How many accidents have you had?

[bmccasland]

I haven't had much major -

• as a child I fell out of a tree and broke my nose on the way down
  
• hit a bump or something in the road and flew through the handlebars of a friend's banana bike, needed stitches in my chin
  
• in college stumbled and fell while hiking, split open my forehead. When they rolled me over I remember someone asking if anyone knew first aid. I said "I do"
  Concussion, stitches in my forehead, and some lost feeling in my forehead to this day.
  
• more fun in college - hit in head with an elbow while playing volleyball. Concussion, skull fracture, some hearing loss, and vertigo. Still have issues with the vertigo
  
• learning to use clipless pedals - fell over at a complete stop, and did a face plant on concrete steps at the office. Broke nose, again.
  
• And most recently, that did actually get me an ambulance ride to the hospital - found out the hard way I have a food allergy. Full blown anaphalytic shock in a restaurant. Fortunately I had an epi-pen, and figured I'd better use it, before I passed out. The suspect food was squid, but when my blood was tested (at the Mayo Clinic), I didn't show an allergy. So my doc is confused and is trying to figure out what to test me for, or see if there's a skin test available. We do know I had a severe reaction to something. and the only new food I ate was the squid.

(all required trips to the ER in one way or another except nose break #2)

[OakLeaf]

Oh, geez, we're listing ALL our accidents, cycling, other sports, car, motorcycle, kitchen, slip and fall, everything?

Y'all don't have enough room for mine

[sundial]

Oh, geez, we're listing ALL our accidents, cycling, other sports, car, motorcycle, kitchen, slip and fall, everything?

Y'all don't have enough room for mine

Ya gotta share at least ONE memorable moment in the natural world. C'mon, pretty please?

[margo49]

Last time there was a thread on this topic I got a PM "you always seem to win these" so I'll sit this one out !
(Actually I am in my Terrible Tractor Nearly Squished to Deff Accident Anniversary period with accompanying post-traumatix. No sudden noises or movements, please.)

[OakLeaf]

Ya gotta share at least ONE memorable moment in the natural world. C'mon, pretty please?

Oh.....

Bicycle wrecks, two stand out.

First one, I was 14 years old, riding down the hill. This kid from my high school (on foot) wanted to play chicken. He got out of the way. His fishing line didn't, and it caught my handlebar. Badly sprained shoulder that will never be right (no such thing as reconstructing ligaments in those days). I think it was three weeks that I had to pick my right hand up with my left hand and put it on my school desk so I could write.

Fast forward 15 years. I'm riding a touring bike, but this friend of mine has decided he's going to get me into racing. Well, okay. We drive out to the state park, do some downhill intervals, and then we're doing a simulated crit in the parking lot. Only nobody's told me that the inside pedal is supposed to be up in the corners, especially on a long-wheelbase, low bottom bracket touring bike. So I stick a pedal in a corner at 21 mph and that's the last thing I remember. The way he tells it, all my forward momentum got translated into straight up. I'm launched five feet into the air, jackknife front to back, then turn upside down and land head first, with sparks coming out of the strap rivet on my helmet. Next thing I remember is 25 minutes later - this is the days before cell phones - he's spent the first 15 minutes completely freaked as I vocalized unintelligibly, then once I became responsive, checked me as best he could for spinal cord injury (none, thank goodness) and decided the best thing to do was to go ahead and get his truck and take me to the ER. The guy who owns my LBS still has the helmet I was wearing that day, and shows people the inch-deep depression in the EPS liner so they can see just what it is that a helmet is for.

Latest injury I'm dealing with is not cycling related.

We were painting our living room. I picked up a ladder.

Didn't drop it, didn't twist it, just picked it up. And the edge of the rung caught me wrong in the meat of my thumb, and bruised a tendon and a nerve. Which might've been okay except for the ortho's advice to immobilize the hand, and so, more than two years later, I have lingering tendinitis in both elbows.

Okay, okay, one more. I cut my thumb peeling an acorn squash, midway between the MCP and IP joints. It was pretty deep and bled profusely, but it wasn't into the tendon or anything, so I just bandaged it and wound up with a scar contracture that took a year to loosen up. A few months later I'm at my doctor's for something unrelated, and I show it to her, and she says...

"Why would you peel a squash?"

..........

But anyway, Beth, I had allergic reactions three times after eating at one particular restaurant in my town. It's the only times I've ever had an anaphylactoid reaction to food (I have the other type of slow-burn reaction to lots of foods, and once had an anaphylactoid reaction to a wasp sting). No idea what it is the restaurant used, but it's obviously not any common allergen or it would've been more than those three times. The first time it happened, I'd actually taken some aspirin after lunch and thought that that's what I was reacting to - my medical charts still flag an aspirin allergy, and honestly I haven't tested it to be sure I'm *not* allergic to aspirin. But after the next two times, I'm pretty sure it was the lunch, not the pills. So it might not've been your squid or my aspirin, but who the heck knows, maybe some kind of mold that grows in that restaurant. Weird.

[boy in a kilt]

Cycling-related accidents;

I was 8 years old and my friend and I were riding our Huffy's under the cable where a tennis net used to be. Didn't put my head down far enough so I tore my face open. Rode my bike home and walked in the front door with blood dripping down my face and shirt. Those scars have been completely covered by others.

I'm 17 years old, riding my mountain bike home from my new girlfriend's house. Pull a wheelie as a dog runs out. I put my left foot down just a little wrong. Damage: compound spiral fracture of left tibia. a plate and 11 screws to put my leg back together, plus a godawful amount of staples to close the whole thing up.

Few years later, I'm riding my bike from NOB Norfolk toward downtown. Pull up my front wheel to go over train tracks. The front QR isn't properly secured so I come down on the fork blades and go *** over tea kettle. 6 or 8 stitches in my chin

Last year, I was riding my bike to the store for beer and groceries. It'd been raining so I went a little wide as I pulled into the parking lot to make sure my front wheel wouldn't catch on the little lip between the driveway and the street. Made that ok, but went a little too wide. I grazed the curb with my front wheel and went down hard on my left side, re-breaking the ribs that had just finished healing from a few months before.

My favorite scar is on the inside of my right arm. I worked on small boats when I was in the Navy. One day I was climbing a jacobs ladder getting out of one and a broken piece of wire went through my coat and shirt. It tore a hole about an inch long in my skin. It took 4 or 5 stitches and now looks like a little spider. This one was done less than 48 hours after the face planting incident two paragraphs up.

[Tuckervill]

I'm recalling another bike accident on the Schwinn Flying Star. You know how the grips will get scooted in some and the end comes off? Both of mine were like that after a couple of summers. It was a warm spring day and I, the early riser, was out on my bike all by myself in the morning. I decided to try to jump up the curb like my brothers always did. Of course I was going to slow and didn't make it, and the impact tore the bars out of my hands. I slide forward off the seat as the end of the bar spun towards my chest, making a perfect circular cut around my pre-pubescent right nipple.

I was so hurt I needed to tell my mom, but she was having coffee and a cigarette at the kitchen table with a neighbor lady, and I was too embarrassed to show her.

Silly. It is one of those memories where you can still feel the sunshine and smell the air, these 35 years later.

Karen

[lph]

We do know I had a severe reaction to something. and the only new food I ate was the squid.

Hey Beth, maybe you reacted to the spices or oil or something it was cooked in - I know peanuts are one of the things people get really nasty allergic reactions too, and I think you can cook in peanut oil. Just a thought.

[LBTC]

Beth, I agree with lph, the squid could have been cooked in something you react to. At least until you find out what, I hope you always have that epi pen with you!

I'll play the injury game a bit later - when I'm at work, they actually want me to work!

H&B
~T~

[smilingcat]

I guess I can't feel too bad

So soo many Yeoores around. Well I shouldn't talk cause I'm one too.

smilingcat

[singletrackmind]

I guess I can't feel too bad

So soo many Yeoores around. Well I shouldn't talk cause I'm one too.

smilingcat

Ok, ya got me, what in the heck is a Yeoore???

[Zen]

Eeyore?

By the way, that was no accident. I meant to do that. Yeah.

[OakLeaf]

By the way, that was no accident. I meant to do that. Yeah.

I meant to punch out the wall. I didn't mean to break my hand. But that was a long time ago....

[smilingcat]

Eeyore?

By the way, that was no accident. I meant to do that. Yeah.

Thank you Zen,

Not much into children's stories as I have 0 kids.

smilingcat