I loved what C said about children’s entertainment, books, magazines being a portal of escapism as a child. That was exactly my experience and I’ve never been able to put it into words. I need a transcript of that answer to put on my wall. Thank you 💚
My most embarrassing injury was when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and on my half asleep way to the bathroom in the dark, I stumbled and bashed my face directly into the door frame. It gave me a horrible black eye that lasted almost 2 weeks... During which I had to tell EVERY person I came in contact with about my tiny bladder and extreme clumsiness.
Is there any possible way that you guys could list out the skincare routines? I would love that so much, but also...
It was senior year of college and my friend Rachel and I were at the school union. She was much more athletic than me and ran up the down escalators with ease. I attempted to do it to seeing her at top and all I can ever remember is my brain saying, “Dive for it!” So I did and I ended up cutting my right knee with the teeth of the escalator. Rachel (a pre-Med major and now a wondering Dr) watched the whole three stitches they put into my knee and even had the Resident assisting stay,”Stand back!” a few times because her head was so close to the wound! To this day I’m extra careful going up, or down. 😇
I stuck my finger in a blender. An immersion/stick blender (not a stand blender 😅).
It was the day before Thanksgiving 2012. I was using the blender to puree freshly roasted pumpkin for a pumpkin pie. I'd finished blending and was going to set down the blender on the counter next to the sink, unplug it and rinse it off, when I noticed some pumpkin was starting to drip off the bottom of the shaft. I reached my left index finger up to collect the dripping pumpkin, and as I did, the blender shifted in my right hand. While trying to recover my grip, I managed to press the button that turned on the blender (one long button that was waaay too easily triggered!).
When it turned back on, my left index finger got sucked into the blades. It cut down to the bone and FRACTURED the bone - I ended up with a compound fracture and had to get 17 stitches--all in the top half of my fingertip. The very kind ER doc who sewed me up compared my fingertip to the slinky dog from Toy Story - as I'd pulled my finger out, the blades had just kept whirling and cutting all the way up. He also said I came about as close as I could have to cutting off the top of my finger without actually cutting it off. So I was lucky! The pie was lucky too - the pureed pumpkin somehow dodged the blood that splattered all over the kitchen, and my mom was able to finish the pie.
My grandmother was a real tough cookie who'd grown up on a ranch in Idaho, and when she arrived for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, she walked straight up to me, looked down at my hand, then looked me in the eye and said, "now that was a stupid thing to do." 😂 I had to walk around for weeks with my finger in a big bandage and brace and answer ashamedly whenever anyone asked what happened.
Thanks to physical therapy, my finger recovered quite well, though 11 years later it's still consistently a few degrees colder than the rest of my body and it gets really stiff sometimes before it rains. It was definitely a wake up call - I'm a lot more careful now with all my appendages. I found out later that the same thing had happened earlier that year to Miley Cyrus https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/ouch-miley-cyrus-cuts-finger-in-blender-2012184/. At the time that definitely made it feel more embarrassing but in hindsight I'm kinda surprised it doesn't happen more often--those blenders could really use a safety/2-button system!
PSA - operate immersion blenders with extreme caution!!! Several friends tell me they think of me every time they use one, and embarrassing as it was, I like to think my story has helped keep others' fingers safe through the years, so at least there's that! 🫠
This happened to me recently, and I can laugh about it now but at the time I was pretty sure I was dying. We were at California Adventures, on Goofys Flight School. It's a tight squeeze to get in for us rounder folks. I got in, done it plenty of times before so I know how to position. But this time I didn't get myself far enough back into the seat and once the harness was down, I was locked in. There was the hump on the seat (I'll call this the crotch hump) that I'd never noticed before, probably because I was seated further back. The ride carries on as usual, we're laughing and screaming and having a good time, when we come to the big drop section. It's always fun, the braking that comes after it isn't, but the drop itself is fun. That is, unless you can feel the crotch hump. I slammed down into the hump so hard I saw stars and yelped so loud, my husband could tell it wasn't the usual "this is so fun" yell right away, because I instinctively I yelled out, "MY VAGINA!!!" *facepalm* My friend who was with us and my husband start cracking up not realizing I was in actual pain. The rest of the ride after that I was trying to gingerly hold myself down into the seat so I wouldn't do further damage. When we climbed off the ride, we had to climb up then down the exit stairs and each step was just pain shooting up - think if the worst day of period pain, when you feel like your pelvic bones are trying to spread apart. It took about a week for me to be able to sit down at a normal pace instead of gingerly.
Another comment reminded me, I had to get a cortisone shot for back pain back in '07. I was so sick and coughing so hard that I threw my back out and had to miss 3 days of work. Who throws their back out coughing?! I was only 27!!
Not really an injury but when I was a kid, I was waiting for the bus in the snow. The bus had gone in the ditch and my mom was already gone, so there was nothing to do but wait. Finally, my older brother's friend drove by and gave us a ride. I had been wearing my sweet canvas Keds and by the time we got to school, my feet were frozen. I went to a small Catholic school that didn't have a nurse so the director - who was the meanest, most terrifying old nun I ever met - took care of me. She made me take of my soaking wet shoes and socks and wrapped lukewarm towels around my feet. I didn't have frostbite, thankfully, but it took a while for my feet to thaw. She ended up giving a pair of her own socks and let me go shoeless for the rest of the day. I was supposed to wash and return the socks, but was afraid the washer dryer would eat them, so I just sprayed them with Lysol and gave them back. Years later, I ended up living with my friend who had gone to school with me and every time my toes would get slightly chilly, she would ask me if I wanted to borrow Sister What's Her Name's socks.
Last Fall, I was stepping up on an outdoor stage that was really a bunch of platforms pushed together so the group I was performing with would all fit, and caught the toe of my left shoe on the lip and rammed my shin into the edge of the platform so hard that I immediately started spurting blood everywhere. Fortunately, someone in the audience saw it happen and rushed to me with a towel and told me to hold tightly on to my shin while they ran to the first aid box and got a compression kit. They wrapped it up and I felt okay, so I played the performance, went home and fed the cats, and THEN went to the ER to have it looked at. I needed sixteen stitches to close it up. Less than twenty four hours later, I drove myself back to the ER (my husband was out of the country visiting family) because I had a fever and was admitted with what I thought was just an infection of some kind that needed more than an antibiotic in pill form. Found out two days later after I still hadn’t been released that I had sepsis! Fortunately the neighbors rallied to make sure the cats were fed and some friends came and moved my car out of the ER parking lot and eventually brought me home when I was finally released five days later. Took me another three weeks of being homebound to recover from that and another six months for the wound to heal completely. All because I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the back of the stage to walk up the stairs and through all the already seated people to get to my place. Lesson learned. I will always take the stairs from now on and if I ever forget I’ve got a lovely scar to remind me. Also, my husband will never leave me alone for that long again!
One halloween I went to a party dressed as Lady Gaga (to set the scene, it was one of those years where I thought the perfect Lady Gaga-costume was a purple wig and black tape covering my boobs like an X. I think it was 2010 ish?). My friend went as «Youtube» which was essentially a big cardboard with a cut out of where the video would be. We went together of course, and maybe ten minutes into the party I somehow got the youtube-cardboard edge shoved right into my eye. I tried to pretend it was okay, because the cute guy I had a crush on was at the party, but an hour into me not being able to open my eye someone took me to the emergencyroom. Remember my costume? Purple wig and black tape over my boobs you guys. And I had to wait a good three hours until I got help. The cardboard had ripped up my eye, which in all honesty sounds a lot worse than it was. My sight is okay, but I still need to be careful opening my eyes when I wake up unless I want to be in pain, 13 years later. 🫣😅🫠 I never got to talk to the cute guy and the party was supposedly super lit so I guess I got hurt in more ways than one that night.
Maybe it was this podcast or the hundred others that i listen to, but some guest was talking about phone addiction and everyone being so online that sounds ridiculously obvious but made me reframe everyone’s relationship to our devices. Like, people talk about it like it’s a failure of the person to not be able to put down the phone, when that should be championed. Every single aspect is made to keep our attention, EVERYTHING. They are promoted through all the “helpful tools” and the fact that it’s impossible to put down is just a side effect that plagues the weak minded. When in actuality it’s an ad machine that has a couple useful programs. That are also enveloped in ads anyway. It’s not your fault if you get sidetracked for an hour on the phone, it’s BUILT to sidetrack you. It has no compunction about waylaying you and only after there has been outcry does the company add something like “screen time” to make you feel guilty.
Just like any other addiction except even more insidious because it plays like it is benign and your succumbing to it is your fault. I know I’m over explaining. I just can’t quite elucidate the little switch that happened in my head...
Okay. All apologies if this grosses anyone out. For whatever reason I have a tendency to get lightheaded and pass out at the most ridiculous times. The worst was when I was a bookseller, and I was shelving in fiction. I was on a stool, and put a book on the top shelf, got lightheaded and passed out, tumbled head over ass over a leather reading chair and bonked my head on a bookshelf in mass markets. I split my head open and had to be taken to urgent care where a doctor anesthetized my scalp and proceeded to staple the aforementioned split head. He hadn’t anesthetized me enough and it HURT. I kept saying “ow” louder and louder every time he stapled my scalp at which point he stopped and said, “are you okay?” to which I said, “just finish it.” I’m sure my tone implied annoyance.
For the record I had a similar incident, not a year later, and had to go through the same experience. To this doctor I said, “please make sure you have anesthetized me enough, because the last time I had this done, the doctor had been light on the anesthesia.” I think she was an intern because she got this “look” on her face, and she left the room for a moment. I’m happy to say she did a better job of anesthesia, but a not great job of the actual work, and it took forever to heal. I have an ITP disorder though, so I guess that’s on me.
I have a story about the time I split my chin on a diving board, but I’ll keep that in my gum wrapper for another time.
Last November, I was at my local brewery with some friends. To set the scene, it's like my "Cheers", where everybody knows my name; I'm a weekly regular. My friend's birthday present had been delayed, so I brought it with me that day. When he arrived, I was so excited to give it to him (it was a personalized set of etched How I Met Your Mother pint glasses). I went out to my car (in the dark) and as I was walking back, tripped in a pothole in the street. I need to make clear that I wasn't drunk, and also there was no sidewalk so I had to walk in the street. Anywho, I tripped.... HARD. On my face and my knee (which I'd already previously had surgery on and then re-injured 3 years prior). Anyway, my friends had to piece me back together in the bathroom as I was gushing blood from my mouth and knee. My friend had to call my mom to take me to the ER. I was on crutches for weeks and looked like I'd been beaten BADLY. My face was gnarly. I still have pieces of gravel popping out of me and my knee will never be the same. I was so embarrassed because the story makes it sound like I was hammered but I wasn't. I only missed one day of work, though (as a full time nanny) lol 🤦🏼♀️💪🏻
I slugged my little brother and jumped up and ran out of the room so he couldn’t hit me back… except on the way out in my hurried state, I stubbed my pinkie toe on the edge of the dresser so hard that it broke and stuck out perpendicular to my foot! All they could do at the doctor was buddy tape it and I couldn’t wear real shoes for weeks. 🤦♀️😑
I hyperextended my thumb while artificially inseminating a cow (not an eccentric hobby, I work on a dairy farm.) Explaining how it happened seemed too embarrassing so I never told anyone 🤣
I had adult fun that led to me having a bad case of vertigo. I ended up with a doctor visit and 6 weeks of physical therapy. My physical therapist wanted the details of what I was doing when it happened.... I just said I was in bed, and sat up too quickly. 🤦♀️😂
I was showing my family how dull a “kid safe” knife was by dragging it WILLINGLY across my palm. Turns out, I had been fooled into thinking it was designed to be dull when in reality the demo I was shown was just REALLY OLD and my brand new version was, in fact, sharp as all get out. Readers, I needed 9 stitches to close up that gash. To say I traumatized my family is an understatement.
I loved what C said about children’s entertainment, books, magazines being a portal of escapism as a child. That was exactly my experience and I’ve never been able to put it into words. I need a transcript of that answer to put on my wall. Thank you 💚
My most embarrassing injury was when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and on my half asleep way to the bathroom in the dark, I stumbled and bashed my face directly into the door frame. It gave me a horrible black eye that lasted almost 2 weeks... During which I had to tell EVERY person I came in contact with about my tiny bladder and extreme clumsiness.
Is there any possible way that you guys could list out the skincare routines? I would love that so much, but also...
It was senior year of college and my friend Rachel and I were at the school union. She was much more athletic than me and ran up the down escalators with ease. I attempted to do it to seeing her at top and all I can ever remember is my brain saying, “Dive for it!” So I did and I ended up cutting my right knee with the teeth of the escalator. Rachel (a pre-Med major and now a wondering Dr) watched the whole three stitches they put into my knee and even had the Resident assisting stay,”Stand back!” a few times because her head was so close to the wound! To this day I’m extra careful going up, or down. 😇
Sorry for typos... just so excited to share my story, lol.
I stuck my finger in a blender. An immersion/stick blender (not a stand blender 😅).
It was the day before Thanksgiving 2012. I was using the blender to puree freshly roasted pumpkin for a pumpkin pie. I'd finished blending and was going to set down the blender on the counter next to the sink, unplug it and rinse it off, when I noticed some pumpkin was starting to drip off the bottom of the shaft. I reached my left index finger up to collect the dripping pumpkin, and as I did, the blender shifted in my right hand. While trying to recover my grip, I managed to press the button that turned on the blender (one long button that was waaay too easily triggered!).
When it turned back on, my left index finger got sucked into the blades. It cut down to the bone and FRACTURED the bone - I ended up with a compound fracture and had to get 17 stitches--all in the top half of my fingertip. The very kind ER doc who sewed me up compared my fingertip to the slinky dog from Toy Story - as I'd pulled my finger out, the blades had just kept whirling and cutting all the way up. He also said I came about as close as I could have to cutting off the top of my finger without actually cutting it off. So I was lucky! The pie was lucky too - the pureed pumpkin somehow dodged the blood that splattered all over the kitchen, and my mom was able to finish the pie.
My grandmother was a real tough cookie who'd grown up on a ranch in Idaho, and when she arrived for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, she walked straight up to me, looked down at my hand, then looked me in the eye and said, "now that was a stupid thing to do." 😂 I had to walk around for weeks with my finger in a big bandage and brace and answer ashamedly whenever anyone asked what happened.
Thanks to physical therapy, my finger recovered quite well, though 11 years later it's still consistently a few degrees colder than the rest of my body and it gets really stiff sometimes before it rains. It was definitely a wake up call - I'm a lot more careful now with all my appendages. I found out later that the same thing had happened earlier that year to Miley Cyrus https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/ouch-miley-cyrus-cuts-finger-in-blender-2012184/. At the time that definitely made it feel more embarrassing but in hindsight I'm kinda surprised it doesn't happen more often--those blenders could really use a safety/2-button system!
PSA - operate immersion blenders with extreme caution!!! Several friends tell me they think of me every time they use one, and embarrassing as it was, I like to think my story has helped keep others' fingers safe through the years, so at least there's that! 🫠
This happened to me recently, and I can laugh about it now but at the time I was pretty sure I was dying. We were at California Adventures, on Goofys Flight School. It's a tight squeeze to get in for us rounder folks. I got in, done it plenty of times before so I know how to position. But this time I didn't get myself far enough back into the seat and once the harness was down, I was locked in. There was the hump on the seat (I'll call this the crotch hump) that I'd never noticed before, probably because I was seated further back. The ride carries on as usual, we're laughing and screaming and having a good time, when we come to the big drop section. It's always fun, the braking that comes after it isn't, but the drop itself is fun. That is, unless you can feel the crotch hump. I slammed down into the hump so hard I saw stars and yelped so loud, my husband could tell it wasn't the usual "this is so fun" yell right away, because I instinctively I yelled out, "MY VAGINA!!!" *facepalm* My friend who was with us and my husband start cracking up not realizing I was in actual pain. The rest of the ride after that I was trying to gingerly hold myself down into the seat so I wouldn't do further damage. When we climbed off the ride, we had to climb up then down the exit stairs and each step was just pain shooting up - think if the worst day of period pain, when you feel like your pelvic bones are trying to spread apart. It took about a week for me to be able to sit down at a normal pace instead of gingerly.
Another comment reminded me, I had to get a cortisone shot for back pain back in '07. I was so sick and coughing so hard that I threw my back out and had to miss 3 days of work. Who throws their back out coughing?! I was only 27!!
Not really an injury but when I was a kid, I was waiting for the bus in the snow. The bus had gone in the ditch and my mom was already gone, so there was nothing to do but wait. Finally, my older brother's friend drove by and gave us a ride. I had been wearing my sweet canvas Keds and by the time we got to school, my feet were frozen. I went to a small Catholic school that didn't have a nurse so the director - who was the meanest, most terrifying old nun I ever met - took care of me. She made me take of my soaking wet shoes and socks and wrapped lukewarm towels around my feet. I didn't have frostbite, thankfully, but it took a while for my feet to thaw. She ended up giving a pair of her own socks and let me go shoeless for the rest of the day. I was supposed to wash and return the socks, but was afraid the washer dryer would eat them, so I just sprayed them with Lysol and gave them back. Years later, I ended up living with my friend who had gone to school with me and every time my toes would get slightly chilly, she would ask me if I wanted to borrow Sister What's Her Name's socks.
Ohmygosh. What a memory!!!
Last Fall, I was stepping up on an outdoor stage that was really a bunch of platforms pushed together so the group I was performing with would all fit, and caught the toe of my left shoe on the lip and rammed my shin into the edge of the platform so hard that I immediately started spurting blood everywhere. Fortunately, someone in the audience saw it happen and rushed to me with a towel and told me to hold tightly on to my shin while they ran to the first aid box and got a compression kit. They wrapped it up and I felt okay, so I played the performance, went home and fed the cats, and THEN went to the ER to have it looked at. I needed sixteen stitches to close it up. Less than twenty four hours later, I drove myself back to the ER (my husband was out of the country visiting family) because I had a fever and was admitted with what I thought was just an infection of some kind that needed more than an antibiotic in pill form. Found out two days later after I still hadn’t been released that I had sepsis! Fortunately the neighbors rallied to make sure the cats were fed and some friends came and moved my car out of the ER parking lot and eventually brought me home when I was finally released five days later. Took me another three weeks of being homebound to recover from that and another six months for the wound to heal completely. All because I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the back of the stage to walk up the stairs and through all the already seated people to get to my place. Lesson learned. I will always take the stairs from now on and if I ever forget I’ve got a lovely scar to remind me. Also, my husband will never leave me alone for that long again!
That's a nightmare! Glad you were okay.
All is well. Thanks for listening! 😆
One halloween I went to a party dressed as Lady Gaga (to set the scene, it was one of those years where I thought the perfect Lady Gaga-costume was a purple wig and black tape covering my boobs like an X. I think it was 2010 ish?). My friend went as «Youtube» which was essentially a big cardboard with a cut out of where the video would be. We went together of course, and maybe ten minutes into the party I somehow got the youtube-cardboard edge shoved right into my eye. I tried to pretend it was okay, because the cute guy I had a crush on was at the party, but an hour into me not being able to open my eye someone took me to the emergencyroom. Remember my costume? Purple wig and black tape over my boobs you guys. And I had to wait a good three hours until I got help. The cardboard had ripped up my eye, which in all honesty sounds a lot worse than it was. My sight is okay, but I still need to be careful opening my eyes when I wake up unless I want to be in pain, 13 years later. 🫣😅🫠 I never got to talk to the cute guy and the party was supposedly super lit so I guess I got hurt in more ways than one that night.
Oh my goodness, you poor thing! Well, if you ever run into that guy you have a good opener?
Maybe it was this podcast or the hundred others that i listen to, but some guest was talking about phone addiction and everyone being so online that sounds ridiculously obvious but made me reframe everyone’s relationship to our devices. Like, people talk about it like it’s a failure of the person to not be able to put down the phone, when that should be championed. Every single aspect is made to keep our attention, EVERYTHING. They are promoted through all the “helpful tools” and the fact that it’s impossible to put down is just a side effect that plagues the weak minded. When in actuality it’s an ad machine that has a couple useful programs. That are also enveloped in ads anyway. It’s not your fault if you get sidetracked for an hour on the phone, it’s BUILT to sidetrack you. It has no compunction about waylaying you and only after there has been outcry does the company add something like “screen time” to make you feel guilty.
Just like any other addiction except even more insidious because it plays like it is benign and your succumbing to it is your fault. I know I’m over explaining. I just can’t quite elucidate the little switch that happened in my head...
Okay. All apologies if this grosses anyone out. For whatever reason I have a tendency to get lightheaded and pass out at the most ridiculous times. The worst was when I was a bookseller, and I was shelving in fiction. I was on a stool, and put a book on the top shelf, got lightheaded and passed out, tumbled head over ass over a leather reading chair and bonked my head on a bookshelf in mass markets. I split my head open and had to be taken to urgent care where a doctor anesthetized my scalp and proceeded to staple the aforementioned split head. He hadn’t anesthetized me enough and it HURT. I kept saying “ow” louder and louder every time he stapled my scalp at which point he stopped and said, “are you okay?” to which I said, “just finish it.” I’m sure my tone implied annoyance.
For the record I had a similar incident, not a year later, and had to go through the same experience. To this doctor I said, “please make sure you have anesthetized me enough, because the last time I had this done, the doctor had been light on the anesthesia.” I think she was an intern because she got this “look” on her face, and she left the room for a moment. I’m happy to say she did a better job of anesthesia, but a not great job of the actual work, and it took forever to heal. I have an ITP disorder though, so I guess that’s on me.
I have a story about the time I split my chin on a diving board, but I’ll keep that in my gum wrapper for another time.
Dear lord!
Last November, I was at my local brewery with some friends. To set the scene, it's like my "Cheers", where everybody knows my name; I'm a weekly regular. My friend's birthday present had been delayed, so I brought it with me that day. When he arrived, I was so excited to give it to him (it was a personalized set of etched How I Met Your Mother pint glasses). I went out to my car (in the dark) and as I was walking back, tripped in a pothole in the street. I need to make clear that I wasn't drunk, and also there was no sidewalk so I had to walk in the street. Anywho, I tripped.... HARD. On my face and my knee (which I'd already previously had surgery on and then re-injured 3 years prior). Anyway, my friends had to piece me back together in the bathroom as I was gushing blood from my mouth and knee. My friend had to call my mom to take me to the ER. I was on crutches for weeks and looked like I'd been beaten BADLY. My face was gnarly. I still have pieces of gravel popping out of me and my knee will never be the same. I was so embarrassed because the story makes it sound like I was hammered but I wasn't. I only missed one day of work, though (as a full time nanny) lol 🤦🏼♀️💪🏻
But did the glasses survive?!
They did!!! Unscathed! And I made my friend open his present as I gushed blood everywhere 😂
🫣
When I was a senior in college I broke my ankle at a bar whilst dancing to “My Humps” 🫠
🤣
I slugged my little brother and jumped up and ran out of the room so he couldn’t hit me back… except on the way out in my hurried state, I stubbed my pinkie toe on the edge of the dresser so hard that it broke and stuck out perpendicular to my foot! All they could do at the doctor was buddy tape it and I couldn’t wear real shoes for weeks. 🤦♀️😑
Your brother might have special powers!
I 100% deserved what I got that day!
I hyperextended my thumb while artificially inseminating a cow (not an eccentric hobby, I work on a dairy farm.) Explaining how it happened seemed too embarrassing so I never told anyone 🤣
🤣🤣🤣
I had adult fun that led to me having a bad case of vertigo. I ended up with a doctor visit and 6 weeks of physical therapy. My physical therapist wanted the details of what I was doing when it happened.... I just said I was in bed, and sat up too quickly. 🤦♀️😂
Good cover!
lol let’s just say I will never let my head be upside down again! 😂
I was showing my family how dull a “kid safe” knife was by dragging it WILLINGLY across my palm. Turns out, I had been fooled into thinking it was designed to be dull when in reality the demo I was shown was just REALLY OLD and my brand new version was, in fact, sharp as all get out. Readers, I needed 9 stitches to close up that gash. To say I traumatized my family is an understatement.
I am so glad you are okay. Yikes!
Horrifying! I can’t imagine!
GAH!!!
Ouch indeed!