toe vs the rest of the world
Let’s see, do I talk about the slipped disc in my lower back which squeezed the central nerve bundle into an hourglass shape, or the perforated cornea which required multiple surgeries while awake …
Well I could regale you with the fun and sensations of undiagnosed osteoporosis and cracking a vertibrea in my back thinking it was just muscles. Twice. So you end up unable to do much at all and gaining weight. Then when you finally stop having blindsiding pain. You try to do things you think you can do and the minute you push yourself WHAM you are back in horrible pain unable to move more than minimal good thing health care is free right? So I got the news at the clinic that I had osteoporosis and I got Medicare a doctor and good care they offered pain meds but I specifically asked for non opioids. My journey hasn’t ended but I’m better now than before.
Ruptured the disc at L4-L5 3 times – in ’92, ’95, and ’20. The most agonizing, debilitating pain imaginable. The second time was the worst and because of the *&^%$9 HMO took MONTHS to get them to do an MRI and get me into the hospital for a laminectomy. I’m still left with a miniscule amount of discomfort in my lower back and down my right leg, although it can sometimes get aggravated a bit depending on what position I get myself twisted into in bed or turning my hips.
Always a shame to remember what you didn’t like when you get something back.
A very Sydney moment. Hey Dave, don’t worry – human brains are terrible at remembering laterality. Up and down? We’re great. Left and right? We suck. Both my feet are severely flat and the way the bones grew caused tension to end up on the wrong tendons and muscles, causing daily pain and grade-S+ cramps. I got very painful bone surgery, one foot each summer over two years. I was 17 and it was less than 10 years ago, so you’d think I would remember which one went first – because it came with one month of nothing but pain, a wilting leg, relearning how to walk over two-three more months, etc… but nope. I really can’t be sure. It feels eerie.
The worst injury?
Spiral microfractures in my right ulna and radius after a bad and unfortunate fall.
The busted elbow and wrist were sorted in about 4-6 months, but the microfractures…
The thing about those is that they are too “clean” and small so that the body doesn’t recognise the bones as damaged.
But they do compromise the strength and stucture of the bone so putting torque on the bones *HURTS*.
Just opening a door torgue, nothing special.
And you *need* to cause yourself that pain to give your body the signals that tells it to repair those fractures…
And then wait for the repairs to finish..
And then do it again… and again… Deliberately… because else it simply won’t heal…
In my case for two years before I was able to wring a teatowel again without flinching..
Honestly… I’d have prefereed to have plain broken that arm.. Wasn’t a fun experience..
My self-inflicted injuries were both minor in comparison.
Working in a drive-in freezer – with a wheeled rack of flash-frozen product – the wheels were stuck so when I finally got it to move my one finger got smashed between the rack and a shelving 2×4. X-ray showed one finger bone broken but it healed after being immobilized for a few weeks.
Just groggily walking in the middle of the night to the bathroom smashed my one big toe into a step up from the living room and murdered the nail bed on my big toe somehow. It went black and then fell off a week later – but eventually grew back good as new.
I don’t recall if this has been discussed before, but…did you name Peggy because of the peg-leg or did you decide she’d lose the leg because of the name? Is someone who goes by “Peg” tempting fate?
I, too, had a run-in with a swingset that did result in a broken ankle. I’ve broken both and sprained both (four separate incidents, all self-inflicted), but they taught me a lot about my pain tolerance and how freakishly fast my bones heal. I don’t retain conscious access to the feel of the pain, but I’m able to recognize it when it happens. That said, I also shattered a couple of toes which never hurt at all. I thought they were simply dislocated until an orthopedist told me otherwise. I’d gone to the hospital to have them looked at because I had a feeling that if I yanked them back into their proper positions, someone would tell me I shouldn’t have. That feeling was confirmed as correct. If you have a body part or parts that have come to be in unnatural positions, consult medical professionals if at all possible.
You can thank me later.
I named her Peggy because I had just learned that Peggy was the nickname for people named Margaret, like other nonsense shortened names like Richard/Dick or William/Buck, and I thought that was interesting and at least a little amusing to name my tattooed sniper girl Margaret, as that’s not really a “cool” name for a girl. Like how Vehemence is named Kevin. It wasn’t until many many pages later that I realized what I’d done.
I think of it as honoring my aunt Peg and my great-aunt Peg.
I think Dave has mentioned it at least twice, most recently on page 1312 (where he stated he’d mentioned it before, hence my “at least twice”), but apparently her being named Peggy was pretty much pure happenstance. My guess as to why he opted to have her leg regrown – which I think he’s also discussed, but I’m too lazy to look that up too – was largely just because it didn’t make sense for them [i]not[/i] to, if they have access to the relevant technology. The rules the setting has for primitives interacting with alien tech allow for her to get her leg regrown and reattached (they’re not actually giving the humans advanced technology, just using it for treatment), and she’s become friends with a spaceship captain with a crewmember who is a highly-skilled medical technician. About the only way it makes sense for her not to have her leg regrown is if she decides not to, and while there were certainly reasons she could have gone that route, I feel it would be out of character for her to give up an opportunity to be at her natural best when she has teammates depending on her in combat.
So, this really seems like just an organic result of her character and the story she’s in, rather than, say, the author deciding having a one-legged woman named Peggy was too on-the-nose.
I, too, was once hit by a truck.
Not *run over*, technically, but the car I was in was sold by the insurance before I even woke up.
I don’t remember the incident itself, but when I woke up in the hospital it’s what everyone told me had happened. And I haven’t noticed any spontaneous development of superpowers, so it’s _probably_ not cover for some sort of secret surreptitious super soldier program. (Also, I’ve never been a soldier).
Do you have vague memories of saving a kingdom with magic powers?
Nothing that I didn’t have before the accident, which may very well have been a result of reading the chronicles of Narnia at a young age and then dreaming.
Also, attempts to create magical effects have not met with any success. Even just light, which would presumably be one of the simpler options.
try this: in a dark room, focus on the reflective properties of your palms, and hold them out towards the walls. If it works, you’ll see a faint light from them, just enough to see a wee bit better in the dark, like a really weask flashlight.
What? Normal people can’t do this?
Let’s see…my worst injury, damage-wise, would probably be when I broke my arm as a kid while roughhousing with a friend. I fell at an awkward angle and wound up hitting the floor with my arm twisted underneath me. Had to have a cast for a while, but it was only a partial fracture (a “green stick” fracture, as the doctor called it), so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
But my most cringe-inducing injury? That’d be another incident from my youth. Be warned: sensitive souls may wish to stop reading now.
I had a toy sword and shield made of wood, and one evening I went into the living room where the shield was sitting on the floor, and bent down to pick it up. I immediately felt a sharp pain in my fingertip. Upon further inspection, I discovered a splinter of wood from the shield jammed under my fingernail. To this day, I have no idea how I managed to do that; the odds of reaching for the shield at precisely the right angle and speed must have been a million to one.
My parents tried pulling it out with tweezers, but no luck, so we had to go to the ER. Of course, the ER was crowded and backed up, so I had to sit there in the waiting room for over an hour, holding my aching finger in a cup of ice water to numb the pain. When I finally got to see the doctor, first he gave me an anesthetic shot in the fingertip, which was pretty unpleasant in and of itself. Then he took some medical pliers, grabbed the end of the splinter, and YANKED on it with the force of a freight train. It succeeded in dislodging the splinter, but dear God did it hurt like a motherfucker, even with the anesthetic.
So yeah. All in all, not the most fun night I’ve ever had.
On one hand you also got to remember the quirks you have to unlearn. the change in center of gravity, durability of your regrown leg, but also the unconscious quirks you might have picked up as you might be less cautious about your regrown limb… Because bumping it up against things wouldn’t cause you to stub your toe.
This will merely be the first of many stubbed toes… For at least a good week or maybe a month if unlucky.
I used to say I’d never had a broken bone (then look for some wood to knock on). But I did have several badly sprained ankles as a kid, some that took waaay too long to heal. Then a few decades later *my* young son rolled his ankle, we took him to the doctor, got an xray (better quality than the ones when I was a kid), and the doc pointed out the little broken bone at the end of the intact tendon. He informed us that in kids some bones haven’t fully developed yet, and that one specifically will break before the tendon tears. So now I’m 99% sure my childhood doc was wrong and I’ve broken bones in both feet several times.
I don’t think I’ve ever technically ‘broken’ a bone, but, I did crack my tailbone as a preteen. My body has a habit of retaining damage to internal connective tissue, though, so my spine, left wrist, right ankle, and both hips and knees are the equivalent of a 70 year old body builder’s and I’m only in my mid 30s. I was very rough on my body as a ‘youth’, since I had a tendency to climb trees that reasonably shouldn’t have been to far higher than I should’ve and then jump out of them at half again my own height or greater. Still feel like the worst injury was my tailbone, which was caused by hubris and sitting on a porch railing roughly 8 feet above a clay, winter-frozen ground. In any case, I yearn for a body that functions even mostly correctly for a 30 year old, instead of the decrepit thing I carry around now…
I caught fire once. My own fault, not following good lab hygiene. Was making rocket fuel and it went up burning my hands and arms. That was ~17 years ago, and arthritis has set in my left hand from scar tissue. several bonks on the head have slowed me down too. Not missing any parts, though. Plenty of dings and dents and some titanium scaffolding in my back… I have vids of the burn debridement…
Fell while running on a sidewalk and saved my face from meeting pavement by putting the back of my left hand in the way. It looked like you could see the bone on two patches that are on top of the hand bones. It pushed all the blood out of the way or something because I think the skin was still sort of there, but it was white for a little while. Then it bled like all hell. For some reason I wasn’t taken to the hospital (I was probably like 8 or something). Scars are still there, though after 25+ years it’s beginning to get a bit difficult to see them.
I also once decided to find out what a car cigarette lighter did by putting my thumb on it. Pro tip: don’t do that.
And in high school while playing handball in the gym, I was playing defense, and blocked a shot someone tried to make, but my hand was too close to theirs. About a minute later I realized that I couldn’t move my hand at all and that I was probably in excruciating pain that the adrenaline was covering up, because my middle finger had hit his palm and became hyperextended. For the life of me I can’t remember which hand that was though. I feel like I have memories of having trouble using WASD with my left hand, but also trouble writing with my right hand.
DaveB.
This story is set in the 2000s early 2010s right? Keep forgrting the timeline.
The very first episode was published August, 2010, and I think that was also the time in the comic (Obama was president). The comic time passage since then is unknown. The end of the first day in comic time was published in February, 2015 (!!!). Four and a half years of real time for a single day in comic time. That day had Sydney help “foil” a fake bank robbery, get interviewed and accepted into ARC-SWAT, the introductory press conference, and the first major super-fight that evening. Just the fight scene took a over a full year in real time.
Since then there have been multiple time “jumps” (the time dilation due to space travel, jump to finishing basic training, etc.), but nothing has been firmly established. Since Sydney is still a private, and was revealed to be a corporal in comic #4, we’re technically still in a flashback from the opening scene, which was stated as going back “a few months” (see lower right corner of #4).
So probably less than a year since that first day. If August, 2010, was the first day of the flashback, we’re maybe early-to-mid 2011. If August, 2010, was the day of comics 1-4 (pre-flashback), then we’re still in 2010.
Wow, looking back is really jarring based on the art transition.
But good catch on the rank.
I think this week reading the comments gonna take a pass…
You all are gonna give me trauma. I have enough with a broken bone, 5 pins on one foot, limping on my best days and cronical pain.
She is going to have an uncontrollable urge to wear shorts. I can imagine the whole med crew chasing after her to keep her away from the obstacle courses while she is still getting used to her new limb.
I wonder if she will have phantom limb while things mend.
When I was 13, I ran through a shatterproof glass door. It wasn’t, and it decided to run through a part of me. I came within a quarter inch of doing open heart surgery on myself. I can remember lying on the bed in the ER and watching the doctor probe the wound with his fingers. He went in all the way to the knuckles.
I also remember being fascinated by the layers of skin and muscle I could see as he did that.
When I was 13, I ran through a shatterproof glass door. It wasn’t, and it decided to run through a part of me. I came within a quarter inch of doing open heart surgery on myself. I can remember lying on the bed in the ER and watching the doctor probe the wound with his fingers. He went in all the way to the knuckles.
I also remember being fascinated by the layers of skin and muscle I could see as he did that.
God damn Peggy is *cute*.
Be careful of Galveston. I live there. We’ve periodically had some truly weird shit appear on the beach.
Impalement is fun! Especially when it’s a pencil that your so-called friend has set up on a chair and you actually drove it into your glute sitting down. I don’t even think I have a scar any more, but it was my first experience on valium.
You always have a scar, always. The body doesn’t really “heal” like people think it does, not with skin trauma like that. Even if it’s not currently very visible after the fact, what the body essentially does, is glue the wound shut, and the process is an active one, as in, the “glue” has to be periodically maintained by the body, and will open back up again. That is what makes scurvy so scary for people way back when. The deficiency that leads to scurvy essentially means that the body lacks the necessary material to keep all scar tissue and old wounds “glued up”, and ALL of your old wounds start to open up once more. So, we don’t necessarily “heal” the way most people think, it’s just a stopgap that lasts for as long as we keep taking in Vitamin C.
Had trouble starting my car at the car once and had to start it at the engine and jump in to keep it going. Well, I was 350Lbs at the time. A large part of it muscle, so big guy, My fibula popped out of place my knee went sideways, couldn’t put my weight on it for the next 8- 10 months. Finally started taking HGH healed me up after a month. Bit of a warning I learned later, if you have any kind of cancer in your body it will accelerate it, so check before using. Having some blood work done should do it. When my knee went sideways didn’t hurt. It was the swelling afterwards that hurt.
Was like a year and a half after I could put my weight on my knee that I found out about HGH and between when my knee first popped out and was healed knee popped out 6-7 times redamaging my knee again. Bad point in my life. 2003- 2005.
Opus the Poet definitely wins at death defying stories. I do not remember all of the mishaps they’ve had, but I’m certain it’s been more than just the truck one.
I also had an ingrown toenail that festered for a long time, but I have an advantage in remembering which one it was. It was both of them at the same time. One was way worse than the other. I thought I’d always remember which one was worse, and then the podiatrist did something something with a laser on both sides of the toenail that had been worse to make sure it didn’t have problems again, and that has a visual consequence so I can easily tell them apart so I don’t have to remember.
Which, um, just drove the point home that I would have eventually forgotten at least twice over. within the next 36 years It was the right toe that was worst. And confirmed, so I don’t have to add one to that number. Yet.
My issue was definitely due to how I cut my toenails and not the fact that my father was a cheap-ass SOB who didn’t buy his kids shoes in a sufficiently timely manner, such that we probably had shoes that were too small somewhere between a third and half the time we were growing up. And of course I never got a spanking over not being able to walk right because my shoes were just that much too small.
Except, wait a second, I haven’t had any ingrown toenail issues after I gained enough financial independence to buy my own damned shoes, not even on the toe that could theoretically still get them, and I have not changed how I cut my toenails because the thing my dad wanted me to do leaves two protruding sharp corners on the toenail and I definitely move my feet enough while I’m sleeping in bed that cutting my toenails his way had me waking up with bleeding ankles on several occasions.
To be clear, many people have worse parents than mine. Of all of the people I know with parents who I consider to be objectively horrible parents, I’m the one with the best parents. Yes, that includes my siblings. Among other reasons for that declaration, I only ever had to have one emergency tetanus shot due to my father providing us with an unsafe living situation, while all the rest needed two. Also, this thing with ingrown toenails wasn’t just me, because apparently none of us knew how to cut our toenails correctly. That said, I do think I was the only one of us to get spanked for doing my homework.
Well, let’s see…
When I was in my late teens, I rode a bike everywhere. And my therapist’s office was right at the bottom of a mile+-long, 30-degree-incline hill directly between my house and her place. Being a dumbass teen, I would of course try to take this hill at the highest speeds I could muster. And being a teen smart enough to understand basic physics but NOT smart enough to understand materials, I thought I’d be able to just hop the curb at max speed and get back on the sidewalk at my destination. It did not work out that way. I hit the curb and my front wheel immediately gave up the ghost. I remember going *flying* down the median, then nothing, then laying face-down in the grass as the mangled remains of my bike slammed down less than 3 inches to the right of my head. My landing spot was a good 30 feet from the point of impact, and all I had was some road rash and what I realized later was a pretty bad concussion. I got up and walked the rest of the way to my therapy appointment and she sent me directly to the hospital.
There was also the time a couple years later that I walked 3 miles home from my fast-food job in nothing but slacks and a short-sleeved polo. At 2 AM. In the middle of an Iowa winter (back when we still HAD those). During a blizzard.
I had one of my internal organs explode. Does that count? Or does it have to be an external threat?
No…. I think that one’s valid….
Next question is , of course…. WTF?!! Howdahell?!!
Appendicitis. TECHNICALLY I didn’t get through that unscarred and with all my bits and pieces intact, but close enough.
Let’s see:
Femur broken landing hard sky diving. First surgery didn’t take, so they took the pins out of the top portion of the nail through the bone to compress it. That didn’t take either, so 6 months of a moving nail in the middle of the bone. Total 2 years with the broken leg.
2 ribs broken and broken wrist rappelling – Belay wasn’t quick enough.
2 different ribs in motorcycle accident.
Tendons in knee torn in another motorcycle accident.
Fibula broken in another motorcycle accident – You’d think I’d learn…
Ankle broken in football, wrist broken in football, thumbs dislocated in football – all separate incidents.
Nose broken twice, once in a fight and once dropping a bar-bell during bench press.
Arm broken on monkey bars – too young to remember details.
My favorite – ankle broken stepping in a gofer hole mowing the lawn…
And people ask why I don’t go out much anymore.
Worst injuries were a hard landing/crash in a Blackhawk which compressed my spine enough that I went from 6 feet tall to barely over 5′ 11 in the span of a second, or getting blown up by a 107mm rocket that threw me into a concrete block wall hard enough that I left some hairline cracks in it. Picked up a TBI and more back and shoulder injuries from that. Damage to my leg from the chopper crash in 2008 finally led to me having a hip replacement last year.
OK, so, sharing time. I’m gonna narrate, not describe. So skip if you wish. I have three tales to tell!
Story 1: A Fool in the Rain.
When I was 12 I was riding my bike to take care of a friend’s dog. That meant I had a garage door opener in one hand, so riding a bike with handbrakes with one hand. Because I’m as smart as a 12-year old gets.
Add to this it’s raining. Not a storm or deluge, but a steady rain and the roads are wet.
Add to this I’m riding down hill (not San Francisco style, but a pretty good slope) and heading for an intersection with a local highway.
I squeeze (one of) the breaks. For SOME REASON i don’t slow down. Oh well, nothing to do but go for it. If I’m fast, I’ll be fine. Right? RIGHT?! Hahaha. We all know the answer to that.
I got past the first lanes and the divider without problem. but I didn’t even *see* the car that sideswiped me (it was raining, even with brakes I estimate 35-40 mph at time of contact. I slid across his hood, shattered his windshield, was redirected a bit upward so actually *missed* the rest of his car but hit the ground and slid a good distance more.
I got up and asked him for a ride, knowing my bike wouldn’t work.
Yeah, I was the luckiest damn 12-year old. The worst I felt was a bruise from where the crossbar smashed against my inner thigh that lasted painfully for at least a month.
Story 2: I Get More than Road Rash
This one makes me look like an idiot.
At age 13 or 14 I was riding my bike again. This time it’s sunny though. and I am using BOTH HANDS. I’m ADHD though, so I am NOT looking where I’m going. At one point, when my knee is fully bent at the top of a pedal, it smacks into a *parked* car’s sideview mirror. Rim. Not the glass. The frigging rim.
“Ow!” I say and keep peddling. Still not watching where I’m going. Which is why I noticed the blood all over my shoe. Maybe I should examine myself? I do. There is a three in gash in my knee. best I can reckon the skin was stretched tight and the content just split it and the peddling ripped it the rest of the way.
At urgent care, the doc poured a little hydrogen peroxide on it. it was still dirty, so they opened another. poured a bit on. No biggie, I honestly don’t feel ANYTHING. They can’t find the lid. So he poured an entire bottle over my knee. I’m not sure you could see bone, but you could see several layers of fat and whatever else. Is there muscle on top of your knee cap? I don’t know, but SOMETHING was meaty there. Two internal stitches, seven on the surface. Crutches. Apparently, in 7th grade crashing into a parked car is more shameful than the idiot who sprained his ankle playing kickball. I did not live this down.
Story 3: Starting Out Right.
Not as much narrative here. I was 3. My mom was experimenting with grinding her own wheat for flour. This is not something that lasted my whole life, possibly because I’m her idiot child. The grinder was open motor, with a big old belt driving the actual grinder. I have a distinct memory of looking at the belt and wondering how it would feel running underneath my finger. So I reached out to touch the open expanse.
My very next memory in life is being at the doctor having the stiches removed. I either passed out or have blocked all the trauma of the pain and my mom screaming and what not. The injury was the inside of my second knuckle of my right index finger. But it severed some tendons, which like to snap back when freed from their bindings. The surgeon had to cut down almost to my thumb, then across the palm of my hand almost to the wrist to do repairs.
fortunately, the surgical scar is much smaller relative to my hand now that I am adult sized. My finger still bears a large mass of scar tissue under the knuckle, and if I make a fist my index finger pokes a bit forward because I can’t bend it completely.
I could go on. Even as an adult. For a couple years my primary means of travel was a bike, and I had a nontrivial accident at least once a month during that period, some involving mechanical mishaps or other vehicles. Other just me being a complete moron.
Cracked my left wrist playing Little League baseball when I ducked to avoid a bean ball but my left wrist didn’t. A couple of years later I cracked the same wrist playing a pickup game of football. No pads or equipment. A few years after that I was riding a bike with only front brakes and a car pulled in front of me. So I went flying over the handle bars and broke my right arm between the wrist and elbow. You could see from the bulge that the bone was displaced. A country doctor looked at it, grabbed my arm below the break, and muscled it back into place. I was about 13 then. I was moaning and complaining and he asked what the problem was. He had fixed it so what was I complaining about. Later on when I was old enough to know better, I was playing a pickup basketball game with a bunch of teenagers and twenty somethings and blew out my right knee when I tried to stop and the knee when sideways. Later I was playing in a adult league basketball game and blew out my left knee when some idiot decided to play tackle basketball. I also broke my right index finger playing basketball when a bullet pass hit the tip of my finger instead of my palm.
I’m worried my granddaughter is following in my footsteps. At age 7 she was going across the monkey bars as she had done a dozen times, slipped and messed up her left elbow big time. A couple of metal screws 3 inches long and a cast for weeks. At age 8, she got tangled up with a couple of players playing soccer and fell with the same arm under her and broke a bone in her wrist. The cast was not on as long this time and she was out dribbling and shooting basketball even with the cast. Also batting in the rec league coach pitch baseball games. A week after the cast was removed she was back playing basketball with her travel team and the rec league coach pitch games. Tough kid.
Two items to report:
1) Back in ‘96 I was in basic for the Army, running the obstacle course for the umpteenth time that day, arms were tired, and when I tried to climb over a wall, I swan dived down the back side of it, head first onto the sun baked clay that is the ground of South Carolina, I ducked my head at the last moment, landing on my shoulders, and would have been fine, except my right shoulder landed over the spot where everyone’s boots were landing, so there was a depression, my left shoulder hit first, and I broke my left clavicle (and kneed myself in the mouth, but that’s beside the point)
2) I was driving my roommate to work Christmas Eve of 2023, when I got T-boned by a pickup truck, totalled my car and shattered my right humerus, my arm was in the back seat (still attached) I needed to get a rod implanted, I now have a long scar from my right shoulder down over my bicep
I’ve had eight spaces in my spine fused from my neck down. I can’t turn my neck more than a fraction. Died on the operating table once (crash cart and everything) for a simple parathyroid surgery. I’ve had congestive heart failure (which I totally recovered from). I’m know dealing with pancreatic problems (not cancer), so I have diabetes AND I can’t digest food without supplements. Also I am epileptic. I’m in my 70s and it’s been a fun ride so far. Sometimes you just hold on for the ride. I’ve got a good wife and son, and all things considered, I’m doing well.
This makes me whining feel petty. Good on ya, man.
I would be psyched to get my three distal phalanges back and even though I’ve been typing without them for… 31 years now, I actually believe I’d adjust relatively quickly, if only because my right hand is whole and I am quite convinced that simply mirroring the other hand would expedite the process
I’ve messed up my arms badly twice, once when I was 11 and I broke my left one and once when I 15 and I used to free run. When I was 11 it was sports day and I was winning a hurdle race literally at the last hurdle I trip. Everyone watching says I did a pretty incredible flip but all I remember was, trip, blackness, hearing a crack, then waking up on my stomach with my arms in front of me, one of them looking like a fork. First time I ever got high off nos, or high period and also how I discovered that morphine doesn’t work as well on me.
The second time I seriously jacked my arms up, I was parkouring near my home and I see this run I want to try and it involves using a skylight as a spring board. I mess up the first run, reset, and as I’m jumping off the skylight shatters beneath me. Now it was plastic and not flush to the surface I’m running on, so I was imagining that it would flex and spring back, not flex and shatter. I manage to catch myself, but the floor is only 10 feet away, so I drop down and make my way home. The next day I lost most of the mobility in my arms. I could zombie pose but couldn’t lift my hands above my head without severe pain and if I tried raise to my arms from a relaxed pose to a “T” pose, I’d only be able lift my arms to less than 30° without blinding pain again. For 6-8 months putting on any piece of clothing for my torso was torture
I went through a phase when I was at college of having an accident every 6 months for a couple of years.
*The first incident was on a helter-skelter; as I neared the bottom of the slide, one foot came of the mat I was sitting on, shot forward, and stopped dead on the braking mat at the end. The rest of the leg was still going. It did something to my knee which was Fairly Unpleasant (TM), and also catapulted me upright, whereupon I started hopping around on my good leg, looking for something to lean upon. The woman in charge of the helter-skelter then asked, “are you alright?” I wasn’t particularly polite with my response. Anyhow, the doctor said I’d strained a ligament, strapped it up, prescribed some pain killers and got rid of me.
* The second one happened while I was out for a walk in the countryside. I was heading for a pub I knew, and was on the stretch of road leading up to it. Now, the correct procedure for walking on a road with no footpaths is to walk on the opposite side to which a car heading the same direction would be. The idea is that both car and pedestrian can see what’s coming towards them. So, for a Brit where the car is on the left, the walker is on the right. This is a decent practice, and it works pretty well most of the time – apart from when there is a convergence of arseholes and idiots.
You see, while I was on the right, a jogger going the same way was on the left. To add to that, the jogger was being overtaken by a car. The good news for me was that the road was plenty wide enough for all three of us. The BAD news was that there were four of us; some total waste of genetic material decided to overtake that first car at exactly the same time, with the result that he clipped me as he sped by. The first I knew of it was suddenly finding myself in the ditch with a chipped elbow (it was only the wing mirror that hit me. Phew). I never got that drink.
*Incident no.3 was dumb. I was on campus, and trying to take a shortcut in the rain from the canteen to the dorms. Unfortunately, I slipped on some mud, and came crashing down onto a pebble with my knee. Yes, THAT knee. I wound up spending a couple of months with a full-leg cast.
*The fourth and final event in this chain was just as dumb, if not as catastrophic: I was in my dorm, making my way from the kitchenette (a room with a kettle and an ancient, inefficient cooker) to my room with a plate of food. Unbeknownst to me, a trio of Lads (TM) were on the other side of the double doors I would have to pass through. Well known for substances and hijinks, they had decided it would be fun if they coated the floor with talcum powder and use its now-slippery properties to use each other as bowling balls, and the doors as their target.
You can see where this one’s going, can’t you?
Fortunately for my face, my foot was ever so slightly closer to the door when it hit. Which makes it a pity that I wasn’t wearing any footwear. What I WAS wearing was my dinner.
To their credit, the Lads (TM) were very apologetic. It’s just a pity they were so stoned at the time they kept giggling all through it…
Oh, and the saga of the knee doesn’t end there.
Some years later, I was housesharing with a guy who had a cat. I didn’t have anything against cats in general, but this one had a habit of being underfoot all the time. On one such occasion, I was walking through a door, and the damn thing appeared in the spot I was just about to bring my foot down. Instead, I jerked the leg to one side, and smacked my knee on the doorframe with a sickening crunch. The doctor later said I had chipped the bone. I said I wasn’t surprised.
A few years after THAT, I was playing badminton with some colleagues. In the game, I mis-stepped and twisted my knee badly, resulting in a knee four times the correct size and some ligaments on the verge of snapping. This meant another cast, a bunch of anti-inflammatories, four weeks off work, and a course of physiotherapy.
And people wonder why I don’t like to go out…
I’ve messed up my arms badly twice, once when I was 11 and I broke my left one and once when I 15 and I used to free run. When I was 11 it was sports day and I was winning a hurdle race literally at the last hurdle I trip. Everyone watching says I did a pretty incredible flip but all I remember was, trip, blackness, hearing a crack, then waking up on my stomach with my arms in front of me, one of them looking like a fork, cos i had snapped one bone and dislocated the other. First time I ever got high off nos, or high period and also how I discovered that morphine doesn’t work as well on me.
The second time I seriously jacked my arms up, I was parkouring near my home and I see this run I want to try and it involves using a skylight as a spring board. I mess up the first run, reset, and as I’m jumping off the skylight shatters beneath me. Now it was plastic and not flush to the surface I’m running on, so I was imagining that it would flex and spring back, not flex and shatter. I manage to catch myself, but the floor is only 10 feet away, so I drop down and make my way home. The next day I lost most of the mobility in my arms. I could zombie pose but couldn’t lift my hands above my head without severe pain and if I tried raise to my arms from a relaxed pose to a “T” pose, I’d only be able lift my arms to less than 30° without blinding pain again. For 6-8 months putting on any piece of clothing for my torso was torture
The greatest hits huh? Let’s see… Hit by truck, twice, miraculously nothing broken, but hella bruised. (Apparently sidewalks aren’t for people, who knew?) High side flung off of a motorcycle and broke a bunch there. Smashed my toe with something, lived with the ingrown for awhile until it got so bad that I couldn’t walk while I was in the middle of the desert in nevada that I “surgically” removed it myself with a sharp knife and some pliers. Got thrown by a horse and cracked my skull. Got struck by lightning, not as exciting as it sounds. Shot in the head at a range so great that the bullet bounced off and I thought that someone had thrown an acorn at me. Ended up being a pellet from a buckshot round. Fucked up and tore ligaments in both knees, and one elbow just from doing stupid stuff. I don’t remember any other highlights at the moment. You’re right, you do forget these things with time
The only bone I’ve ever broken is a stress fracture of my right sesamoid bone, which is a little bone in your foot that isn’t even attached to anything, it just floats inside a ligament. One doc remarked they didn’t even know you *could* break that bone.
The worst injury I’ve had was when I was eight, and fell on a rock while running and cut my knee open to the bone. I commented “I think my kneecap’s showing” which isn’t a very commonly spoken sentence. It wasn’t very painful, but I had to keep my knee straight for two weeks, and one time I slipped on the stairs and wrenched it, and *that* hurt like the dickens.
The closest I’ve come to dying, not counting the landing at National where either a) the landing gear indicator light was burnt out or b) the landing gear wasn’t locked (it was a)) was anaphylactic asphyxiation, aka my throat closing up from an allergic reaction. Fortunately it resolved before I needed an emergency laryngectomy, but I still needed an ER visit and my BP dropped to 80/40.
Lucky. I had both halices* cut out fifty-five to sixty years ago. Our host is not wrong about the excruciating process of anesthetization. I’m calling him lucky because HIS problem self-corrected. My left hallux grew back more or less normally, but the one on the right STILL needs the attention of a podiatrist once every few years.
*The amateur philologist in me insists that the plural of HALLUX has to be HALLICES. YOU argue with him if you want. I’m out.
Back in college I wiped out my bike on gravel. A kind woman gave me a ride to the clinic and during the drive she asked me “Doesn’t that hurt?” “Not until you asked me that.”
I think I spent an hour in a bathtub picking gravel out of my wounds. Not sure why I was doing it instead of a trained professional, but I think they wanted me to do the first pass at least. Certainly not my worst case of injuries.
Growing up with a grandmother who had been a nurse in WWI, if I wasn’t missing a limb, I could go back to work.