I’ll start: I tried to move a bookshelf while drunk about 6 years ago and tore a tendon in my shoulder pretty damn good. It still bothers me sometimes if I move it wrong or sleep on it wrong.
In 2017, on a snowy January day, I was supposed to go to the gym before work. When I got to the subway station, the service was interrupted. I thought “I could just take one hour to briskly walk to work, and not go to the gym”.
But it was fresh snow and it was abundant, all the sidewalk were still covered. And I didn’t have proper boots for a 1 hours+ brisk walk in the snow.
I got to work, changed, and started working. After 2 hours, I want to get up, but I immediately fall back on my chair.
I had hurt both my Achilles tendons at the ankle. My tendinitis in the right ankle healed well, but the one in the left ankle still hurts when I walk for too long. And sometimes just hurts because.
I feel you man
I literally laid down wrong night before last and my shoulder slid out again
Still hurts but not nearly as bad as it did right after
It’s a little petty, but I feel stupidest about my hearing. Cranked my music too loud and didn’t wear ear protection ever when I was younger. The tinnitus gets so bad sometimes it makes me suicidal.
Tried to open a can of ravioli in tomato sauce with a pair of pliars. Bad idea, 0/10, won’t recommend. Still have the scar 30+ years later.
Torn foot ligament just because I went too hard too early after winter of no exercise. Since then every year I have swollen foot at least once and am unable to walk for few weeks.
I never felt my hand break.
The tip of my opponent’s long sword snapped into the back of my right hand, just behind the pinkie. There was no flash of incandescent pain, no stars in my sight - my mind was too focused on the swordfight. My opponent had scored a hit - and it had hurt, even through my glove - but adrenaline, as they say, is a hell of a drug.
After the tournament, it became clear that something was wrong. My hand began to swell and deform, my right pinkie levering itself inward across my palm until it was sitting at nearly 30° off true. Its nail sat jauntily behind the second knuckle of my middle finger. Making a fist was impossible.
Unfortunately, I was nineteen and had neither cash nor insurance for a doctor. So I did the next best thing - ignored it and told people it was probably just a bad sprain. When people suggested I see a doctor i responded, “What’s a doctor gonna do? Tell me it’s broken and take it easy? I’ll save the money.”
After a few weeks the swelling had gone down enough that I could finally feel the bones in my hand. Where there had once been a single line from wrist to knuckle, I could now feel an ‘x’. An ‘x’ which had clearly spent the last few weeks knitting together at a now permanent bad angle.
It occurred to me then what a doctor would do - set it properly. But now they’d need to re-break the bone.
Unfortunately I still had neither insurance nor cash.
What I did have was a freezer full of popsicles and a small toolbox. I ate a popsicle. And then put the stick between my teeth as I braced my right hand on the table and raised a hammer in my left.
WHAM … WHAM!
I hauled on my pinkie to pull the now-separated bones out straight then massaged them into position until things felt roughly aligned properly.
… Many years later I had health insurance and told my doctor this story and asked if he could x-ray it for me. A week later I received a letter in the mail. Inside was a printout of my hand x-ray with the healed break circled in pen. Besides the circle was a note: “Good job with the hammer”.
All things considered I did a pretty good job, but it’s not quite perfect. My pinkie still leans inward - just a hair. Just enough to remind me.
The kind of story that, among the modern nations, literally only happens in America.
Ha ha, yup. I love telling this story, but it’s also a definite indictment of the state of medical care in the states.
Wow, impressive story. And even more impressive that you managed to rebreak it. That must’ve hurt so much.
I sneezed about 5 years ago and I haven’t been able to look up and to the right without pain since then. It’s a minor pain, but definitely still there in my neck.
Have you had a doctor look at it? This worries me.
I unfortunately can’t afford that. It’s not bad enough and hasn’t changed at all over 5 years, so frankly the doctors here would likely just say “yes, just don’t look that direction anymore”
That sucks. I’d expect a doctor to at least try to find out what’s causing it and if it’s serious or not. I wouldn’t expect them to tell you to “just don’t look in that direction anymore”. But then I don’t know your doctors ofcourse.
Wishing you all the best and I hope your issue still gets resolved one way or another. And I hope it’s nothing serious.
I went jogging on slightly damp asphalt with my then-7yo.
I tripped on nothing and dislocated the living fuck out of my ankle, to the point that the paramedic insisted on sitting up by my head in the ambulance so she didn’t have to look at it - it was indeed extremely cursed.
They said that I escaped major reconstructive surgery by grams and millimetres, but the ligament went to hell and my ankle is now only held together with chewing gum and hope.
Running more than for the bus is off the cards for the rest of my life - however I’m otherwise fine, and I go hiking at every opportunity.
but the ligament went to hell and my ankle is now only held together with chewing gum and hope.
I strive to be this eloquent one day.
Bent down to pick up a kitten in my garage when I was 8. It was under a car engine suspended on a lift, and I brained myself badly while standing up. Lots of blood, seizures due to three TBI and resultant swelling. Thankfully my mother bravely stood up to the mean old doctor insisting I needed surgery to relieve the swelling and instead treated me with psychic healing and veggie smoothies. It only hurts sometimes 45 years later.
Bent down to pick up a box while cleaning an extra bedroom that had become infested with bees (they had started a hive in the wall due to an unseen opening happened around a hot water pipe after an earthquake). Frustrated due to both the intense heat and the bees that had only left their hive due to said heat, tried lifting said box, not realizing it was full of books and simultaneously ignoring a lifetime of working around my chronic back issues. I stopped trying to stand once I resembled a fleshy right angle and had to crawl out of the room on my hands and knees. A lovely 40 mph fender bender later that year (I was at a complete stop as were the cars in front of me) made that a delightful addition to my back problems.
Same year, I was making Hasselback potatoes for the first time. I have a seldom used but quite nice food processor, but decided ‘hell, why not use the mandolin?’ About an 1/8" of my right ring fingertip, that’s why not, dumbass! Thankfully it grew back, but the very tip looks like a light burn scar and it’s still somewhat numb and tingly when touched 9 years later.
Woke up realizing I must’ve slept wrong, had a crick in my neck.
About an hour of messing with it and tried to crack the crick,
Life’s been different since then. Can’t move my head a certain way, if so my arm will go numb in seconds.
I had this too, but mine went further. Eventually became burning, terrible pain down my arm – worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I spent six weeks on steroids, oxycodone, and gabapentin until I could finally get steroid injections directly into my spine.
Be careful, and get checked out for cervical spinal stenosis. You might be able to do some proactive stuff at this point.
Now my neck always hurts, I can’t feel my fingertips (especially on the right hand), and my right forearm sometimes feels like it’s on fire.
Future me! Yayyyyyyyyyy
I’ll look into the stenosis for sure! Thanks!
Was eating soup after a long day of work. Tired. Figured I’d drink the last bit out of the bowl.
Crashed it into my front tooth and a piece of it flew off. Enough to be visible, not enough for the dentist to do anything about it. It’ll just stay like that forever.
Not so bad compared to many other stories, just really really pathetic.
A dentist should be able to at least just bond it. I broke my two front teeth in half playing hockey, and got veneers to replace them. Now that’s a bit more than what you did, but I’d go on to chip both of those veneers and the two teeth below them them on my bottom jaw when (long story short) I punched myself in the face accidentally. And to make another long story short, my top front four teeth are now all veneers and the bottom ones the dentist just shaved to make even, since I have some crowding, and it’s all good enough.
But yeah, when I originally broke them the dentist bonded them so can say the letters S and F, because yelling “huck, huck” when it happened just didn’t feel as good as it should have.
I broke my wrist rollerblading when I was 14. I didn’t even fall super crazy or anything; I just got tripped up on a rock getting stuck in my wheel and fell forward while not moving very fast. Even after it healed, I didn’t really skate anymore and every now and then to this day, I feel it hurting like it was freshly broken for a moment or two on random occasions.
I had also taken a few tumbles directly onto my knees without sustaining lasting injuries, but I do recall a doctor telling me if I took a fall or two like I had for one time when I thought I broke something that I may need surgery because there was an issue with the cartilage in both my knees.
It wasn’t until a few years later while playing racket ball that I pivoted to hit the ball and just felt something pop and hurt like hell in my knee that another doctor said I had, if I am remembering the name correctly, Ozgood Slater’s and a deficiency of cartilage in my knees so things that normally aren’t supposed to rub together were rubbing together, causing inflammation and pain in the area. I still struggle with this and some days my knees just hurt like fucking hell.
I was rear ended in my 20’s while at stop light and got whiplash. Neck is constantly sore from that. Doctor told me it never really heals and just to do stretches. And I have carpal tunnel from shitty posture and playing games.
Earlier this week I tried to pick up my fat ass cat and tweaked my back. I’ve been hobbling around like an old man all week.
I was playing with some kids I was babysitting in McDonald’s play tubes when I was 18. I bent my ankle weird. I’m turning 30 in a couple months and there’s literally not a single day without ankle pain. Sometimes it’s disabling. Several times they haven’t actually found anything wrong with it but last time they said it had something (can’t remember) and it made a lot of bad clicking sounds when the podiatrist handled it. I’ve tried lots of things to help.
Skydiving, once, in my 20s. Not sure if the chute was on wrong, being slightly over the weight limit was a factor, or if it was just genetics, but when the chute opened, the jerk caused a loud enough pop that my instructor asked if I was okay.
I lied of course, the adrenaline kept me from knowing the deal, anyway.
The first time I threw my back out, after, it was from picking up a piece of paper. These days, when I have the least pain I can still tell my back muscles are as tight as a garage spring.
I had never known a moment of back pain before that day, and I don’t know what it’s like to walk a mile without back pain now.
Several back injuries led up to the one to rule them all, from skiing accidents to picking up a ping pong ball. One day a few years back mid-deadlift (right as I was getting in decent shape from a life long affliction of being a fatty) something in my back popped loudly and I passed out.
Hasn’t been a normal day since. Lots of physio and some rehab, just weren’t doing the trick. Now got some futuristic prosthetic discs and we’ll see how it goes. Hopeful again, finally.
I blame the utterly nonsensical popularaization of deadlifts. Whatever you get outta that, is minimal compared to the risk of potential injury. Also, 90% of the time, people AREN’T using the proper form, so it makes it even worse! add in trying to squeeze out extra reps, or going for a new PR, it’s just an injury waiting to happen. Been liftin my whole life, fuck deadlifts.
I think deadlifts done correctly are almost unanimously considered a good lift, but I was ahead of my skis that day on weight and already had a bad back. I’d been form checked by two trainers so I think I was okay there too, but I can’t be sure because the smallest, imperceptible change, especially if you already have a bad back can ruin things quickly. I live with a ton of regret about it. Hindsight blah blah.
yeah, right? like, you can work forever on getting good form for a lift, but as soon as you start straining, bit tired, maybe 3rd or 4th set, things start to get lax, and BAM. herniated disk. sucks.
What do you do instead?
Since dead lifts are primarily glutes and traps, just break it up into two different exercises. Squats (or leg press) and row. Also, the biggest secret to not getting injured in the weight room that most weightlifters ignore (to their detriment) is yoga. Yoga isn’t for bulking, it’s exclusively for all of the little accessory musculature groups that aren’t typically utilized in standard kinetic motion strength training. These are the muscles that help you keep your good form while you’re doing strength training, and preemptively primes your body to not injure yourself.
Got WAY TOO drunk at a club, kicked out (which I genuinely accepted with good grace). Walking home, realised I’d forgotten my jacket. Figured I’d just nip in past the bouncer, grab the jacket and leave without bothering anyone. I didn’t nip past. I got bounced. Rebuffed from the club, and pushed backwards I fell over and broke my foot (a Jones fracture). Was in a moon boot for 3 months or so, but now it hurts whenever I walk wrong.
It seems like you weren’t drunk enough, drunk people are indestructible.
