What is the WORST injury you have ever sustained?

[tow653]

Putting 30 gallons of Treflan into 500 gal spay tank and the ladder on tank broke,spilling an open 5 gallon bucket of undiluted Treflan all over me,starting from the head down. Stuff got in my eyes and down pants onto my privates,burned like crazy. Managed to get to water nurse tank and got pump running. When help showed up,standing there with my pants at my ankles,with 2" water hose washing me off.

 

[Boondox]

A year out of high school while serving with the Marines I picked up shrapnel in the left arm and leg, and the right side of my face. One corkscrew piece augured in behind my kneecap and hurt like ****! Four months of PT to keep the scar tissue at bay hurt even more, and though I wanted to kill my PT I walk today without a limp. The big chunk that hit me in the face shattered my eye socket. That hurt for a good, long time.

 

[oldpilgrim]

Boondox,

Craftsbury Common, Vermont: one of the most beautiful towns in VT. Love that place.

 

[Luke'sScreenName]

A long time ago, when I was 17 I was on a catwalk at 30some feet when it decided it wanted to fall down.
Landed on my left side, broke almost every bone on my left side, ambulance scraped me up and took me to the local ER, young rookie Dr. Look at me and said " you should be dead" 10 plus surgeries and 9 months in casts I was able to resume life as we know it. Fast forward 6 years, I was pulling out of a commercial drive on my motorcycle, and a delivery truck was coming, he was going to pull on the drive I was sitting in, so I pulled out, what I didn't see, was the car behind the truck that decided to pass up the slowing truck. Hit me square on t-bone, knocked me down, and drove over me and the bike. I remember seeing the driveshaft and muffler go over me. Ambulance came scraped me up and took me to the local ER, same Dr from previous incident comes in and tells me " your still supposed to be dead"
1 broken leg, and a broken arm on the right side, plus a lot of road rash from that one, just a simple 7 weekend in a cast, and life goes on.
At that time I figured I wouldn't make it past 30, but next year(God willing) I will have made it to 60.
In my late 40's I tore a rotator cuff felling a tree, had to have surgery to grind down some burrs on the shoulder, and repair the rotator cuff, and all things being equal, that was the most painful of all the others, don't know if it was that surgery, my older age, or a combination of the two, but I don't want to go thru that again.

Yes, a rotator cuff repair arthroscopic or especially open is a particularly painful recovery. Same surgery without the RCR is much less painful.

 

[DFB]

Back when I was in my early 30's a misdiagnosis of a serious high fever by a General practitioner resulted in me virtually unconscious in the ER and into emergency surgery within an hour for what turned out to be a ruptured intestine from a diverticulitis infection where I spent the next 10 days on morphine for the pain after they cut me from hip to hip which to this day looks like they used a can opener to find out what was wrong. 6 months with a colostomy and then another surgery to reverse things after the infection healed. It took a while to feel normal again.

No broken bones ever (yet?) though 2 hard falls in later years one when I was building my house went thu a stairwell opening cover onto the stairs below miraculously landed on feet on the edge of a stair tread then feet slipped and came down hard on my coccyx all within seconds and another time came down 10 feet onto a snowplow frame after a faulty ladder gave way while I was fixing a garage door for landscaper I was working for. I thought I broke my hip but the ER said no injuries except for serious bruising and a huge centralized fluid buildup. I was black and blue from rib cage to kneecap for a good 2 weeks and the second day I was in so much pain it was pure agony.

Geez I only flipped one time over the handlebars on my motorcycle after an abrupt stop once. Didn't hurt nothing there just landed on my head!



I have the utmost respect for anyone who has ever been injured in combat.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

In the early 80's I was doing some work on a 3 point backhoe attachment. To be safe, I climbed off while my uncle re-positioned the tractor.

As I was climbing back on, I somehow pulled the foot pedal that raised the stabilizer legs, while my foot was in on the leg where it hinges.

Crushed my right foot. Lucky it wasn't too bad. I had 3 broken bones in my foot and spent 5 days in the hospital because it was swollen and they couldn't put a cast on it.

The worst thing was that I was in college at the time and had to get around campus with crutches for about 6 weeks. Lucky I had a few girlfriends to carry my books between classes.

 

[MossRoad]

In reply to pretty much any of you....

Ouch! Ouch! and more Ouch! :laughing:

 

[QRTRHRS]

My worst injuries have been chemical, not physical.

#1. Overcome by chlorine gas at an industrial facility. Fortunately I was on an outdoor metal stairway, and when the gas knocked me out, I fell down the stairs and out of the gas cloud.

#2. Industrial strength ammonia in the left eye. The eye still feels a little bit "funny" 40 years later, but the vision was not effected. Hurt a lot.

I can only imagine having had just a small dose of clorine. I thought that I had done everything right when changing out just a single cylinder. Airline resperator, purged the line, leak checked, etc. So, sans airline, I cracked the valve and the valve seal leaked by. Got a good "snootfull".

 

[AGRIMAN]

Re: What is the WORST injury you have ever sustained

Hmm, probably the fractured skull (been a few injuries). It was several year ago now, but we were using a liquid pretreatment on our corn seed. The process back then was to pour the seed into 55 gal drums to apply the thread. We then hauled the drums to the field to fill the planter.

We had just placed several full (3/4) drums on the back of the truck and started out the driveway. Me and my older bother was riding on the back of the truck, when one of the drums took a hard rock and fell over taking me with it.

I hit the road first and the drum of seed ended up on my head. Woke up a few days later in the hospital with a 4" long crack in my skull and one heck of a headache.

It took a months to get over that one.

 

[gwstang]

Re: What is the WORST injury you have ever sustained

I too got "gassed"...by chlorine gas. I was working at a different water plant about 30 miles from where I live. We used CL2 gas to provide a disinfectant. Well, I came in one Saturday morning at 7 AM to relive the night shift guy and he left. We were very good friends and I know he didn't do this on purpose...he forgot to tell me that he smelled chlorine. I got done running some tests in the lab and walked out to go check the plant for any problems before sitting down. I got a whiff and was headed into the chlorine room to shut off the ton cylinder that was on the scale. Now in the winter time the plant was closed up tight and no real air movement so even a small leak would have a devastating effect very quickly, also CL2 gas is 2 1/2 times heavier than air so it stays low and doesn't evaporate like someone might think it would. I thought I could make it to the room and close the valve and then turn on the exhaust fans to remove it. Nope, not even a little. I got gassed good too. I managed to stumble back into the lab and called the boss who lived close by. He came and got the valve off and I spent the next 3 or 4 hours dry heaving...bad! I will never forget that moment. I told him I needed to go to the hospital (couldn't hardly breath along with the heaves). He said," naw, you'll be ok". Yeah, right. I just about died. I am still very sensitive to any kind of strong chemical smell even perfume and the like, gets me where I am wheezing for breath if it bothers me at all. I transferred to a new plant built three miles from where I live and we did use chlorine gas but got rid of it in favor of a hypochlorite generator. Uses electricity to split the salt molecule NaCl. Leaves a weak bleach solution that works good for disinfectant. I am glad, no more chlorine gas. The next worst was getting hit by an EF4 tornado 4 1/2 years ago. Got a nice plate in my neck that is painful all the time and gives me a headache constantly and wife had a broken leg. Please Lord, no more of those things. Nothing like being in the dark and getting hit head on, I still get a little nervous when a big storm blows up. Demolished my neighborhood and killed six people close up and down the road. Lucky we are still here and thankful. Next, got hit in the back on the opening kick off of the third game of the year (high school) idiot hit me from behind (illegal). Hurt like crazy but played on. Found out later on that it broke a piece off inside of a lower disc. That thing would move around and start slicing on the nerves in there. I finally got so I was just about paralyzed on the left side. Wound up in the hospital, wife thought I was going to die. Definitely interrupted the heck out of my world. MRI had just come out that year and it showed the piece. Neurologist said I needed an operation and I said that I would think about it. He said, you'll be back" even told his lady that did the scheduling.I went home and about a week later...it moved again. Put me to my knees and I managed to crawl up on the tractor and get to the house. Called and said, I am ready. The nurse sorta chuckled and told me that the doc had said to her that I would be calling soon and have a slot ready. Got the piece/disc removed and just left me sort of limping through life. I told my kids not to play football and both of them played anyway.