See also:
Sleep Deprivation
Illness
Dehydration
Hunger
Heat
Cold

And NotThatShort's spin-off threads:
Specialized Edition: Fire
Specialized Edition: Phobias
Specialized Edition: Mental Illness
Specialized Edition: Disabilities
Specialized Edition: Developmental Delays/Disorders

Two days ago I had an unfortunate accident involving inexperience, a hill, and rollerblades without brakes. There were also no kneepads involved...
So I ended up with two badly skinned knees. It's worse than I thought it would be: they're raw and still oozing a bit.
But the result has been good, because, aside from being reminded of my own weakness and frailty, I've been thinking about what happens when fictional characters get injured. Sometimes an injury can be worse than you think. Skinned knees can be brushed off as nothing---or they can be a painful, crippling injury that lasts for days. A blister can be cured with a simple change of footwear---or it can be continually rubbed for days and infect the whole foot.

In our stories, we want to portray injuries realistically, right? (Have you ever watched a movie where someone got shot in the arm and could still move it normally?)

So here, on this thread, we are going to share injury tales. Just tell of a time you got injured, how long it took to heal, and whether there was any permanent damage or not. Especially if it was a "commonplace" injury that turned out to be worse than you thought.

P.S. Be considerate of the weak-stomached among us. Only share something that happened to yourself, and use the spoiler text if you think it's really gross.

I'll go first.

One day, I was wearing new socks and walking on a wood floor. I slid a little, slipped, and landed in a one-knee kneeling position, all my weight crashing onto my left knee. It hurt like crazy, but after the pain subsided, I discovered I had lost feeling in my skin, over the kneecap. After a month or so, most of the feeling came back. Nerve damage, I guess. Interesting, huh?

That's interesting, Aemi. I've never heard of something like that before.

I hope you're feeling better soon, by the way, after the tumble you took.

I once jumped off a climbing frame, into my brother's arms. He caught me but dropped me, and I was in such pain in my left arm. I walked around for a few days like that, and Mother refused to believe my arm could possibly be hurting that much. In the end, my Nana said she had to take me to the hospital, and I had actually broken my arm.

Which movie was that?

I think - aside from falling from bikes/rollerblades - one of the worst injuries I have received would be getting a rusty nail in my foot. Extremely painful. I think it took about.... 7-18 days to be mostly healed, although that was a long time ago; I don't remember it clearly. I limped for at least 3 days afterwards though.

Thank you for contributing, everybody! So far, I've learned that a broken bone is not always immediately evident.

So are these threads just about telling stories of injuries, or to increase everyone's knowledge of how to hurt their character?

Both! We are swapping first-hand experiences, to increase one another's knowledge.
I don't want any of my Holy Worlder friends to publish stories where someone breaks an arm and then is able to function normally.

The only real injury I've ever had was from swimming. Because swimming requires so much repetitive motion in the shoulder, injuries there are really common for swimmers.
Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what I did, but I think I pulled my shoulder slightly out of joint. Whenever I moved it, something inside the joint would pop, and it would hurt. My shoulder would ache, and I had to stop pulling at swim practice for a while because it hurt too bad. Eventually, I went to the chiropractor, and it healed up pretty quickly after that... though it still bothers me sometimes.

But that's probably not very helpful information, unless you happen to have a character who's a competitive swimmer. XD

Speaking of finger injuries... my brother Caleb (Griffin) has jammed his fingers multiple times, and he could hardly move them for about a week. It looks pretty bad, too... they always swell and turn a weird purpley color.

I guess I'll start a new thread on characters injuring themselves, such as Koon....Or is there a thread about that already?

I like this thread.

I remember once, when I was quite a bit smaller, I got run over by a large person while playing football. I fell on my elbow and afterwards couldn't bend it out without pretty sharp pain. Consequently, I didn't bend it. My mom took me took the doctor, but it wasn't broken or anything. My parents made me carry around a bucket with something heavy in it to force my arm to straighten out. And yup, I can straighten it now.

I used to constantly be gettting splinters or stickers or whatever in my feet, since I almost always go barefoot, wherever I can. I stepped on a nail-like object (thick wire) several years back - couldn't walk on it for a few days.

One of my older brothers is pretty accident prone - he has a gi-normous scar on his arm from a mountainbike accident. The bone popped - out.

Oh yeah, I forgot; I have a very similar injury on my left big toe. Way back in December I stubbed it hard when I tripped over a stair-step. Blood seeped out from under it for a minute, the the nail quickly turned a dark color, and, like your fingernail, was sore and tender for a while. I could hardly wear shoes with it; if I did I had to limp to keep pressure off my toe. The nail doesn't hurt now, but it's still the same color you're describing. I guess I have to wait for it to grow out, so I covered it with pink nail polish.

Okay, you're talking to someone that gets hurt a lot, though never very seriously (I've pretty much not broken a bone, unless you get too technical).

Ok, my earliest real injury I can remember is when I was in some store when I was three and got knocked down by a cart. I hit my head on something (I think it was a wire-type shelf, the kind with wheels on it), and split my forehead on it. I don't remember how much it hurt, but that I cried and got to ride in an ambulance...while my dad (not sure if this is spoiler worthy, so just to be safe: pinched the loose skin on my forehead together to keep it from staying open. My right eyebrow is still slightly split and you can see the scar.

Then once I was ice-skating and fell on the ice, slamming my right arm palm side down. I felt my right arm tingle as if the tendons attached to my fingers were tangled up, but it didn't hurt, and I felt like I should take a nap right there in the middle of the skating rink! (I think my brain numbed the pain somehow, and in the process almost knocked me out) I made it to the side and out of there, but if I put weight on my right arm to get up, it completely gave out and started tingling again-got better a few weeks to a month later. (ironic fact: we might have gone caving instead of ice-skating, I've never gotten hurt caving, or backpacking for that matter)

Then once I was playing volleyball and dislocated my pinkie at the second joint from my palm on the right hand...felt like passing out that time too (especially if I looked at it *shudders*). My right pinky is still a little misshapen and hurts like crazy sometimes when I play piano, or whenever it feels like it and I have to pop it (which is scary, knowing what happened to it before).

Well, those are my most interesting injuries (well, in a way at least) that I can think of right now...hope this is helpful.

Oops, just remembered some more: Once while playing Ultimate frisbee, I face planted in some girl's (very hard) back...then onto the ground. It felt like my whole head was as flat as paper from the top of my spine to the top of my head, and slowly took normal shape again. Thought that might be useful to describe how a mild head impact feels...
Then just a couple days ago I opened the (very heavy) door to our pantry and the top hinge broke, allowing the top corner of the door to slam into my head. I didn't realize much what happened except I was holding up the door a little and staring blankly at the other pantry door...it didn't hurt either...sort of caused a brain hiccup or something I guess...

When I was about twelve years old, my dad accidentally ran over my foot with a 1995 Toyota Camery. It didn't hurt of much as it sounds, but I guess I could have been in shot at what was happening. He was slowly pulling out of a driveway and thought I was in the car already. Initially, I couldn't feel my foot because it was so numb and tingly. Once that subsided, it ached and I limped a little, but I was perfectly fine in a couple days.

I once sprained my wrist playing Cops & Robbers when I was fourteen. The pain I had didn't go away for a little over a year. I still have some occasional pain depending on the exertion the project requires.

For the most part, my injuries were always minor. I've never broken a bone or required stitches or a trip to the hospital. If anything, I've visited the clinic or hospital due to medical issues.

I praise the Lord for my overall good health. ^^

~Calen

And… wait. Did I ever tell you about the time that I fought against the abyss?

Ouch, Calen! And you only limped for a few days? I would have expected that to pop all the little bones on the top of your foot.

Don't blink.

*winces* But it sounds nasty.



I once sprained my wrist when I fell because I was balancing on a ball...

A paragraph I wrote shortly after being bucked off a horse:



After walking up to the house, jumping the fence, and subsequently fainting, it was found I had not only broken my wrist, but dislocated a number of my vertebrae (by God's grace nothing else happened--with the position I fell in my back might have easily broke, thankfully I landed more on my hand). At the hospital I was extremely fatigued, headachy, and couldn't register conversational content acurately, mostly because of the pain. In the wrist it was a deep pain, as if stemming from the centre of the wrist, and incredibly acute. The wrist healed gradually, but months after the cast came off it felt light, stiff and a bit achy, and when I used it, tender and weak. Some ligament or bone still moves uncomfortably in my wrist when I rotate it, and like Calen's wrist there is pain if I apply too much exertion. A kind of dull, intent pain, as though the bone might come part where it has knit.



My sister did something similar... ran into the corner of a wall. *hesitates, then adds spoiler to be safe* I was the one who had to hold her forehead together as we drove to the hospital.

I've had a nail in my foot too... right through my big toe.

*tries to think of more recent injuries* *fails*

Yikes! I'm glad that you were ok after your fall!

I've been minor-ly hurt many times. I've never broken a bone either.

Let's see, first off - I've been slammed in the face on accident by a volleyball at least three times.

I've also walked into the corner of the hallway (twice in a few months ), causing a small bruise right in the center of my forehead. (Luckily my long bangs covered it.) It healed in about two weeks.

A few months ago, I tripped walking up three concrete steps outside. (Who invented concrete steps? ) That caused a skinned knee, which ached for a couple days.

Several years ago, I was on the monkey bars and fell off. The position I fell was kind of awkward- I landed face-down with my wrist close to my collarbone. I went to the doctor because my wrist ached, but thankfully I hadn't gotten a fracture or anything major. It was sore for several days.

Also a couple years ago, I was getting a drink. I was struggling with the icecube tray, so I put it over my thigh (bad idea) and pushed down with my hands. The whole thing snapped over my thigh. I was short of breath for a minute or two, but I was okay after a while (though I limped a little for the rest of the day).

I'll have to think more about the rest of my injuries.

I thought of a kind-of injury I forgot about earlier.

Being the klutzy person I am, I have fallen down the stairs to my room multiple times. I've always been okay, but once I did land awkwardly, and the whole impact of the fall was on the middle of my spine. Thankfully there was no lasting damage, but I actually couldn't move at all for about a minute, which was really scary. I'm not sure why that happened, but I'm assuming I pinched an important nerve or something. But... yeah, that was more than a little scary.

Ouch! That would have been scary, Abigail!

Yes indeed.

I decided to post a healing update on my knees.
The first two days, my skinned knees were raw and very painful. I couldn't stand the stinging pain of fabric brushing against them, so I taped soft pads from the first aid kit over them. They were protected, but the bandaging then stuck to the wounds, so when I pulled it off, the wounds were raw again. They were also oozing pus. Finally, on the third day, the scrapes dried and finished scabbing. This was a huge improvement, since fabric didn't sting them anymore. But, since the scabs got stretched whenever I moved my knees, walking was painful. I tried to walk without bending my knees, but that just made my legs stiff and sore. On the sixth and seventh day, I got lots of exercise, and this seemed really to help. My legs lost their stiffness and the scabs started flaking off, revealing thin new pink skin underneath.
Today is the twelfth day, and my right knee feels perfectly fine, with only a tiny bit of scab left on it. My left knee was scraped more deeply, and it got bruised pretty badly, too, so it still has thick scabbing on it, and I can't kneel on it without pain. But it's healing well and I'm sure it will be all better before I know it.

Isn't it amazing how well and how fast our bodies heal? Thank You, God.

Wow, I'm glad they're improving Aemi! I hope the other one is good as new soon. Yes, our bodies are amazing, God is good.

Thanks for your concern, Lycanis.

I remember getting skinned knees all the time as a child, and they never seemed as bad as they do now. Maybe it's a combination of increased height, increased body mass, and increased age.

I'm glad you are healing well, Aemi.


When I was younger (probably between 3 and 10) I was often breaking my fingers from getting them trapped in doors. It was scary how much it happened. I don't vividly remember every time, but one time that I have never forgotten was when I was about 6, and we had a really heavy back door, which slammed itself shut. Anyway, somehow I trapped three of my fingers in the door as it slammed shut, and ended up at hospital. I think three were broken then, and I remember how much it hurt. I still cringe when I think back about it.

Ouch.
I've never broken a bone, but I have gotten my fingers smashed plenty of times. It usually causes soreness, which goes away after a few hours. Ouch.

I remember one time, I found a skateboard at a friend's house. I carefully stepped onto it---and it shot out from under me. I landed on my hip and got a nice limping bruise. Now I'm kind of scared of skateboards.

It could be from the roller blades, momentum, etc. *shrugs* I never did trust roller blades much. I think height probably helped too though.



I was cringing reading about it! I'm glad you're able to type and stuff still, I only hurt my pinkie and it's caused a ton of problems for me in playing piano, so I can't imagine how bad things could get from actually breaking fingers!

A thread about injuries? I've had some experiences. I’m going to describe the pain as best I can so you all can hopefully find something to use.

The majority of my injuries came from wrestling, football, and just plain clumsiness.

Jammed fingers were the most common for me in sports. My fingers would swell up at the joints, limit mobility and feel very stiff. If I tried to make a fist the fingers would not completely close against my palm and stick out. The pain was mostly dull, located in the joint. Bumping or squeezing the finger caused a sharp pain that lingered for several seconds.

The only thing you can really do is to tape the jammed finger to another for stability. Jammed fingers are very prone to reinjury, as they stick out, and it was not uncommon for my fingers to remain hurt until football or wrestling season ended.

Large welts and bruises covered my forearms from being hit and using them to hit others. My body was always sore form neck down day after a game so we had a Saturday morning stretch and jog to help get rid of the lactic acid buildup in our bodies. The saying during our stretching was, “Hurts so good,” because it hurt and yet felt so satisfying at the same time to stretch our bodies.

***

At the end of my sophomore year in wrestling I somehow had a minor separation in my right shoulder. The pain was incredibly intense and sharp, like continuously pinching your skin except amplified deep within the shoulder joint and muscle. The sensation would travel down my arm and up into my trapezoid muscle and continued to hurt until I relaxed my arm. By just lifting my arm or subjecting it to any sort of resistance caused pain that drained my arm completely of its strength. I couldn’t even hold a five-pound weight out in front of me without my shoulder giving out. My strength was just gone.

Since I’m no stranger to working through pain I tried to wrestle in a tournament thinking I could just tough it out, but my shoulder would not cooperate and refused to give back my strength. Ended up losing both my matches and nursing my shoulder for a couple months. Never should have competed that day, but I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t quit unless I can’t move anymore or someone above me says to stop. This is important to remember for the next story.

***

Junior year in football, two weeks before our first game, we were in practice and as I was blocking our running back got tackled behind me and rolled onto my left leg. I felt a pop in my ankle and a tingling sensation much like electricity running up my leg. Like my shoulder, the strength in my left leg disappeared for a few seconds and I limped off to the sideline.

I immediately iced my ankle but no signs of bruising or swelling showed. I felt a deep ache within my ankle joint and a severe stabbing pain whenever I put pressure on my foot. The pain was mostly concentrated in the ankle joint. Our athletic trainer said it was a high ankle sprain and I would be okay in a few weeks, so we just taped it up before practice and I iced every day.

Over the next 11 weeks the pain grew worse and worse. Every step I took felt like somebody dug a knife into my joint and twisted it around for fun. I was a two-way starter for varsity, meaning I played both offence and defense, so I rarely came off the field.

The pain became so intense that after practice and games I couldn’t even stand under my own weight to take a shower. I would drive home, limp into our house, and just sit in the shower to wash myself. I went to a doctor and had an x-ray but it showed nothing, so he said it was just a sprain that was taking a long time to heal.

I couldn’t take any sort of pain medication before games and practice as it would mask symptoms of a concussion. Because everyone thought it was just a bad sprain I was told to suck it up, grit my teeth and tough it out. So I did.

Last game of the season, 8 minutes into the 1st quarter, we run the same play that injured my ankle in practice and the same turn of events occur. Our running back gets tackled and rolls onto the same leg. Again, something pops in my ankle and everything tingles. Only this time when I try to put pressure on my leg it’s like nothing is supporting me, and I start to sink under my weight. Fortunately, I was near our sidelines, so I gathered myself up, hobbled over the boundary line, collapsed, and crawled the rest of the way out of bounds.

Next day I had a cat scan. When the doctor came back into the waiting with the results he looked right at me and said, “Young man, you shouldn’t be able to walk right now, let alone play football.”
I had broken my ankle, twice. It was in an odd spot that didn’t show up very well in x-rays. The first break popped off a piece of bone, lodged it into my ankle joint, and then grinded against my bones and cartilage for those 11 weeks. I ended up having surgery to fix the damage and remove some bone spurs.

***

I went camping with some friends and we decided to start a fire old school by rubbing sticks using the bow. I was in charge of making the bow. I got a fresh branch and used my friend’s pocketknife to cut off the twigs. Because the branch was still green I couldn’t just snap the twigs off, so my left hand held the branch as my right hand did the cutting. I would cut the twigs, twist and then pulled them off. When I pulled I held the knife with the blade poiting downward and angled it so I pulled away from my body.

For some reason, I don’t know how as it happened so fast, when I pulled on the twig instead of going away from my body my hand went straight down along the branch and hit my hand.

I felt the impact but no pain. The knife dug deep into my ring finger on my left hand.I basically skinned my finger. The knife hit bone and peeled my skin back, exposing my knucklebone, which looked pink, and the deep red flesh under my skin. My first thought at seeing the damage was sarcastically, “Really? That’s stupid.”
I dropped the knife and quickly pinched the wound close. It needed stitches, bad. My friend was about 70 yards away, so I calmly shouted:

“Hey, Will!”
“What?” he yelled back.
“I need to go to the hospital!”
Pause. “What? Why?”
“I cut myself!”
“Are you sure you need to go to the hospital?”
“Pretty sure!” I raised my hand and displayed the injury.Blood poured down my arm and trickled off of my elbow. It pooled in my hands and seeped through my fingers when tried to I applied pressure. It felt warm and sticky. We used fresh water to clean the wound, cut strips of towels to apply tight pressure, and went to the hospital for eight stitches. I felt no pain during the incident either because of shock or adrenaline. The only pain I felt was when the doctor poured some chemicals into the wound to clean it out. That stung like crazy!

Aftermath: My finger was extremely bruised and stiff. It throbbed with a low pain and I could not bend it very well do to the stitches and swelling. Once the stitches were removed I still had minor swelling and stiffness for many months. The skin alongside the cut experienced numbness but I regained feeling after a few years.

Those are just a few stories. My family goes to the hospital so often I think the staff knows us on a first name basis.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, Roager! They are very valuable to us writers. I'm very thankful your injuries didn't cause permanent suffering for you.

*Considers sharing stories of dislocating shoulder, toe, spraining ankle multiple times. tendon injuries, cuts to the bone knee, tail-bone injuries, shin-splints (from running to much without strechig) falling out of tree's,having the back of my head cut open slicing fingers* and a few more.

The doubly broken ankle sounds very painful, Roager. Injuries that weren't fixed and got worse would probably be even more common in fantasy worlds where medical knowledge wasn't as advanced as it is today.

You could give us the "highlights", Danko.

*Doesn't want to write it all out* If you want to know about a certain one, I will write it out, but I'm not sure if any of them I would call, "Highlights" so if you want one or more just ask me for the exact one, please.

Okay, this one isn't that exciting, but it has lasting effects. Last year, at my camp we have a slip-n-slide (a tarp going down a hill, with water going down) the tarp is held down by rocks, it was my turn, I don't want to brag, but I can go down it pretty fast, I was the third fastest person there, despite the fact that I'm not even 90 pounds. I did a running start, as I jumped I flailed my arms, when I landed I was bumping up against the side of it, when I heard this huge pop, I screamed, I kept sliding down the slip-n-slide, I couldn't stop it went on for, 30 more seconds, because I dislocated it at the top, when I got to the bottom, I couldn't feel my arm, it wasn't numb, I plain old couldn't feel it. That lasted for a couple of minutes, then I felt my shoulder slide, it was back!

Lasting effects:
I can semi dislocate it when I want now, my collar bone didn't place back in properly so when I move my arm a lot, my collar literally pops out a bit, sometimes my friends can even hear it, if I sleep on that arm, I wake up really sore and it's hard to use that arm.

What happened?
When I went up the side of it a rock dug under my shoulder-blade causing it to pop out it. My nerves had no real connection to my shoulder so I couldn't feel it.

I have a finger story similar to yours, Roager.

A few years ago, my mom sliced open her left pointer finger. I'm not sure if you could see bone (I didn't look that closely), but it was deep enough that the doctor kept pointing out different muscles and tendons.

Anyway, she did it when she was cutting brownies. Back then, Caleb was on a special diet, so the brownies had some weird ingredients that apparently made them really sticky. They wouldn't un-stick from the bottom on the pan, so my mom put one hand on the back of the pan, to keep it from moving. Then, when she went to slide the spatula around the brownies, the spatula hand slipped, and drove the sharp edge of the spatula up through her finger.

My mom just stared for a second, because blood was going everywhere. Then she grabbed the nearest hand towel, and wrapped it tightly around her hand. (The towel was soaked through by the time we got to the doctor, and stuck to her finger, which she said hurt a lot) She just held it against her chest, and called my dad.

Long story short, he came, took her to the doctor, and he stitched it up. However, since the tendon was severed almost in half, he had to slice her finger open even more, in a zig-zag, so that he could reach the tendon and sew it back together.

After that, my mom had to wear a removable cast thing that kept her hand in an 'L' shape, so that the tendon would heal properly. It did... but the scar tissue was built up so thickly that my mom couldn't even move her finger, and it was always sore. So she had to get another surgery, where they cut her finger open again, and removed all the scar tissue. Thankfully, it worked better that time.

After it healed again, she had to go to physical therapy a couple times a week. They made her do things like squeeze silly putty in her hands, because her finger had very little strength left.

Even after all that, the therapist said she would never have full movement in that finger, and he was right. She can't quite make a fist with that hand, because the one finger sticks out. And she still has a zig-zag scar, which is hard and aches frequently, though not as bad as it used to. Sometimes, when she drives, she sticks that finger up in the air because it hurts to bend it a lot.

Wow... that ended up being longer than I thought.



That sounds similar to a girl I knew from swim... she injured her shoulder while swimming, causing it to dislocate. And from then on, she could pop it out whenever she wanted. It was kinda gross.

*shudders at talk of dislocated bones*

The brownie story reminds me of something that happened to me. It's similar, but not nearly as bad.
Someone had made brownies, then cut out the squares and removed them from the stoneware pan, leaving the crusts in there. Now, the crispy crusts are just as good as the soft squares, in my opinion, so I picked up the serrated spatula, and started chipping them out.
Somehow it slipped. The serrated edge flew over my left pointer finger, slicing it right at the base of the nail. It bled a lot.
I ran to the bathroom, rinsed it with water (which seriously stung) and pinched the finger hard to stop the bleeding. When I examined the cut, I found it was not deep at all, but its position on my finger caused it to pull apart whenever I bent it. I wrapped the end of my finger firmly with a Band-aid.
It healed pretty quickly, even though I accidentally bumped it and made it bleed again once. But when my fingernail grew out, it was misshapen. Kind of bumpy. But the deformity grew out eventually, and now, my finger is normal---save a thin, pale scar line right at the base of the nail.

Wow! This is a gross topic.

How about a weird one?

One night, I was writing with a pink fine-point Sharpie pen. When I finished, I decided to do my own, personal, ultra-cool pen-capping move: I held the cap and the pen about one inch apart, then slammed them together, to click the cap securely into place. Well, this time it went a little wrong. The fine-point tip missed the cap and skipped across two of my fingers. I now had a short, bleeding cut on my left index finger (right under the scar from the spatula incident) and another small one on the side of my left middle finger.

I had wounded myself with a pen.
I felt a bit stupid.

I managed to find a Band-aid, put it on the deeper cut (the one on my index finger), and went to bed. Over the next few days, they closed up and then healed. I can still faintly see marks in those places.
And no, no ink got inside the wounds.

For all of those who are wondering about what it's like to sprain an ankle, here you go:
I have sprained my right ankle on many occasions (About 7); when your ankle starts to twist, it really starts to hurt. But once you fall down, it isn't as bad for about 5 seconds, then wham you get hit by a wave of pain, when ever I sprain it, I normally lie on the ground for a few minutes, then I try to get up, it gets really swollen really fast.

And that's a quick bio on the pain of a Sprained ankle.

Ouch! I’m sorry your mom had to have surgery. I was very fortunate in my injury as it only hit the bone on top of my finger. The doctor said I cut myself in the best possible spot because of where the tendons are located.

Speaking of surgeries, here’s a few more apart from my ankle.

I tore my meniscus in my right knee three separate times during the final two years of my football career, all of which required surgery. I don’t remember how I tore it. This type of injury usually happens from the knee twisting in ways it shouldn’t, but I never felt the tear.

After the tear, my knee would be swollen and filled with fluid. Whenever I bent my knee I could feel pressure build in the joint, around the sides, and I could see my skin expand from the fluid much like a water balloon. I had the feeling if I bent my knee too much the skin would pop, but it never did. It was also very difficult to straighten my knee all the way out. When I ran my knee felt weak and very loose, like it could overextend or dislocated whenever I took a step.

Got to the point where I needed to have it drained. Not fun. They stuck a large needle right above my knee and used a syringe to suck the liquid out.

For all three surgeries I went under anesthesia but I only remember going under once. They put an oxygen mask on my face and began introducing the medicine through an IV. I vividly remember breathing in the pure oxygen and then doctors around me suddenly moving in slow motion. There’s this effect in movie editors, like iMovie, called ghost trails, where a person moves and an after image of them lags behind. It looked just like that as they moved in slow motion around me. The last thought I had before the medicine took over was, “Wait a minute, this isn’t oxygen.” Then I woke up in recovery.

Worst part of the whole experience was having this male nurse shave my leg for surgery. And I’m sure I had the same nurse shave my leg each time! I was like, “Don’t! I just grew that back! Now my leg’s going to be cold and look glossy.”

Fun fact: my legs do not look good shaved. Too many bumps and dents. Although, come to think of it, my calves did look nice...

...Anyway, I was usually in a soft cast for about a week. I had this pressure bandage around my leg to prevent blood clots that had to be removed. That was the closest I ever came to passing out. Since the bandage constricted blood flow, and we removed it, the blood was no longer constricted and so ran back into place. I became immediately light headed and darkness literally rushed in from the corners of my eyes. It was like making binoculars with your hands and closing your fists until you were looking through tiny holes of light. Felt sick to my stomach and nearly vomited. I had to lie down for about 10-15 minutes before I returned to normal.

The third surgery was the hardest because the doctor basically gave me an ultimatum. He said I could keep playing football and possibly walk with a cane by the time I was thirty or stop now. I asked how cool the cane would be and he said it was not cool enough to keep playing, so I ended my career there. Which turned out to be good, because the third surgery revealed I had cracked my kneecap and was in stage two of four with arthritis.

Cool! Haha, I want to be a paramedic. Injuries and first-aid intrigue me
My stories probably won't live up to many of yours, but here's a finger story:
My friend and I were tossing a football at church, while the rest of the youth group was playing some other game that I guess we didn't want to play. Anyway, he went very far back and threw it extremely high, and when I went to catch it, it bounced off my right ring finger.
I'm not sure if it broke or not, because for some reason my parent's don't like going to the doctor unless there's something life or limb-threateningly wrong, and I guess since I wasn't hysterical, apparently I wasn't really in any pain. , but anyway I'm almost positive I got a little fracture in it. I said, "Hey, I think you broke my finger," and he blew me off. It had started to hurt a little. I said, "No, seriously, I think you broke my finger." He goes, "Yeah, sure." And I'm like, "No, this has happened to me before, but it didn't feel this bad." I am excellent at hiding my pain, obviously, for I was smiling and acting normal, if a bit adrenaline-high (I get adrenaline highs whenever I get hurt severely). So I showed him. It was already swelling and I couldn't move it. I was like, "Yeah, I think you broke it." Hes like uhmm... lol, he didn't quite know what to say.. I go, "I'm going inside now."
I found a first-aid kit inside the "youth building" where the Student Ministries of the church is headquartered, and there was an instant cold pack in it. The instructions said to squish it around until it got cold, so ignoring the pain in my finger (like an electric shock running up and down and throbbing) I kneaded it for a while, until the others came in, but it wouldn't get cold.
My friend Anna sees the first-aid kit out, comes up to me and says, "Hey, what happened?" I say, "Isaiah broke my finger with a football, and I can't get this stupid cold pack to work." I'm still acting normal and pleasant. She goes, "Oh my gosh, here, let me do that," even though I don't think she quite believed me either, and starts squishing the pack for me. I tell my youth leader, and he doesn't seem to believe me either, because he asks, "Does it hurt?" But he gets me a cold soda out of the fridge to put on my finger because the cold pack won't work.
Anyway, nobody believed me until I came in the next Sunday with a splint on my finger. The guy who did it is like "Wow, you were serious?!"
This was last summer, I think, or maybe spring, like in May? And when I stretch my finger out to the limit, it still feels stiff and weird.
If anyone's seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I've been compared multiple times by totally different people to the Black Knight. "It's just a flesh wound!"

Y'all might be getting sick of my posts by now, but I'm bored, so here's another injury story-perhaps the one I'm most famous for!
So this is why they call me Crash, and most of the reason I'm also called The Black Knight! (For those of you who don't watch Monty Python movies, the Black Knight is the guardian of a certain road, and you can only pass if you defeat him. "King Arthur" chops his arm off, and he says it's just a flesh wound. Chops his other arm, and he's still coming at him, kicking him. Chops off a leg, he hops around, bumping into him. Chops off the other leg, and he threatens to bite King Arthur's legs off and calls King Arthur a "pansy" and a chicken because he leaves the limbless thing and rides ahead. )
ANYWAY! So I'm at camp. All 3-400+- campers are on the "island"-a wide, flat-topped grassy hill about 3 feet high, surrounded by a gravel road-for morning prayers. Now, with hundreds of hungry teenagers, the lines for food form quickly and move slowly-for that reason, everybody RUNS! So after prayers, I'm running down the hill, across the gravel, but I trip and fall on my hands and knees. I get up and join my fellow campers in line, who all ask if I'm okay. I tell them I'm fine, I'm used to getting scraped up (I'm a klutz). But they start to sting, not hurt exactly, just sting and itch on the surface, and I find that jumping up and down helps. So I'm jumping up and down, boing, boing, boing, still smiling and talking, until we get to where we're waiting just outside the cafeteria door for tables to open up, and the guy letting people in sees me. (Puts a spoiler just in case) I'm bleeding from both hands and knees, worse on the left hand and right knee, where my weight landed and slid. I figure it's just a scrape, I tell him I'll rinse it off in the bathroom once I get inside. But he goes and pulls one of the camp nurses out of breakfast and brings her out, and she's like Oh my! And she goes and gets all the other nurses!!!! So I'm like, wow, this is a little much for some scrapes.
They took me in the nursing office/room/thing, and give me Motrin (ibuprofen), and the head nurse (Sherri) tells me to try and wash them off with water first. At this point, there's blood dripping all down my right leg from my knee. I wash it off, though it hurts a little, come out and sit in the chair. The nurses point all the lights at me, one even holds a flashlight up close, while Sherri puts on gloves and gets tweezers and picks rocks and dirt out of the flesh of my right knee and both my hands. This takes about an hour, and I'm hungry. My camp counselor gets me a tray of food and I'm sitting there chatting with the nurses and other patients, laughing, smiling, and eating while they're digging into my hands and (much more) into my knee with needles and tweezers. They ask why and how I'm being so good, I tell them with a smile, "Well, it has to come out." They decided right then and there that I was their favorite patient, and said so enthusiastically.
So, the injuries: Right knee: Skin scraped totally off of my knee (the area your weight is on when you kneel), a bunch of more minor scrapes running down my shin. Bandage: A bunch of gauze pads taped to my skin, with a wrap bandage holding them all on. Left hand: A gash an inch or so long, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep, with several layers of skin scraped off the area over it to boot. Bandage: Gauze pads and LOTS and LOTS of tape, since it never wanted to stay on. Right hand: Hadn't really bled much, but somehow a bunch of blister-like pockets full of dirt and small rocks were formed. Bandage was a light gauze dressing and, later, a big Band-Aid. Left knee: Run-of-the-mill scrape, except a little worse. They had to scrub that one a little to get the dirt out.
A couple months later, when the wound on my left hand is healed over but there's a painful lump that just won't go away, I decide they missed something inside of it. I sanitize the area and my tools with alcohol, get a bottle of Kanka (numbing liquid for cold/canker sores) and put a bunch of it all over the area, wait for it to numb, then do it again. I use a pair of small but sharp scissors to cut the flesh away until I have the lump, and they did indeed miss a tiny rock thingy, which I got out. It healed up at a quicker pace and without as much pain after that.
That was two summers ago, and it still feels odd when I poke that place on my hand-I think it did some nerve damage.

If I'm annoying anyone with my long and detailed posts, feel free to stop me, but I also have some sprained/bone-bruised elbows to tell y'all about

No, go ahead! That's what this thread is for. (Although could you possibly put the part about the Black Knight in spoilers, too? ) Those scrapes you got sure sound bad. It's weird how they don't hurt much right at first, isn't it?

Speaking of which, my knees are almost completely healed now. The scabs are gone, and my left knee just hurts a bit when I kneel on it.

Glad your knees are feeling better! Anyway I couldn't use either hand or knee to push myself up to stand-even when I was sitting in a chair, I had to get people to pull me up! And we did a skit and I had to lie on the floor with some other people, and then some OTHER other people had to come touch us and we'd get up. Well the guy touched me and I'm like "Wait! Help!" LOLOLOL
The week after that, I played volleyball EVERY DAY because I went on vacation to a place called Sandy Cove, and volleyball there with friends is the most fun thing you'll ever do. Anyway, after every game, my left hand was bleeding again.
So anyway, my crazy elbows:
I was skateboarding (something I'm not too good at, just acceptable), and I tried to do that thing where you tilt the board and drag the end on the ground in order to stop. Well, the board slid out from under me and I landed on my elbow. I, being a person who gets right back up and ignores pain after an injury, thought it was nothing at first, but then when it wouldn't go away and I couldn't move the elbow joint without extreme pain, or straighten it, I figured it must be sprained. So I went to the store and bought a wrap bandage, wrapped it up tight in a slightly bent position, and in a couple of weeks I could move it normally again.
Another time (I sprained BOTH elbows this time) I was doing a powerful skit for the glory of God (this is the one I did, but it's not the actual video of me doing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA ) I was the main character girl. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, watch the video. Anyway, that almost-end part, where she gets beat up, pushed down, thrown on the ground, etc.? Yup. I'm heavier than her, and I took most of the falls on my elbows. I would NOT let my fellow actors fake it, because I knew it would be less convincing, and I really wanted to impact people for God (this worked tremendously btw, I can't even count how many people came up to me crying and saying how good a job I did ) So anyway, the adrenaline rush covered the elbow pain for a while, but then I found I was having the skateboard experience again, but with the right arm, and the left was very sore as well but I didn't want to wrap up both.
Now, three? four? years later, I still can't lean on my elbows in certain ways because the nerves are somewhat damaged and it either hurts, or tingles and makes a finger or two go numb.

I picked up an oyster when I was at the river once, and threw it, and its sharp edge sliced my index fingertip open. It didn't hurt at first-just the feeling of maybe a needle jab-then it began to throb, not badly at first, but then worse. I went home and went in the bathroom to clean it. First I squeezed it to get the dirty blood out, and I was extremely surprised when blood squirted all over the place-it looked like I had murdered somebody! So yeah, after squeezing it and cleaning it, I put a band-aid on it and it throbbed for a while longer, but healed up completely within maybe three weeks