Tuesday 28 June 2011

X is for... X-rays!

Ok, so X is a tricky letter to try and fit in to any topic. I don't play the xylophone; I am neither xanthocomic (meaning yellow haired) nor do I suffer from xanthocyanopsy (a form of colour-blindness, where you only see blue and yellow). So I am falling back on a classic choice for X - X-rays.

I have a peculiar habit for injuring myself in embarrassing ways. Rather oddly, I don't have photos of any of the times I have ended up in hospital for ridiculous reasons, so this post is going to be word-heavy, I'm afraid.

When I was 11, I broke my wrist. Not so unusual, you might think, kids break bones all the time. But most of them do it while being terribly exciting and adventurous; they crash their BMX bike or fall out of a tree. Me, I broke my wrist in a drama class at school, in the midst of improvising a play about some aliens who had kidnapped the King's daughters. I was Chief Alien, and we'd put a chair on top of some rickety old wooden shelves to act as our spaceship. It wasn't so bad, at first, because I didn't really have to explain it to the school nurse. But then I had to tell my Dad what had happened; he took me to the hospital and I had to explain it to the receptionist, the triage nurse, the doctor, the radiographer, another doctor and the person who put my plaster cast on my arm.

Worst of all, I then had to explain my broken arm to my Mum when she came home from work to find me already home, watching Neighbours and eating my packed lunch!

In the sixth form, I ended up in casualty on Red Nose Day, because I'd injured my hip kicking a football across the school field. Of course, because the theme of Red Nose Day that year was Pants to Poverty, I was wearing a rather fetching pair of red furry pants over my jeans, which made getting them off for the x-ray even more uncomfortable!

My crowning achievement, in the world of silly injuries, has to be back in 2002, when I needed stitches after sitting on what we believe to have been a corkscrew. We were at a LRP event, and we'd just chucked our rucksacks full of kit inside our two man dome tent before dashing off to help other people put up their tents. When I went back into the tent to get something, I just threw myself in and landed on the bags. All I felt was the tiniest prick, as if I'd sat on a twig or something and it had just poked me. But when I investigated, my hand came out red to the knuckles with blood! Talk about scary! Turns out I had a cut on my bottom about 1cm wide and about 1cm deep, and it bled for ages before the first aiders were able to get it under control. Off I went to casualty to get it stitched up! All I can say is I am very grateful it was before the game had started, and I wasn't already in kit and painted green.

I did wind up in hospital days after the corkscrew incident as well, with nasty burns to my thumbs following a cooking oil incident in our kitchen. It was not a good week to be me! I think the nurse in the uni health centre felt quite sorry for me when I toddled in to get my stitch removed, with one hand strapped up in a plastic bag and the other one heavily bandaged.

Touch wood, I haven't done anything particularly stupid or painful for a while now. Hopefully it was just a youthful clumsiness that I have outgrown!

Have you guys ever done something as stupid (or even more stupid) than my injuries?

12 comments:

  1. OMGosh!  What a colorful, injury history you have!  No one can say you were ever scared in life b/c you did everything with gusto!
    I don't have as colorful an injury history as yours but I am clumsy, I think esp. after I had kids.  I walk too close to the wall sometimes and hit my shoulder or arm against the wall or doorway.  I get bruises on my legs and forget why but I know I knocked them against something.  The worst injury I've had was this past Thanksgiving.  I was lazy and tried to scoop out 3 Tbsp. of burning hot, rendered down bacon fat out of my stainless steel, All Clad pot and accidentally touched the pot.  I jerked my right hand holding the Tbsp. and the bacon fat went flying out and landed on my left arm, resulting in the nastiest blister that was divided into four parts and just huge - 4 inches about.  I didn't want to go to the ER and waited until the Monday after.  But my BFF's husband who was a general practitioneer across the bay gave me good advice so there was nothing the  intern could do further except tell me to keep doing what I was doing.
    As for X-rays, I've had the most X-rays for my teeth.  I just had periodontal surgery #2 and my face looks like, as 50 Cents raps, "...a fat kid love cake."  Got some bruising as well.  I still have two more surgeries to go in the future.  Chalk it all up to genetics and being in the 8% who has early onset bone loss.

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  2. Glad to hear you're not xenophobic either (heh).  I'm a total klutzo, but your injuries are so DRAMATIC.  Fitting that you broke a bone in drama class... ;)

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  3. Those are injuries with cool stories - I've never properly injured myself *touches wood* but any that I have done are lame... When I was younger, I pulled all the muscles in my back doing that terribly dangerous activity - skipping!

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  4. I am also massively clumsy, my legs are always covered in random bruises from walking into the bed, desks, walls etc.

    Your burn story makes me cringe, ever since I burned my thumbs I've been really cautious because I never want to experience that again!

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  5. Poor you!  You have been in the wars.  I haven't had any bad accidents but I have just put up a blog post about riding a runaway sheep at the weekend!

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  6. I did read your post about the runaway sheep, it made me laugh! Do you think it would catch on, as a sport? Sheep rodeo?

    I tried to leave a comment, but your blog settings mean I can't! On blogger blogs I can only comment if the option to comment under a Name/URL is allowed, as my Google account plays up and doesn't let me sign in :-(

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  7. ps, thanks for the hint on what to do with my bizarre yarn, I've added the pattern to my queue ;)

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  8. I wouldn't rate my injury as stupid in as much as it was ridiculous?

    I found myself (with my father) in the Thomas Mountain Range in UT for my 30th birthday.  We were climbing and scrambling over some pretty precarious spots and several times I lost my footing.
    All in all, after a weekend, I came home with several water-clear topaz, a teeeeny piece of spessartite garnet and NO injuries.

    The following day I went back to my classes at school, one of which was a "fitness bootcamp" class.  That Monday, my teacher set up an obstacle course.  I guess it was because I was tired (ooh, unintentional pun) but I missed my footing on the stupid part with the large tires and twisted my ankle.  Way to spend my first full day of being 30!  :p  I ended up with a moderately sprained ankle (the doctor commented if it had been much worse, it would have required surgery to fix).  I was also told that sprains are more painful than breaks, though I'd have no frame of reference for that, myself.

    Figures I'd go rock/mountain climbing and come back fine but injure myself in a college course. 

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  9. Not I, touch wood. My 'little' brother (aged 14 or so) once managed to lodge a fork into the back of his throat by eating too heartily, and had to go to A&E to have it removed!

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  10. OT - I didn't realize that was going to post my full name. Hrrm

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  11. It was pretty bad.  I felt like a burn victim on a TV show.  Thank goodness for first aid supplies.

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  12. Oh dear, thanks for letting me know.  I have changed the who can comment setting, do let me know if you still have trouble.

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