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Ridiculous injuries

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I broke a rib picking blackberries yesterday.

Over to you …

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  1. I broke my pelvis when I was 17 after a cow fell on me. I have a floating chip in the acetabulum (the lip of the socket in the ball-and-socket hip joint). Has been giving me increasing grief as I have got older.

      • Stumbled on the top step while carrying a basket of freshly-ironed clothes. Lashed out foot for balance, kicked door frame instead. Just about managed to not fall down stairs myself, but clothes ended up crumpled again.

        Probably more like 50 years ago, thinking about it. Went to loo – number two. Ran out of paper. Pack of loo roll kept on high shelf. Climbed on top of washing machine (it was an old house, and WM was in bathroom) just as it started a spin cycle. Machine wobbled, I lost balance, fell head-first onto bog. I broke the toilet seat in half, and had a lump the size of an orange on my bonce. Luckily, my head hit the seat and didn’t go down the pan. Enjoy your lunch…

  4. I was gored by a red deer stag in my attic. Getting ready for a trip to the Isle of Man to help a motorbike racing friend, I went up to the utterly chaotic attic to get my rucksack and, in my bare feet, trod on an antler. Right into my heel. It bloody hurt. No sympathy from my friends, of course.

  5. Cutting a tomato with one of those very sharp kitchen devil knives, “Hmm this tomato is really tough this knife is not very good” Yep slicing into my finger and I’d got a fair way in.

    Speared my foot through my boot (luckily not too deep) as I tried to take a shortcut through a park in Edinburgh by climbing over the Victorian spiked fence. Drink may have been taken.

    Smashed a couple of crowns in my mouth as I fell from a bench bashing my jaw down on the edge of the bench. Drink may have been taken.

  6. Cut a finger with electric hedge trimmers. Lucky two ways:
    1) nearly reached the bone – but didn’t.
    2) nearly cut through the power cable – but didn’t.
    A few mm from disaster in both cases.
    I still have the scar.

    • I still have the scar on my thumb from when I tried to open a tin of varnish at in woodwork at school using a chisel. Obviously it slipped and slashed my thumb open. I guess I was lucky it didn’t hit the tendon.

    • Electric hedge trimmers, I was cutting my brother in law’s hedge and sliced through the cable of the trimmers. He came out to find me refitting the plug on a shortened cable, “oh I’ve just sliced through the cable won’t take me long to fix it”, off he went. A bit later he came out and found me refitting the plug “I thought you’d done that”
      ” Oh I did, but I sliced through it again” I replied cheerily.

      I once got out of the bath and went into the bedroom to get dressed for some reason I took the plug out of an extension lead still with wet hands. I found myself on the other side of the room from the shock.

      Seeing Gatz’s stapling disaster reminds me of using a wall stapler I looked away and managed to send a staple right into my finger luckily not hitting a bone as they told me at the hospital.

      Oh and wiping glue from joining some wicker together to make a frame, never wipe hot glue off with your finger.

      • My wife put some take away food in the microwave once to reheat it a bit. Wasn’t in there very long but she’d not noticed there was a metal strip in the pattern of the plate. I did notice it when I picked it up with my bare hand to take it out

  7. I got a bruised rib last week having a sports massage. It was aimed primarily at a stiff and sore tendon in my shoulder. She fixed the tendon nicely but somehow when doing my back a rib went ping. A week and a half later it still hurts like a bastard and wakes me up several times a night.

  8. Minor compared to the above, but early in my working career I unblocked a stapler, then checked it was fixed by pressing my thumbs against the staple end. Having thus stapled my thumbs together I then couldn’t get the staple out.

  9. Bent down to unplug a Flymo lawnmower in May last year. Fucked my L4 disk. Sciatic pain immobilised me for a month. Obliged to walk with a stick until just after the new year. Still have, now fading, nerve damage in my left foot.

    I’ve recently taken to visiting garden centres to tell lawnmowers to fuck off.

  10. So many, but here are three ‘highlights’.

    Exploring the sheds on the old farm we lived in, I thought it would be a really good idea to open up the rusty can on one of the shelves. Lifting it up to the light above my head, I inserted a screwdriver between lid and edge, exerting force. Out poured ancient creosote all over my hair and face, sticking instantly and securely. Hard scrubbing by my mother with green scratchy cloths cleared my face and she cut most of the viscous clag out of my hair – you can still it sticking out in the official school photograph I was booked in for the following day, together with apple cheeked, freckled grin on my face.

    Rewiring a multisocket extension cable, I thought would be no problem, as I’d rewired many a plug before – blue, brown, yellow/ green wires all in the right place – except I’d neglected to unplug the other end, or indeed switch it off at the wall. 4 nice deep stabs into my left hand on the arch between thumb and first finger. I persuaded the first aid colleague who treated my bleeding hand to let me finish the repair job, as it wasn’t safe to leave the bare elements open, and once I’d disconnected it from the supply of live electricity, it was perfectly safe.

    Skateboarding near home with a glass bottle of mineral water in my hand, I dropped the bottle on the ground, it shattered and I fell with my right thumb base landing in the broken pieces – a nice deep slice that took several stitches. This was about a year or two ago. I haven’t skated as much since then.

  13. Chalk this one up as a near miss. When I was about 2 my mother discovered me poking a metal toasting fork into an unswitched 2-pin round-hole electric socket. Fortunately the fork had a wooden handle.

    @clive – hope your injury doesn’t cramp your Wordling style!

  14. I broke my wrist punching someone in a rugby match. He moved at just the wrong moment, and what would have been an absolute beauty…wasn’t.

    I have put my (longstanding injury) back out a few times by doing the laundry and emptying the dishwasher. Sadly this has yet to relieve me of my responsibilities in this area

  15. I had to go to hospital to have a piece of dried pasta removed from under my fingernail, an injury sustained while doing the washing up.

    I also repaired the insole of a pair of trainers with superglue and glued the trainers to my foot.

  17. I fell off the back of an MG Midget when I foolishly loosened my grip to reach for a prawn cracker just as the driver took a corner a bit sharpish. A broken wrist scenario blossomed after hitting the tarmac. I think I got off lightly tbh.
    I stabbed myself in the thigh with a scalpel because I got distracted when working on a painting and I forgot I was holding it in my left hand. Lots of blood. Really so much blood.
    I got pissed on by a goat after taking refuge under a tarpaulin during a thunderstorm at a free festival. Not injurious but certainly wet and smelly.

  18. Not sure if this counts as an injury as such but years ago I was cutting the grass on Easter Saturday when a got an insect bite on my thumb. No reaction so I forgot about it. Next morning when I woke up my hand was starting to swell up and was throbbing, then red blotches started appearing up my arm. Rang the emergency doctor who said you need to go to A&E. Easter Sunday, it was packed, I waited for hours and by the time I saw the doctor my hand was huge and flashing red and white as it throbbed. People were staring at it.
    Went in and without looking up from writing his notes, the doctor asked what was wrong. I got as far as saying i had been bitten by an insect. He had a go at me for coming to A&E with that so I plonked my hand on the desk and said he might want to look at it. When he did, he jumped out of his chair and shouted “f***king hell, what the f*** bit you?”. I then had to sit on his cupboard, he said “I won’t lie, this is going to hurt.” and using a very large needle gave me a tetanus jab in my thigh. He wasn’t lying.
    I would still like to know what bit me.

  19. When my nephew was in primary school, the teacher was talking about safety aroujd the home and asked the class if anyone in their family had suggered an accident. One of my nephew’s friends put their hands up and said “Miss! Miss! My dog burnt its balls jumping over an electric fence!”

    • On a midnight hike in Denmark and cutting across a field we heard the noise of hooves. Looking back we saw were were being pursued by a herd of bullocks we started to run and luckily we jumped over an electric fence, no balls were hurt luckily though there was a nasty electrical burn across a coat.

      In Norway travelling in an old ambulance (somewhat fittingly) the driver stopped and said that it was struggling. I was next to him in the front as he unscrewed the water cap which waxs inside the cab. A large spray of hot water hit him in the face, I was lucky but he had to spend some time in hospital. On the same trip someone threw up, after eating a large part of a catering can of bilberries, over my sleeping bag alas with me in it.

  20. Age 17 I had athletes foot and did nothing about it, then became so severe I had trouble walking and had to be taken to the doctors who prescribed ‘trench foot’. Two weeks off school and twice-daily iodine baths. Something my parents (and now wife and kids) continue to find hilarious.

  21. I’ve stapled my thumb more than once. Three times at least. The first was out of curiosity rather than clumsiness, I think. The others were early signs of a failure to learn from mistakes, which has become more of a feature as I’ve got older. I have very bleedy thumbs, it turns out. One time they had to put staples in to seal the wound. Not really, but

  22. Ripped the entire attachment of my left biceps off my forearm while lifting up a television. I heard it before I felt it which was quite odd as it all happened in 2-3 seconds. “What is that noise?” – it was coming from inside the arm! Sounded like someone flicking through a very thick old phonebook. It wasn’t especially painful but you lose function straight away. Being a clinician I diagnosed myself, confirmed by MRI, needed surgical repair and immobilisation for 8 weeks.

    • I’m a clinician and I’m shit at diagnosing my own ailments. I used to be terrible with family members, too, but, now I treat them as patients, I’ve improved immeasurably.

  23. I ended up wearing a neck brace after a fat bloke stage dived onto me at a Wonderstuff gig.

    It was alright on the night, but the following morning I struggled to drive to work, then could not move my head to see the computer screen without significant pain. I took myself to A&E where the doctor, having heard how I came about my injury, laughed… and disappeared for a few minutes. He returned with the entire A&E staff, and made me recount the mishap to an audience, who also laughed.

    A quick X-ray revealed nothing broken, and I was sent home with a neck brace, some painkillers, and the advice to always keep my eyes open in the moshpit.

  24. I had a bit of pie crust stuck in my throat for about eight hours. I could breathe but not swallow, not even saliva. It was… messy. Eventually took myself to A&E where I sat spitting into a bag near the reception desk for another six hours until they could move me to an ENT centre. Around six in the morning I heard a quiet voice behind me say “I see quiche man is still here…”

  25. Despite all my mishaps ironically I had to teach art students the correct use of equipment in the 3D workshop luckily there were no mishaps. Though some years before I was drilling a thin piece of metal on the pedestal drill without clamping it down it caught on the drill bit and spun luckily just missing my finger.

    Drilling something some years later I got something a piece of plastic probably in my hand I drove to Manchester for a concert (Emmylou Harris) during the performance applauding became painful. On getting back to the car I couldn’t hold the steering wheel so my wife drove back and insisted we go to A&E. Friday night in A&E is not the best place to be. Tetanus jab in the buttocks.

    • I watched as a school friend, using a hand vice and a column drill, drilled a hole through the skin between thumb and forefinger. Not deliberately, but he was distracted by talking to me.

      Cue me rushing to the office, sharpish.

      Me: “Sir, Mark’s drilled a hole through his hand!”
      Sir: “Don’t be ridiculous, boy!”
      Me: “No, honestly, he has.”

      Luckily our school was at the top of a hill with an A&E hospital at the bottom, and his Austin Marina had wipe-clean PVC seats.

  26. I have cracked a rib , more than once, by coughing.

    A mate , while drilling something at head height managed to drill into his own neck.

    Another mate , now known as Fang, for obvious reasons, brike his front tooth off removing a nail. Strong exertion with nail removal tool, nail gives way, pliers fly upward – whammo right into the gob.

  27. Broke my nose playing cricket aged 8. I was wicket-keeper, a dive out to catch a wide, batsman decided to give it a wallop anyway. He hit me on the bridge of my nose and I missed the ball. Knocked out, came round with little birdies circling my head, all that stuff. No helmets in 1970s schoolboy matches.

    Looked like a ginger Frank Bruno for the next 16 years. Finally had a corrective nose job aged or 24. It’s still a bit wonky.

    • Not at cricket but I also had the nose that could smell round corners before I got there, corrective surgery in my twenties still slightly wonky too.

      Reading my replies to others that have had similar injuries in surprised I’ve lasted this long.

      One other to add ‘trouser zips’ I think you know what I mean men.

      Oh and another teenage bravado I was bet I couldn’t climb some scaffolding on jump off into a pile of sand which I duly did. Decided to do it again, climbed up bashed my head near the top on a scaffolding pole and fell off, stunned slightly but came to to grab onto some more scaffolding otherwise I would have fallen a couple of storeys onto a large pile of rubble.

      Another breaking into my girlfriend’s house as she’d forgotten her keys climbing the drainpipe to the roof heading across and nearly sliding off the roof.

  28. I ripped off a toenail putting my jeans on. There was a loop of thread inside the leg where they were stitched at the bottom and it caught round my little toenail. The nail was left hanging, not by a thread, but by the corner so I had to finish ripping it off myself.
    Ever since then I make sure to put on my socks first.

    • Both my big toe nails are infected with some fungal thing which I’m treating with some nail paint stuff from the doc, but they are very weak and every day I’m scared I’ll accidentally ping one off.

      • I had a big toe nail removed by a podiatrist. The removal itself was completely painless, but the needle being stuck into my toe for the anaesthetic was absolute agony.

        • I’ll tell you a good way to remove your big toenails: walk a fair distance in ill-fitting shoes. You’ll know you have gone far enough as you will develop subungual haematomas (that’s bruising under the nail). Leave it a few days and then, bingo, you can peel ’em both off, painlessly.
          You’re welcome.

  29. Two separate encounters with corned beef tins: one cut spurted blood while my housemate, a medical type, peered a bit closer and said, “Ah, the classic corned beef tin injury.”
    A 3″ long scar on my forearm from dragging a nail down it 39 years ago while pulling old set panels apart.
    A 1″ scar, also on my forearm, trying to retrieve an Amazon parcel from the wrong letterbox during covid. I finally got it by wrapping gaffer tape onto a long screwdriver, sticky side out.
    I dropped a 30kg base plate on my big toe, end on and that’s why you should wear steel toecap boots. I wasn’t.
    Hit my thumb hard with a hammer, while putting up some fencing. My wife, who used to be a nurse, looked at it and told me dismissively to run it under the tap. as I got to the back door, she shouted, “and take your boots off.”

    • I dropped an 8×4 sheet of MDF onto big a toe as it was being unloaded from a truck. Also not wearing steel toe caps. Ended up having the toenail removed. It grew back but, nearly 40 years later, still looks a bit wonky.

    • Cuts.

      Years ago I was living in a crappy house share in Tooting. Our decrepit washing machine locked itself shut so the landlady called a plumber and I was volunteered by the others to take a work day off to stay in and wait for him.

      Just before he arrived I managed to break a heavy glass tumbler while drying it over the sink and slash the outer length of my right little finger. An astonishing amount of blood. He knocked just as I was getting a bit woozy at the sight of it all. I let him in. His first words were, ‘Blimey, look at the claret!’ I went upstairs to vomit while he fixed the washing machine.

      A strange encounter for the both of us.

  30. In the car on the way back from school, with my sister and her mate in the back. I had pushed the cigarette lighter in and decided to see how hot it was by putting my finger on it. It was very hot. We had to drive home with the windows open (I think with my finger waving out of one of them to stay cool as well as to disperse the smell). Had a cracking blister (and luckily didn’t have to go to hospital, it just cleared up itself with a bit of care and keeping it clean).

    • Blisters! I can do blisters!!!
      More silliness than accidental, but I recall a day when I thought it “cool’ to walk in and out lectures barefoot. This was the baking hot summer of 76, and I was fine getting in, walking from Bloomsbury to Lambeth Palace Road. However, walking back, at 2pm; it was a Wednesday so a half day, the pavements were distinctly scorchio. Massive heel blister and under my big toes, sufficient so I could barely walk for a week. I knew not to pop them, but, a week later, the fluid was milky and, with edges inflaming, I sliced into them, to let out the pus. Didn’t do that again.
      Years later, in Corsica, walking around a deli in Cali. I nudged against some equipment and sensed it was falling. Throwing out my hand, I caught the moving arm of one of those hot sealing tongs used to seal packets of fresh fish etc. Owwwwwwwwwie. The appalled shopkeeper wrapped it in ice and a handkerchief, but it, too, blistered dramatically..

  31. Laid rolls of lawn and noticed tree shadows on the lawn. Late in the day, tired. Decided to get the chain saw.
    Started the chainsaw but thought hey lets be careful here. Got the ladder and leant it against the wheelie bin. I then climbed the ladder to test for stability. At the peak the wheelie bin nudged and down I fell., landing on a pile of bluestone rocks and ripping my leg open on the corner of the ladder.
    I staggered down the drive and Mrs Wells said that’s it “ no more work today”. “ Ya think!”
    Covered in dirt we go to a local doc who says I can see the bone. As I get off the bed I shuffle 2 inches at a time.
    End of story, stitches, neck brace and 3 cracked vertebrates.
    At least I wasn’t holding the chainsaw.
    I still get up ladders.

  32. Only 8-year old boy I knew in Aberdeen who went all the way to Newcastle for his summer holidays (Look, English cows!!).
    Arrived at Auntie’s house, scrambled out of car and went to find cousin Phil. Thirty seconds later we were in his garden. Enormous tree.
    ” Bet you can’t get to that second branch” says evil cousin Phil.
    Up I goes, reaches for second branch which snaps. Down I plunge. Right arm broken, eight stitches in left hand which had scraped along twenty feet of bark. “Half an inch further up and you’d have lost use of your middle fingers” says cheery doctor. Then tetanus injection administered through a twelve-inch long needle.
    My auntie’s house was formerly a small station on the edge of Newcastle alongside the main line from London to Scotland.
    That night might have been the most painful and sleepless of my life. The whole house shaking as the overnight from Edinburgh thundered by and me uncertain which pain was the worse, my right arm, my left hand or my throbbing arse.

  33. Around 40 years ago I noticed an irritating crunching noise while walking and thought I had a stone stuck in the sole of my shoe. ‘I’ll just flick that out with my thumb’, I thought. Turns out it wasn’t a stone but a shard of glass. Cue profuse bleeding from a deep cut that almost reached the bone of my thumb. I still have the scar.

    When I was at school, aged about 8, some kid thought it would be hilarious to push the desk lid on top of my head while I was rummaging inside. The lid hit the bridge of my nose. More profuse bleeding ensued. When I went howling to the teacher I was told not to interrupt and wait my turn.

    When lifting a carpet prior to a new one being laid I thought I would take the opportunity to sand down the wooden door treads by hand. I forgot to be wary of the carpet gripper spikes and ripped a two inch gash in the side of my hand. More profuse bleeding ensued.

    A couple of years ago while some work was being done on the brickwork of my house I walked into a scaffolding pole I had forgotten was there. I had a massive lump on the top of my head and suffered flashing lights in my eyes. Thankfully no lasting damage. Thankfully no lasting damage. Thankfully no lasting damage.

    • If we’re going back I fell off one of those tall slides they used to have in the park in the 60s. They were lethal – no boxing in or anything at the top, just two handles to hold while you manoeuvre yourself into the slide. Age 5 I’d been down a few times under the supervision of my dad then sneaked back and climbed up again. You guessed it. Slipped off at the top, hit the deck, fractured skull, days unconscious in hospital. My mother needed to be sedated and my dad held it together until I came out of the coma and was pronounced out of danger. At that point he collapsed and had to be kept in over night. No apparent damage (some may have a different view).

      • Reminds me of having teeth out to create space in my mouth when I was 7 or 8. I was fine when I came round after the anaesthetic but my Mum had passed out on the waiting room floor and needed medical attention.

  34. I think I’ve related this tale before, but when I was about four years old I dropped a toy soldier into the toaster. I put my hand into the toaster to retrieve it, but in doing so I turned it on by pushing down on the part that holds the bread and couldn’t get my hand out. Being four years old it never occurred to me to just unplug the toaster. Dad heard the screams and unplugged it. My left middle finger was touching the element and it got burnt practically right down to the bone at the top joint. Still have the scar today over 50 years later.

  37. I lost my sight from biting into my sweater when I was around eleven or twelve.
    As a kid I used to get fits of rage when I was tired/hungry + everything went against me, and the way I would deal with it was to bite things, as hard as possible, to release the rage. Sometimes I’d bite into my own arm (but that wasn’t very practical – it hurt, left a nasty mark, and I couldn’t bite as hard and long as needed to get rid of my rage) but mostly I’d bite into either a pillow or a piece of clothing, whatever was nearest to me. Fabrics are soft and doesn’t hurt you – until that one day.

    I was home alone, after school, and something triggered my rage, so I lifted my sweater up to my mouth and bit down furiously hard, as usual. But this sweater happened to be of some really awful polyester type blend, slick and slippery. When I bit down, my teeth slid violently sideways in opposite directions. I heard a crunching sound and “the lights turned off.” Suddenly I couldn’t see properly – it was dark and dim and I could only see hints of contours, darker and lighter parts of darkness.

    I was of course instantly terrified, my cause for rage forgotten and I stood frozen, waiting for my sight to return. But it didn’t! And after a tense minute waiting in vain, I started to cry in blind (sic) panic, making my way, for some reason, down into our basement – feeling my way down the stairs.
    Then back upstairs, feeling my way with my arms stretched out, walking this way and that, not a sane thought in my head, just panic.

    But after five minutes of this I got exhausted and sat down on the floor, resting and too tired to cry. “I have to think logically” I said to myself, “If this sort of thing can happen, then there must be a way of reversing it as well.” Thinking about it I came to the conclusion that I had to recreate the event, so I lifted the same corner of my sweater to my mouth, bit down hard, and deliberately tried to slide my teeth in the same way as before.

    It worked! The lights turned on, I could see again!
    I was shaken to my core, didn’t tell my mother when she arrived home from work later, didn’t tell my friends. I didn’t think anyone would believe such a story! But it happened.
    I never wore that sweater again (or any sweater of a purely synthetic blend of materials) and, more importantly, I never bit anything again when one of my fits of rage came on. In fact, I worked very hard to avoid getting those fits ever again (didn’t work completely, but I did get more control over them from there on).

    I’ve wanted to ask an eye doctor how that could happen, but although I’ve met a few I’ve never gotten around to it. Partly because doctors are in such a hurry, partly because I still don’t think anyone would believe my story. Perhaps one of the AW docs can shed some light on the incident? But don’t bother if you just want to say “That can’t happen”, because I know it did!

      • Once an ophtalmologist I visited for some tests asked me if I’d had some injury as a kid that could explain why my eyesight is so much worse in my right eye. That would have been the perfect opportunity to ask him about this freak event. But because he said “injury to my right eye or a head injury”, I didn’t think about that biting incident at all and said No, I’ve never had any injury that could explain it!
        I thought of it once I got home (as you do) and wondered if that indeed could have been the reason for that difference. But I never met that doctor again, and never had the opportunity to ask any of the other eye docs I’ve seen since.

        Then again; as far as I can tell, big differences in sight between the left and right eyes are fairly common (at least among the people I know) so I don’t see why he was so very perplexed by it. And no other doctor have asked about it or seems to think it’s odd, so it probably is a separate issue.

  39. I broke my wrist and severely winded myself falling off the top of a lamp post aged 18.

    With a gang of mates in the local park, late in the evening and on drugs of some sort, it seemed like a good idea to climb up one of the lamp posts on the footpath that ran across the park. So all of us did.
    It was one of those old iron lamp posts with a crossbar near the top and a swan-neck to the actual lamp above that. Soon, two guys were hanging off the crossbar, another one was clinging to the post just below them and I was sitting on top of the swan-neck with my feet on the crossbar. Unfortunately for me the swan-neck, which was only a hollow metal tube, snapped at it’s base and so I went flying. I landed on the grass, fortunately, and once I got my breath back I was OK apart from my wrist and back aching.
    Unfortunately, some bloke walking his dog nearby saw what happened and seemingly hurried off to phone the police, so we then spent some time hiding from the cops.
    By morning my back was not too bad but my wrist had seized up and was barely usable, so off I went to the hospital and they xrayed it and put it in a cast.
    Told my parents a bullshit story about stumbling into a hole in the ground which they did not believe.

  40. Walking the dog, off the lead, along a canal tow path in the pouring rain, one dark evening in February, I tried to side step a large puddle. My right foot was on a slight incline and when I lifted my left, I slid and the ankle snapped (all compartments, a proper mess).

    There was a canal boat with the light on, three yards from me, a house behind me and a row of houses on the other side of the canal. My cries for help failed to elicit a response for what seemed an age. A man popped his head out of a window opposite. He asked if I was OK. I said: “No! I’ve broken my leg.” That was the last I saw of him.

    Eventually, the resident from behind me emerged. He apologised that he hadn’t responded straight away because he thought I was having sex on the boat. The woman on the boat had called the police as she thought I was being murdered and I assume the man from across away assumed I was drunk.

    Interesting how three different witnesses to the same event have different perspectives.

    • Yow. Similar to Mrs. T who broke her ankle in a double fracture this time last year on a 3km kids walk in a forest in France. She was trying to avoid a patch of mud by climbing a small bank, twisted to avoid falling on the mud, bang. A year later she’s almost back to full mobility.

  41. I feel left out – I have never broken a single bone in my body and have had no major injuries. The best I can come up with is cutting my finger whilst cooking……..

  42. A sill injury led to a funny discovery.

    When I was a singleton, returning to my room in a shared house I kicked a box that was under my bed. The box contained a glass photo frame which stuck in the side of my foot causing a visit to A + E , a bus ride away as I couldn’t drive or had anyone who could take may. Doctor cleaned it up, put in a couple of stitches and x -rayed it in case there was any glass left in the foot.

    There was no glass left in my foot but there was a sewing pin, a couple of inches long. I have no idea how it got there and as far as I know it’s still there.

  43. At junior school on a trip to the local park a bumble bee landed on my face and proceeded to walk about my face. A school chum offered to remove it, I said to leave it alone and it would fly off and wouldn’t sting as they only Sting when provoked. The next minute a branch with leaves brushed across my face as said chum had decided I was wrong and wanted to help with knocking it off with said branch.

    Needless to say I got stung.

    A few years before towing my toy yacht on some string round the paddling pool one of the paving edges was loose which of course tipped me in. Luckily no injuries but I had to travel back on the bus sat on my dad’s knee.

  45. About this time last year I dislocated my shoulder getting out of the bath. I felt myself falling and grabbed the towel rail with my left hand while the rest of me landed on the bathroom floor

    Amazingly I then went to bed but after a couple of hours got Mrs M to drive to Emergency. Then followed 9 months of physio.

    And yes, I admit, drink had been taken…

    • Was talking to a nurse practitioner at the doctor’s surgery this afternoon. About my increasingly painful left elbow and a few old injuries that now affect me more in my old age.
      He mentioned that in his experience, when you injure a shoulder, a knee, ankle, wrist etc. it never returns to as good as it was before.
      My left shoulder and wrist both sustained injuries in the past. Only the wrist injury was a ridiculous one (see above). My elbow hasn’t ever been injured AFAIR.
      It seems my elbow’s just suffering from muscular pain and he’s recommended rubbing pain relief gel like Voltarol on it, but he’s also booked me an appointment with their practice physiotherapist for next week.

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