Stupidest injury

When I was a little lad I was sitting alone in the passenger seat of our VW. Being a bit bored I started to fiddle with things, eventually settling with testing the cigarette lighter. So I pushed the button in, and a minute or so later it popped out, I picked it up, looked at the coil and thought "that doesn't look very hot." So, I put my thumb to it, lo and behold it was very hot and the blister was massive to the eyes of an eight year old.
 
Electricity seems to be a common theme, so here is a couple of mine.

Replaced a ceiling light fitting, but only switched the power off at the wall switch. The stupid thing was I KNEW the circuit would still be live, but just didn't think.

On holiday in Portugal the electric oven died. We discovered that it was plugged into a coiled-up extention lead. Stupid (me) touched the lead, which was hot, and went off bang, throwing me across the room.
 
Back in teenage days my friends father had a ski-boat which refused to start this day, we took the spark plug out of the outboard motor, not realy knowing what we were doing and looked at it.
His dad came along and sitting on the pontoon, legs dangling over the side he reconnected the lead while holding the plug in his hand and told my friend to pull the starter cord - nothing.
Someone had obviously told him that to test a battery you put the terminals on your tongue, he put spark plug in his mouth and said "pull". Levitation is definitely possible! He rose a good 2 feet in to the air - but no lasting injuries.
 
More haste and even more pain.

A few years ago bought a bunk bed for No 2 son it came in the biggest two boxes I have ever seen and of course in kit form, poorly tranlated instructions and no labels on any of the bolts...... you know the form.
Long story short..... in my wisdom I decided to save time and use my electric drill to whizz the allen key bolts up, holding the allen key in one hand and the drill in the other...... some of the bolt threads where decidedly naff and one was particuarly difficult so gave the drill some welly .................. then pain ! lots of pain!!!!!!!! when I looked down the allen key had enterred my right hand just under my index finger and about 10 mm was showing... the rest of it was enbedded in my palm with blood pumping everywhere. 15 hrs later and some 2 bottles of entonox and gallons of morphine, xrays, photos and medical students lining up for a look I had surgery to extracted it. It now still sits a pot and I wince everytime I have to use any allen key and luckily although my hand aches in cold weather there was no nerve damage and I can still hold a pint glass. Phew.
 
CornishSailor said:
At about age 14, plug electric razor cord into socket in bathroom (ok where I grew up in U.S.), hold razor in one hand, cord (now plugged in at socket end, but not into razor) in other hand....oh dear, need one hand to climb up onto vanity to sit and shave legs...put cable in mouth to free other hand.....
Click to expand...

It's amusing reading of the quite bizarre "accidents" here. (Especialy when most have a reasonably happy outcome).

I'm not sure this could be called an accident - more of a doh! moment I guess.

I trained as an electronics engineer, back in the day of the valve! My love was pure audio and recording equipment but my first job also entailed TV repair, which I hated.

I had a largish TV, would have been monochrome, on the bench and was down on one knee trying to release the screws that would enable the chassis to slide out for fault finding. Most fault finding took place with the power on... I had a habit of putting my tongue between my teeth in concentration. Just as the chassis came free, the EHT cable fell out of the the CRT (tube) and swung straight onto the end of my tongue Probably in excess of 20,000 Volts!
I staggered around the workshop only able to inhale and making very weird gasping noises with my throat. The throat muscles had locked up and it was a few moments before I could exhale and begin breathing again. Plonker! No sympathy of course, just a b@llocking for being so stupid. I had a very neat hole through the front of my tongue...
 
BrendanS said:
go for the spray on stuff. you need the normal elastoplast for the first 5 minutes to absorb and stem the blood flow. After that, chuck it away, and spray the plastic skin stuff on.
Click to expand...

I think my fingers were only put on this earth to act as cutting medium for any sharp object, including paper. And let's face it, most off us would be happier to lop off the odd digit than suffer a paper cut.

Whenever I visit the USA I always bring back a tube of triple antibiotic cream. Any cut is dealt with using a plaster with a blob of the cream. Most cuts effectively heal in 24 hours and even deep cuts are clean and benign in the same time.

If I haven't got a tube with me, I find that cuts on the hands fester and go red before the healing process kicks in after 36 hours, or so.
 
Major Catastrophe said:
I think my fingers were only put on this earth to act as cutting medium for any sharp object, including paper. And let's face it, most off us would be happier to lop off the odd digit than suffer a paper cut.

Whenever I visit the USA I always bring back a tube of triple antibiotic cream. Any cut is dealt with using a plaster with a blob of the cream. Most cuts effectively heal in 24 hours and even deep cuts are clean and benign in the same time.

If I haven't got a tube with me, I find that cuts on the hands fester and go red before the healing process kicks in after 36 hours, or so.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, the old non-supervised amateur use of antibiotics. We do love our resistant strains of bacteries, don't we.
 
Two for you:

As a nipper, watching my Dad trying to get the crappy old Vire started from the forward quarter berth: engine fires into life, starter motor belt come flying off down the cabin at high speed, missing him and hitting me right across my thighs. And I was wearing shorts. I think my screams on that occasion managed to drown out the engine!

More recently, I was putting blocks of SIPS insulation (polystyrene/ sterlingboard sandwich) into spaces between joists in our flat roof extension. One of the blocks gets wedged, so I turn round to grab the hammer to thump it home. The block obviously had other ideas as gravity took over and as I turned back and looked up it dropped straight onto my face, gashing the bridge of my nose and giving me the look of a cage fighter...
 
building new dink, was planning down rubbing strakes, with an electric plane. Wasn't concentrating properly and having finished a pass I touched the bottom of the plane. didn't have the dust bag on, so the wall to my right got sprayed with shavings of flesh! It didn't hurt that much because I took the nerve endings out... now have a slightly tapered tip to right index finger

Engine starter battery died, (again) and I had got into the habbit of hand-starting it. On this occasion I failed to properly engage the crank handle on the spiggot, and after a couple of turns, it popped out, swung up and clobbered me on the edge of my eyebrow - an inch to the left would have been a different story, but I guess Darwin gave us eyebrows for a reason... luckliy that was on my berth not at sea.
 
Bought mum a carving set as a present after a school trip to Germany.
Some days later mum asked me to open a bag of coal (they were the days!) for her.
Took said carving knife, thrust it into the end of the bag and with a smooth upward motion opened the bag. Unfortunately the knife continued upwards and took the tip of my nose off :o
 
As a 7 year old, on way home from school, in my shorts tried to leapfrog a concrete bollard, mistimed it badly ending up with both thighs running with blood from the grazes!

Mind you my dad could'nt talk, he had to rescued one very frosty morning when he licked the metal hand rail down the brae and his tongue stuck firmly to it. Think the neighbours ended up with heating the rail with blow torches to try and release him ;-)
 
kingfisher said:
Ah yes, the old non-supervised amateur use of antibiotics. We do love our resistant strains of bacteries, don't we.
Click to expand...

I have some of this cream on board too, I'm off to U.S. next week and will bring back more..... what woud you advise doing in the interim of being say, half way accross the channel?
.............................................................................................

When a toddler, i was facinated by mums hand powered sewing machine.
When she was out of the room I had a go................
Finger caught in cogs and needle through another finger nail in one go...


When a teenager in training for sport, I used to run Elemens rub onto my thighs.
Sat on edge of folding bench rubbing it in one day, bench slips..... Elemens all over the gonads.... panic.quick rush to the local town hospital...dropped trousers in reception pleading for something to be done.... :-o Pretty young nurse dabbed stuff all over :-)

Bust ribs.
As 5 year apprentices at AERE Harwell in the 60's we spent the first year of our apprenticeship at Winfrith and 60 of us lived in a hostel near Weymouth.
Being extremely high spirited at 16 we were more than once into high jinks.
One favourite thing we did on the double decker bus that brought us back to the hostel each day on the 15 mile trip, was to 'rock the bus'.
Double deckers are extremely difficult to get the wheels off the ground but by all of us on the top deck rushing from side to side we managed to get it over to such an extent that it was made to swerve violently and we we were thrown off by the driver. We did get an awful rocket from our apprentice bosses and one of my chums was thrown into the side whilst this was going on and bust his ribs against the seat.


Paint in eyes.
On the last week of our stay at Winfrith, in the middle of the night, we painted large white footsteps from queen Victorias statue at the far end of Weymouth, from her plinth and across the road to the gents loo.
We were caught out as on the way back to the hostel in the dark, my mate got paint in his eyes from his hands and had to go to the hospital to have them rinsed out....
The local press had the pictures on the front page but some were 'not amused'.


As a ten year old I was fishing outside my house alongside the Thames in Abingdon.
I was on the steps before the older lads arrived to go swimming. As mum wouldn't allow me to go farther away to fish I stayed put, much to the boys' annoyance but because i was outside my own house they didn't shove me off.
One of them dived in just as i cast my line...... I hooked him in his groin....he wasn't best pleased.
 
Last edited:
I was installing a new bathroom suite. Had nowhere to store a new plastic bath before installing, so I put it just by my side of our bed.

Late that night I was woken by SWMBO to say out daughter (about 1 yr old) was in our bed and needed taking back to her own. I carefully picked her up, turned round, walked into the bath, dropped her in it, then fell forward and bashed the bridge on my nose on the other side of the bath. A rude awakening for the kiddy, but unhurt.
 
LadyInBed said:
Bought mum a carving set as a present after a school trip to Germany.
Some days later mum asked me to open a bag of coal (they were the days!) for her.
Took said carving knife, thrust it into the end of the bag and with a smooth upward motion opened the bag. Unfortunately the knife continued upwards and took the tip of my nose off :o
Click to expand...

When I were a lad, coal was delivered in sacks the coal-man filled on the lorry! Remember the big pair of scales they carried so they could check that the bag really did weigh a hundredweight?

I've done my share of picking up soldering irons by the wrong end and coming unto unwitting contact with 240 volts, but the one which stands out happened like this:

I worked for a laboratory testing coal tar for use in road making. That tells you how long ago it was - Coal tar was a by-product of the gasification of coal, which has been history since North sea gas came on stream! Anyway, one test was a compaction test on tar-macadam mixes. The test consisted of placing a sample in a pot, and giving it a certain number of blows with a hammer. The hammer was a weight sliding on a rod, to give standardized blows, and it could not be permitted to bounce, as that would have skewed the result. So, the procedure was to raise the weight to the top of the rod, release it, and then follow the weight down to catch it as it rebounded. Well, I'd done the test a fair number of times, and was probably thinking of something else the day that I followed the hammer down a bit too enthusiastically, and got my little finger between the hammer and the anvil. Fortunately it went in sideways, tearing the flesh of the pad of my finger rather than length-wise - I'd have a shortened finger in that case, I suspect. Anyway, once I'd realized I was hurt - in common with most accounts here, my body's shock response meant I actually continued doing the test for another blow of the hammer - I was rushed of to the local A&E department, where they stitched me up. The most painful bits were a) an injection of local anaesthetic into the tip of the finger :eek: and b) an injection of antibiotics into my rear-end. In the latter case, I'm sure the nurse used a 6" nail!

The sting in the tail came a year or so later - I started to get sharp pains in the finger affected. One day, the remains of a stitch worked its way out of my finger!
 
kingfisher said:
Ah yes, the old non-supervised amateur use of antibiotics. We do love our resistant strains of bacteries, don't we.
Click to expand...

I checked with my UK doctor about using it on cuts and he said that the supermarket triple antibiotic cream will not cause a resistance to oral (systemic) antibiotics.

A quick Google brings this result, but note I consulted my doctor and not a web page for advice: Do Bacteria Build Resistance to Antibiotic Ointments?

A: Since bacteria can build resistance to antibiotics, is it wise to use antibiotic ointments?

It’s true that, over time, bacteria can develop resistance to systemic antibiotics– antibiotics that are swallowed or injected, and so require time to be absorbed and circulate. But that’s much less likely with topical ointments, where you apply antibiotics to the skin and they immediately go to work.

You see, the antibiotics in topical ointments are applied at such high concentrations that they usually kill all the bacteria that they come into contact with, so that none of them have a chance to multiply. Also, antibiotic ointments are usually a combination of more than one type of antibiotic. So even if the bacteria are resistant to one kind of antibiotic, odds are one of the other antibiotics will get them.

And don’t forget that when you use a topical antibiotic, you’re only exposing a relatively small and localized number of bacteria, as compared to the number of bacteria you expose when you use a systemic antibiotic. I mean, you’d have to have a recurring infection, and keep applying antibiotic ointment over and over before bacteria would have a chance to develop resistance–and even then this only happens in rare cases.

I was at a party a few months ago where a doctor had recently returned from working in an LA hospital. He repeated the oft quoted news that 'many' southern Californians were resistant to many antibiotics as they tend to pop over to Tijuana in Mexico to self medicate without finishing a course properly.

There is no real problem with taking antibiotics as long as you complete the course and have eliminated the infection. Too many people abandon the course, once the symptoms have disappeared.
 
Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear

Was sitting in the car outside a clients office about to go in for an important meeting. Took a look in the rear view mirror and noticed I had something stuck in between my teeth from Breakfast. No dental floss or tooth picks so need to improvise me thinks. All I have got in the back of the car is fly fishing stuff. Select a large GRHE fly and start scraping with the tip of the hook. Whoops ! Blood everywhere and it wouldn't stop. Had to go to meeting with tissue paper stuch on top lip and could not smile at all. Kept thinking how much the trout would be laughing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top