I sprained my ankle yesterday. That’s not an official medical diagnosis– I have a doctor appointment later today to get that– but I’ve done this before, and I know the feeling.
Sadly, I did not injure myself saving orphans from a burning building (as I usually do on Thursdays), or while dunking a depleted-uranium basketball through a flaming hoop into the face of a Yeti (because how cool would that be?), but by stepping off our front porch in the wrong place while carrying stuff out to the trash. I’m not sure, but I think the stupidity of the injury actually makes it hurt more– somebody should do some medical research into this, though I’d hate to be part of that randomly controlled study.
As I lack access to NFL-quality training and rehab facilities, this means I’m going to be limping for a while yet. And spending most of todayon the couch with my foot propped up, and possibly wrapped in ice. This will necessarily cut down on my blog-related program activities.
To pass the time, consider this a Stupid Injury Open Thread: What’s the most embarrassingly stupid injury you have ever suffered? Or, at least, the most embarrassingly stupid injury you’re willing to admit to in the comments of a blog.
I sprained an ankle by stupidly (mis)stepping into an 18″ drainage ditch while tapping out a text message in the dark.
IANAD (i am not a doctor) but ibuprofen is the wonder drug for inflamation from sprains. i call it vitamin I. take 800 mg a couple times a day. at larger doses like that it is a good anti-inflamatory and not just anti-pain. i have sprained my ankles plenty during basketball* and my confirmation bias laden observation was that when i used vitamin I my sprain healed much faster.
ask your doctor.
*sadly, there was no yeti on the opposing team.
I have one that people usually don’t believe:
I fell from a truck onto a pallet of cacti when I was about 14 years old – straight out of Looney Toons. It hurt like hell (I was pulling out the really small thorns for days afterwards), but the worst of it was that all my friends saw it.
26 years later and my dignity still hasn’t recovered, although that could be more related to being a father than the cactus thing.
This summer I broke my ankle just walking on a flat straight even path! I didn’t stumble, I didn’t slip, I put my foot down, it turned over, I fell and before I had hit the ground I knew something was seriously wrong. When people asked what I’d done I could only answer nothing!
Individually, none of these are embarrassingly stupid injuries, but after a badly broken wrist (which required a plate to fix), a broken bone six months later in the same hand, and an torn ACL three months after that, I’m taking a lot of grief from my friends in my karate dojo! And I still have 4 more months of rehab for my knee before I can kick them!
The short version: I walked into a sliding glass door and got a cut on my forehead.
The longer version is that a) I was 7, b) I had left it open behind me and went back through it only ten minutes later, c) I was skipping (and, I repeat, 7 years old), and d) it was plate glass, not safety glass.
I think all my most major injuries were stupid, though. I broke my wrist (badly enough to need an over-the-elbow cast; I had to wear the whole thing for my first ballet recital, too) by tripping over my own two feet. I hyperextended my left foot (resulting in a week of crutch use) by using a swingset while wearing flip flops.
Apparently I was a clutzy child, because all of those injuries happened pre-puberty.
I had a short job in a rock quarry. 1st day there, a 150-200 lb rock fell off a dump truck in the road. 3 of us tried to move the rock by hand. I stuck my left hand under the rock to get a better grip. It rolled back and smashed my ring finger.
I got a hour-long ride to the ER to get all the grit cleaned out.
One of the workers who helped climbed down from a front end loader that can scoop up 20000 lbs of rock.
The one smart thing that I did that day was take off my tungsten carbide wedding ring.
Mine was back in university. I used a cheap canvas backpack at the time, and it had a tendency to jump around on my back when I ran, so I had to hold it in place, hands by my shoulders.
This one day I was running for the bus, trying to get to my post-class menial bank job on time, when I tripped.
Normally, when you trip, you can catch yourself with your hands. You may scrape some skin off your palms or even skin an elbow, and it hurts like the devil, but lemme tell you: it’s not as bad as if your hands are otherwise occupied and can’t catch you.
I went down like a felled tree – BLAM! – onto my forehead.
I’m sure I got something of a concussion, and probably should have gone to a doctor, but I still went to work… on the next bus; the driver of the one I was running for drove off, having either not seen me or not cared. I’ve always hoped the former but suspected the latter.
In terms of foolishness, the worst thing I ever did to myself was in junior high metal shop. I picked up a piece of bar stock with my bare hands when it was not quite hot enough to be visibly glowing. That’s a mistake you only make once, for sure. Amazingly, it did no permanent damage, unlike some much less foolish things I did around the same time, e.g. cutting the tip of my index finger off with a guillotine-arm paper trimmer.
Wilson – a similar type of accident was one of the many, many unfortunate unintended consequences of the 1970s – The Decade That Taste Forgot. Tight pants were all the rage, and of course some people have the habit of walking around with their hands thrust into their pockets. Trip, and on your way down you’d look like a bad escape artist performing an unsuccessful strait-jacket escape, as you struggled in vain to pull your hands out of such absurdly tight pockets – greatly adding to the accident’s hilarity.
Dropped an ice cube and it cut my toe.
Is that dumb enough?
I slipped on ice while walking out the front door in Los Angeles (the winter freeze of 07), my legs did a split. I thought I was fine so I went on my merry way. within a few days my tailbone starting to ache & 9 months later I had a diagnosis- hypermobile tailbone which likely happened during that fall (dr’s are very conservative w/ tailbones & always recommend “rest/ time” for healing). Here I am 4 years later, still in pain, my tailbone’s been removed and I’ve had 2 other major injuries to my body as a result of not being able to sit correctly/ like a normal person due to pain. The part that people dont believe is that I fell on ice in LA!
Sounds like time for a (un?)scientific poll!
Ok, how about being so engrossed with thinking about engineering that you don’t notice the car that’s coming as you cross the street, and end up getting hit and flipped OVER the car? Been there, done that, have the scar from where my head hit the pavement on the other side of the car to prove it. Ouch! But, I made it to class (although I was 15 minutes late; had to wash the blood off).
When I was 17, in my first lab job, I was cutting a long, 1/2″ threaded rod into smaller pieces on a bandsaw. I hadn’t clamped it firmly enough in place, and the saw started to thread its way along the rod. Idiot that I was, I reached out to grab it with my hand to hold it steady. In no time at all, I had nice threaded bloody cuts all over my hand.
I, at 27, decided to take up longboard skateboarding and “convinced myself” I could jump and out run my speed at 5 or 6 m/s ….needless to say I had a week knee for about a month. I subsequently learned how to slow down with foot-braking.
You know the way your mom told you never to cut a bagel? With your hand underneath it?
Yeah. Five stitches.
Incidentally (or maybe not), five stitches is a negligible contribution to my lifetime total, especially if you count stitches put in during surgery. I wouldn’t say I’m accident prone, just that I tend to be really bad at considering the consequences of my actions.
The basement light switch is several steps down the stairs from the kitchen. This fall I lost my balance trying to turn it off with my foot from the top of the stairs and fell to the landing five steps down. No breakage, but it caused a nasty pulled muscle, and my wife has acquired a new disability where she laughs uncontrollably at the thought of it.
Let’s see:
-Thought a full length window was, in fact, an open door. Skipped right into it. Black eye & split lip ensued.
-Fell off a balance beam, crotched it, kind of bounced off, rolled when I hit the ground (as all good gymnasts know to do), hit my head on the judge’s chair. Panic attacks all around! Oh, and a fist-sized bump on my head.
-Kicked my own thumb doing a straddle jump. I didn’t get it looked at but it hurt for WEEKS.
I did the exact same thing you did (sprain while taking out garbage) when I was 22, and that’s not the most embarrassing injury I have had. If that makes you feel any better.
Okay, at 14, two weeks into freshman year in high school, I was walking to school and tried to jump over a curb into the street. This was back in the late 70’s before they made all curbs into ramps for wheelchairs. Somehow I tripped, and when I fell in the street (luckily a side street)I landed on my ankle. My family’s attitude was always walk it off if possible, and it didn’t seem too bad, so I walked the rest of the way to school. Halfway through first hour, my ankle was the size of a softball. Two days at home on crutches, and then a couple days at school with a cane.
Then there was the time, as an adult, carrying Christmas presents down the stairs, I missed the bottom step. Mangled the same ankle as before! Wasn’t as bad, but still, spent a couple days with the cane again.
I was 18 and a group of us decided to hike a few miles around the bay and ford a glaicer-fed river to get to this really cool outdoor hot tub (filled by a hose from the waterfall). I had an eye infection and could only wear one contact. On the other side of the river I tripped on a BIG rock and dislocated my kneecap. I didn’t say anything but continued on to the hot tub then hiked all the way back to town. The next morning my knee was locked in a bent position. Still didn’t go to the doctor…waited until I popped it back into place.
When I was 20, I was playing hockey on a campus intramurals team. I was playing defense and pushing someone out of the crease. We both fell, and I happened to land on my foot (all 220lbs of me) and broke my ankle. Out of all of the ways to break a bone playing hockey, that is the most lame…..falling down and landing on your own limb! At least I took myself to the hospital after that though!
Several years ago I finished riding a century (Holland Hundred) bike ride. I felt good. I got to my car (hatchback Honda Civic), opened the door, put in the keys and turned on music. Went to the back of the car, opened the hatch, got a drink (soda), took apart my bike, stowed stuff away, reached up to the hatch’s handle and pulled it closed. DIDN’t remove my hand from the handle: the hatch latched closed with my hand trapped between it and the car frame. (Now would be a good time to remember the location of the keys. I stood there, looking and feeling like a complete idiot for a ten minutes at most, waiting for someone to walk by, get my keys and release me. Nothing broken but there were some serious cuts.
The pain of the stupidity returned as I typed this.
I sprained an ankle stepping off the bottom rung of a stile on the first day of a walking holiday – I then tried to pretend nothing was wrong (hah! sprain with crepitus is always a bad sign) and kept walking for two days in soft shoes until someone noticed me crying every time my foot touched the ground.
I also managed two good ones with the cave club as a student: I burned my hand eating cheese on toast (don’t wave it around to cool it, or you may pour molten cheese into your palm), and I wrenched my knee falling down the stairs in the hostel on the way to the bar.
When I was 28, I tore my rib cartilage while putting on my hat.
It was a cold day in January, and I was recovering from a nasty URI that had caused me to cough for weeks. And I did know that the cough had already slightly damaged my rib cartilage. But I was feeling better, and certainly never expected to hear a loud RIP emanating from my side, about six inches under my arm, as I reached up to adjust my hat on my way out of my office. (I actually heard the damned thing a second or two before I felt it!)
I couldn’t even turn a doorknob with that hand for nearly two months afterwards.
Top this for sheer DOH!!-ness (even though I didn’t hurt myself): fell asleep on living rm. sofa one night, and woke up in dimly-lit rm. only to look across and see complete grayness ahead of me, where normally a bunch of bedroom objects would appear across rm. — thought rm. was totally filled with dense smoke & wondered why alarm didn’t sound. Groggily launched myself off sofa and directly into the GRAY wall that was 1 foot in front of me… didn’t hurt anything except my ego, and was so relieved that apt. wasn’t on fire.
Sat down without looking. The chair, office-style, with wheels, was farther back than I though it was. I hit the front edge, it rolled out from under me, and I landed on my butt on the floor, pitched over backwards, and hit my head on the hard edge just above one of the wheels.
No concussion, and I iced it fast enough to avoid a goose-egg, but it was very tender for a few days.
It was a cool spring day, and I had just returned from lunch. I absentmindedly ran my fingers through my hair, and it was then that I discovered that a bee had fallen on my head while I was walking back to the office. He wasn’t too thrilled about it either. Getting a bee sting indoors is about as expected as the Spanish inquisition.