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.
Got bonked on the head by a car trunk door when I was really little; no blood, just a bonk from that metal loop in the door. Then there was that time where I got stung thrice on the belly by a ground hornet after the nest was accidentally disturbed, though that faded within the day. Honestly, mine’re really tame compared to everyone else’s here.
I’ve been mostly good about avoiding anything too serious like heat stress (hydration, hydration, hydration! Vital in the kitchen!), burns of both the thermal and radiation kind (sunburns are a b*** to recover from, especially on the back when they begin to peel… and don’t get me started on watching out for the toaster when it’s active.), or concussions from falling down stairs (good reflexes mean I catch myself with the railing before I slip too far).
i wish peggy got her wish of her and maxima together.
I was 19, chain-sawing a felled tree on a land clearing job. A nearby front-end loader bumped the other end of the tree which pushed MY end of the tree toward me. Saw caught my jeans and pulled my leg into it, the jeans jamming the chain. But before it jammed, the saw bumped my leg three times, just above my knee cap. First two bumps each cut about an inch into my leg, all meat. Third cut exposed a tendon, but didn’t actually cut it. The doctor used five suture strips to close the gouges in my leg (too messy to stitch, he said), bandaged it up and sent me home.
Mine is pretty lame.
Worst *INJURY* (damage to my body caused by my own stupidity in a physical impact sort of manner, not illnesses or neglect) I’ve ever received is when I was working with my StepDad some….geez, 20 or 25-odd years ago? We were hired as temp laborers to tear down a clothing store in the local mall. As we’re pulling up the changing room off the bolts in the floor, my Stepdad & his friend accidentally pull the walls on either side of the doorway apart.
Apparently, this changing room’s wall was not one solid piece, but was basically three pieces – the two full-length walls & the 18-inch section directly over the door. & when SD & friend pulled up on the changing room, they pulled it apart at that segment.
Well, I happened to be squat down at the doorway, trying to lift the walls to guide them off the bolts, when this 18-inch wide, 2-ft long, 3 or 4-inch thick piece of wood – with heavy pressboard decor on the front of it – dropped *RIGHT* onto my skull. Split my scalp open almost to the bone.
Had to be rushed to my family doctor (he was just about to close for the day when we called) to fill my scalp with like, 7 or 8 stitches.
I broke several bones in somewhat unusual circumstances. The first time was as I was being born. I was a big baby, so big that I broke my clavicle on the way out. It healed fast, though, as it will when you’re that young. Then, when I was 6, I was playing tag, and running away when I hit a hole and broke my shin? Anyways, I don’t remember that one too well, but it healed up fast as well. Then, when I was around 8, I got a hairline fracture along my big toe’s metatarsal bone, and that came about because I was being chased, again. I seem to have a mini theme surrounding being chased and getting fractures from it. Then, when I was 9, I got Cochlear Implant surgery. While that wasn’t an “injury” per se, I include it, because of how supremely painful the aftercare was of that surgery. They wrapped my head in a wrap so tightly it felt like they hired a gorilla to come by and squeeze my head between its knuckles, and I had to keep the wrap on my head for a while, to make sure the skin around the back of my scalp wouldn’t split back open. It was the most pain I’ve ever felt, even accounting for the testing of the Cochlear Implant soon after. I think, in fact, it short-circuited my pain response ever since, such that anything painful ever after has felt dull by comparison. I’ve even gotten sinus surgery afterwards to remove a polyp from my sinuses, and it barely registered as pain. I am still sensitive, so it’s not nerve damage, but I just simply now have the ability to ignore a large portion of any pain that comes my way.
Former bouncer and biker, so I have some stories involving injuries which I consider minor…
Injury-wise, the worst I ever had (and remember) is the time I was trying to follow my brother and his friends into a local national park. I was six, and wanted to hang out with my brother (who is ten years older than me) so I followed him and his friend to the park. To get into the park, we had to scramble up a small but steep slope.
One of his friends whispered something and my brother tells me to go home, I’m young and want to go with my brother so I start climbing up the slope to continue following.
I’m not looking up at him when he picked up something to throw down to try and scare me with.
He picked up a cement covered cinderblock… and throws it. Just as I reach out to get a handhold on the slope.
The cinderblock lands flat on my little hand…
Life is suddenly PAIN!
I don’t really remember running back to my grandparents house (they lived next to the park) or the ride up to the children’s hospital with my hand wrapped in cotton wool batting.
But I do remember the young doctor tending my hand, which surprisingly to him, didn’t have any broken bones but the skin and muscle had ruptured into a two inch gash running from the centre of my palm, across the webbing between my thumb and index finger and over the back of my hand to the index finger’s knuckle.
Apparently my grandfather’s actions of using the cotton wool batting saved my hand from needing proper stitches, as it had help mesh the wound closed, so I ended up just needing the butterfly (tape) stitches.
My hand was in bandages for about 4 months.
Though the most painful thing I’ve ever endured is having Scabies and Shingles (two separate times, not together).
There is no pain that compares to them. And like @Chris said he can do, I can just ignore “lesser” pain that would have my friends reaching for painkillers.
My sister said she would go through her entire breast cancer treatment, mastectomy and chemo, again rather than suffer through another round of shingles.
I’m 64, and I have accumulated so many injuries during my life that pain is a day to day thing. But I have learned, as the Dalai Lama says, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Had a third of my face torn off by a dog when I was 6, almost got my eye too. I still miss that dog.
Maybe your rifle needs a scope?
I’ve broken my right arm, my left arm, and one of my toes. I also had to pass a kidney stone.
My right arm was when I was six swinging on one of those massive ropes big ships use to moor to docks. It was tied up in my front yard and we swung on it. I swung, fell off, my right arm was behind my back when I landed on said back. Snapped it clean, to where it went 90 degree floppy. Doc decided to realign and set the bone without any painkillers at all. I have never felt such agony until the kidney stone, which was far worse.
My left arm was when I was thirteen and skating through the concrete water drainage system of the city. They cut out a section to work on pipes and it rained, filling it. I thought it was just water over the concrete because the sun was reflecting across it and I couldn’t see through it. I jumped over it, landed in the hole, whacked my balls on the pipe, and then smashed my left arm across the edge of the ragged concrete. Snap when that bone. I had to walk back over ten blocks to get medical attention.
The toe was from unloading a truck and a box of twenty inch tile fell from on top of a box. The corner of the box landed on my toe and pulverized it good.
The kidney stone was the most painful, so painful I was curled up in a ball and screaming in agony. They gave me morphine when we went to the ER and that was trippy as shit.
It’s said that passing a kidney stone is one of the most painful experiences possible, even worse than childbirth. So far since surgery some ten years ago, I’ve passed three or four small surgical clips, they’re not supposed to do that but at least they came out pretty fast since they didn’t have to come all the way from the kidney and the pain didn’t last as long.
My worst injuries was when u was eight I was at my grandma’s house her neighbor had a trampoline. I wanted to use it, but there was an old chain link fence separating the two yards so I decided to cli.b it in my socks after it had rained. I predictably, slipped and caught my left arm on the spines att the top of the fence got loose and ran Inside screeming
In a car accident, I got a concussion that was so bad that for the first three months after getting home, I couldn’t put together a sandwich to eat.
It was too complicated to figure out. (Getting a paper plate, getting bread, getting meat, getting cheese, getting condiments, getting chips, getting all those things to the place where I was going to put the sandwich together, etc.)
The first two months I couldn’t hardly put a sentence together. And it freaked me out if someone spoke to me when I wasn’t expecting it.
Fortunately, my niece was living with me at the time and stepped up to help out a lot. And we started getting microwavable meals so I wouldn’t starve when there wasn’t anyone around to put a sandwich together for me.
“things-that-should-have-killed-me-but-didn’t stories” ???
Ok, although my collective injuries make pain a constant in my life the worst experience was the subarachnoid hemorrhage. That should have killed me; when it hit I was on the floor laying in a pool of my own vomit. The headache was a 12 on a 10 to 1 scale of “worst pain you’ve every had” and the pain spread until every muscle and joint in my body hurt. I was in the hospital for weeks and laid up at home for months.
But do you know what the worst part was? It was waking up in the hospital for the first time and seeing my mom and dad at the foot of the bed. The pain in their eyes broke me. I promised I would never let them go through that fear and worry again. I have changed my lifestyle and diet for the better.
I’m pushing 70…hard…nuzzled right up to it, and I’ve broken so many parts I’d have to sit down and think before starting a list.
Right now, anything that doesn’t hurt doesn’t work and every day it’s a new “remember this ?” from something I did 40 or 50 years ago.
The latest is a right wrist that I smashed up in the 70’s that’s giving me fits, I’d seriously consider an amputation offer, I’m left handed anyway :) Change takes getting used to, even for little insignificant things, like we recently had the bathroom renovated, now the towel rack is on the other side of the room, it’s been several months but no matter how often I tell myself it’s been moved I still turn toward the old spot when I wash my hands. having a leg you’re used to not being there suddenly reappearing would take some getting used to and it’s a nice bit of detail work by the author showing it.
The worst was a couple of years ago when I died…dropped dead right in the middle of walking across the floor. luckily, hitting the floor jarred the blood clot enough that I came to long enough to call 911. The Dr’s said that given where it was, I was dead before I hit the floor and the jolt was all that saved me, if I’d been sitting down, fini. The funny part was, they said that wasn’t the first time the exact same thing had happened that year, it was like an epidemic of blood clots, half the patients in Hospital were in for clots and a couple more had fallen and knocked them loose just as I had. I didn’t even have the ‘clot shot’, I flat out refused it.
Your mention of an epidemic of blood clots got me wondering, so I looked into this… It’s reported that microplastics can increase risk of dangerous clots of that sort.
Here’s a comparatively readable article on the subject (with a link to a study, should you want to dig into it a bit further):
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240522/Study-finds-microplastics-in-blood-clots-linking-them-to-higher-risk-of-heart-attacks-and-strokes.aspx
There are other studies about the connection, too, but it’s likely a tricky thing to research, what with basically everyone containing microplastics at this point (can’t really compare against someone without microplastics if you can’t find any such person). Maybe twin studies could help, if twins who differ greatly in exposure can be found?
Doesn’t help that there’re so many other possible causes…
Of course, I’m really just speculating at this point, but it would fit with your story.
This. This level of detail is why I love this comic so much! Although I never lost a limb myself, I know fellow Soldiers that have. They’ve often joked about how strange it would be if they ever got their limb back and this specific scene is what has always played in my head! I love it and thank you for letting us see this side of Peggy!
Pain, happiness, annoyance, and relief all in a battle to the death! Only here on Annihilation Nation!
Better than the last vote incentive, if nothing else! What a way to be grateful for a foot lol
Private bits got smashed by a wooden toilet seat when I was 3. Still have the stitch scar. For anyone who cares they still work fine.
Trying to convince the us army that I did serious injury to my knee for 4 years was more painful than the fact I was having to try to manage with a torn ACL that entire time
The second time I tore my ACL ( other leg) was 20 years after that and now my arthritic legs are in an argument in which hurts more
For some reason I really like Peggy’s goofy expressions in panels four and six. Reflections of reality you don’t always see in comics.
Ironically, I want the reverse. Been gimping on a bum ankle for going on six or seven years now – Achilles tendenosis with assorted related sprains from overuse since the ankle don’t bend the way it ought and atrophy in the soleus and calf muscles for the same reason. I’ve been asking them to take it off below the knee for the while but they won’t.
Apparently cutting part of a limb off to get a prosethetic and being able to run and walk decent again is too invasive but limping and not being able to sleep for the pain for six or seven years is just fine. We’ve done the physical therapy exercises and the cortisol to little avail. Up to the $500-a-shot platlet-rich-plasma injections then the surgery with a maybe 30 percent chance of doing anything.
Guys! It’s not a competition!! Some of us are eating!
Gonna start calling Peg ‘Jake’ :P
My Dad was into restoring broken bicycles for a while, like real abandoned piles of junk he would get from behind trainstations and the like. He never got really good at it, but it is an established family maxime that enough enthusiasm can overcome any lack of talent.
And so when I moved out and went to university I was owner of a frankensteinian monstrosity of a bike to ride down the hill through the vineyards to uni every morning.
I had constant problems with the brakes shaking loose, to the point I’d have to tighten the screws each morning or just having to break by dragging my feet on the ground.
So with all that said, one morning I got on this bike, and then the next thing I remember is putting the bikes handle on the counter at the hospital reception and explaining that I was in a bike crash, feeling dizzy and barfy and clearly suffering a concussion.
After getting treatment a friend picked me up from the hospital we drove along my route to figure out what had happened and find the rest of my bike. Well, my friend wanted to figure stuff out, I mostly wanted to lie down and regurgitate ten years worth of food, but if I was asked, my answer was ignored.
We found the bike sans handle and with a bent front tire, lying next to a broken fencepost.
What seemed to have happened was me booking it down the hill when the handle found decided to reject all its worldly connections, foremost the one with the front wheel. The front wheel was completely blindsided by this development and tried to call timeout by suddenly turning 90 degrees to the left.
This resulted in sudden deceleration of the front of the bike, while the back and me mostly kept our velocity, slingshotting me up and over and headfirst through a (luckily somewhat rotten) wooden fencepost. And when I came to I apparently thought walking three kilometers to the nearest hospital was the rational thing to do.
Not necessarily my closest brush with death, but probably the most cinematic
time to get it tattooed to celebrate?
.. also damn shes cute.
I can sypathise with this. I was blown up in Iraq, and have used a wheelchair since 2002. When I turned 40 I decided that I would start drinking alcohol. Had no idea what I was doing. Got so drunk I forgot that I needed a wheelchair, and was dragging myself along my neighbors deck (we had been in the hot tub) trying to get home. Couldn’t figure out why my legs didn’t work, lol. I decided drinking is not really for me.
Was sleeping in the passenger seat of a car coming home from work. Next thing I knew I was strapped to a gurney and being loaded onto a medevac chopper with one of my eyes heavily bandaged shut. This was exceedingly disorienting as I was also confused and could remember nothing leading up to how I got this way.
Turned out the car had been hit hard in the passenger side door (a drunk ran a stop sign at speed), and had flipped and rolled, I had been thrown halfway out the side window and the car came to rest on its side on top of my back, until some bystanders pushed it off of me before I suffocated.
Ended up with a minor scar over one eye, assorted minor cuts, a minor concussion, and a nasty bruise on my back – and that’s it. They let me go after a single night of observation. So that was lucky as hell.
I’ve nearly cracked my skull open several times (I have a bitching scar to prove it), nearly died at least three times in my life, nearlr burned 3 toes off both feet, broke one of the hardest bones in the body and have a pair of boxers fractures.
Havnt been run over though
Also forgot, got double tapped in the nuts during paintball
Most recently I decided to swallow half a hotdog whole and subsequently spent the next six hour with a hotdog stuck in my esophagus.
I’ve also had to go to the er multiple times due to my dairy allergy.
The thing which probably should have killed me is when I ate half a yogurt cup that was actual yogurt. I just got some hives, didn’t even feel very sick. Considering that eating a couple spoonfuls of mashed potatoes with whey powder in it sent me to the er with anaphylaxis, I really should have had a very bad day after the yogurt.
I also skinned my one knee something awful at a summer camp. I stepped on a dodge ball and slid onto concrete. Then two days later when that started healing I fell once more and skinned the scab clean off.
When I was 18 months old I had two paralytic strokes (which no one in the family would talk about, I have theories…); I’m now 76 and have been crippled all my life. You figure out how to deal, you get used to it.