What was the worst accident you were in that caused you physical harm?

My husband was hitching a ride for about 100 yards on the back of a pick-up, just standing on the bumper. (stupid in retrospect, but it was only a few feet.) The guy had just waxed his car and the plastic bed liner was slippery on the tail gate. My husband yelled, “Don’t go so fast!”
The guy only heard the “go fast” part, and floored it.
Hubby went flying. Shattered his tibia and broke his collar bone.
Had a crappy local surgeon and spent the next several years in pain and also gained about 80 lbs because he couldn’t be as active as he once was.
11 years ago he got a knee replacement and although it will never be the same, his quality of life improved immensely. He now works out 3–4 days a week and does yoga. He has lost the weight he gained.
Unfortunately, he has been having a lot more pain in the knee lately.
We can’t really blame the friend. He never should have been on the bumper in the first place.

Having to throw myself from a run away horse that bolted down a steep, boulder strewn hill above a lake after spooking from a gunshot in the woods. My horse bolted with several others and I had no choice but to throw myself off for fear she would trip and fall on the rocks.
Baaad, baaad, I dislocated my shoulder, slammed my head into the ground resulting in a black eye, wrenched my elbow and tweaked my knee.

Had to have surgery and a pin put in my shoulder. Took my elbow months to heal, but, it’s amazing what you can do when under duress. Far better outcome than having a 1300 lb. horse fall on you.

@Coloma What happened to the horse?

In June of 1990 my husband was driving his pickup on a back road in Tennessee. He noticed someone following him and sped up. The driver sped up and chased him down the road. Eventually my husband lost control and went off the road. The front end of his truck dug into the dirt and it went flying. The car flipped five times before coming to rest upside down in the front of a house several yards back from the road. His passenger was thrown from the car and stuck under the bed of the truck. He was trapped between the dashboard and windshield. After they got the passenger out from under, they rescued my husband; someone had taken all of his money and his wallet. He had no broken bones. His face was smashed up, he almost lost an ear, and his spinal cord was severed at the C5 level. He has had no movement or feeling from his armpits down ever since. His passenger had a brain injury and has since recovered.

Photos taken of the truck after the incident showed a bullet hole in one of the rear tires. There was no investigation and to this day no one knows what the guy who was following my husband was up to.

@SuperMouse She was fine, I was riding bareback on open land and there were two other free range horses and a pony tagging along with us. My horse took off with the herd and I bailed so she wouldn’t risk tripping and falling. Rounded her up and walked 2 miles back to the house with my injuries. Never ride alone, haha.

@SuperMouse: Wow. That is horrible.

Oops, I meant @FutureMemory. Oh wow @Supermouse!

I gained multiple ankle fractures during a game of football. (Thats soccer to you yanks)
It was a pretty complicated break, and I was out of action and on crutches for over three months. I had to get surgery for it too.
At least I got a bit of metal out of it ;)

A woman was not paying any attention to her surroundings, and pulled right out in front of me. She was driving a compact car, I was driving an SUV. I t-boned her car. It totaled her car, and smashed in the entire front end of my suburban.

To make matters worse, she had a 2 week old baby in the backseat. How in the holy fuck do you not pay careful attention while driving, when you have a child with you? Her carelessness shocked me.

Anyway… I was a few months pregnant with my youngest daughter, but luckily she was fine in my big ol’ belly. My oldest daughter was in the backseat, and luckily she was fine as well. She was mildly sore for a few days. I was bruised and incredibly sore for a week. It could have been much, much worse.

I think the worst “injury” was the mental/emotional injury of it. Every time I drive down that road, I remember thinking “Oh my God” watching the lady pull out, I remember the panic I felt when yelling at my daughter to brace herself, and I can still hear the idiot woman’s baby screaming. It’s awful.

I was knocked over by these drunken pricks when I was 18. They mounted the pavement & I managed to jump a little, the car struck me on the back of my legs, sent me onto the bonnet & my head completely shattered the windscreen.
An overnight stay in the hospital, coupled with a few stitches to my head & I was pretty much okay. That’s only because i’m a hard bugger though.

@Coloma I thought about jumping as we were swerving out of control. I think I would have done it if the cart was not also tipping. As we swerved towards my side I was very close to the ground, as we swerved the other way I was up in the air. Who know if I made the better decision.

@SuperMouse What a bazaar story. So tragic too. Were your husband and his passenger wearing seatbelts? Why didn’t they investigate?

@JLeslie That’s just crazy! Do you need insurance to drive a gold cart on public roads? Does she have insurance to help cover your expenses?

My friend (who was only 10 ft away) accidentally spun a little too much in the wind-up hit me in the head with a baseball sized rock throw at full power. Bounced off my head 6 ft, and knocked me to my knees. Only thing I said was “why the fuck did you do that”? I got a crazy pump knot that raised off of my cranium about an inch….matter of fact, I still have a small lump there. :)

@Coloma Yes, you need a license plate and insurance to drive on public roads, but this was not on a public road. The owner, not the driver, is seeing if it can be covered under his homeowners, but I called my insurance to ask questions, not because I thought I had coverage, and they said it would have to be covered under auto insurance like a car.

@JLeslie they were not wearing seatbelts and I am not entirely sure why there was no investigation. I think his injuries were so bad everything was focused on his survival no one thought to look into what actually happened.

Two of my biggest accidents were when my younger sister hit me in the head with a baseball bat. She broke my nose, injured my eye and knocked me out for I don’t know how long. I just know that there were tons of kids around when I was conscious and no one around when I finally came to. I had a blown pupil for months. Then, some time later I hit a root whilst motorbiking and went flying into the handlebars. I broke 5 ribs.

Oh, and then there was the time my older sister tried to take my pinky finger off with a rock. She nearly succeeded and I have a scar that runs the entire length of my finger.

@JLeslie that must have been scary. I hope you recover soon.

I was in Wales on a project. I notice the movers were pretty rough unloading my equipment. I got in the truck to insure that they took better care. While I was checking the truck, the bed raised to about 6 feet above ground. Since I was jet lagged, I decided to be careful jumping off the truck. I sat down and slid off. Something caught the back of my pants, spun be around so that my achilles tendon on my right leg struck the undercarriage. Then my pants ripped and dropped me straight down 6 feet. I hurt my left wrist, both elbows and both knees. When I tried to stand up my right food didn’t work very well; I thought I sprained my ankle.

After about two weeks my right leg didn’t get better and it was turning blue. I went to the hospital, found that I severed my achilles tendon, and had a caste put on my right leg. Later on the airplane ride back home, the caste evidently damaged a vein.

I was operated on to re-connect the tendon and experienced a great deal of pain in my upper thigh. I had a deep vein thrombosis, and several blood clots which almost killed me. Further examination determined that had clots in my groin, damaged esophagus from taking too much Panadol and spent two weeks in the hospital while they tried to control the pain.

I travel a great deal and people ask where the most dangerous place I’ve been. I have been all over Asia, Europe, and South America. Wales is the only place where I sustained a life threatening injury. That’s what I tell them England and Wales are very dangerous but I really like their medical system. All of the x-rays, castes, and examinations would have cost nothing if I was a citizen. Since I was a visitor I only paid 400 pounds.

In 1978 while driving alone one night on I-75 through Georgia (on my way to Florida to start a new job the next day, and for that reason unwilling to stop for the night) I fell asleep at the wheel. We seldom wore seat belts in those days, and I wasn’t wearing mine.

I drifted left through the other travel lane and woke up when the car was bumping (at high speed) though the grassy median. I spun the wheel too hard and too fast to the right to get back on the road, and started doing a donut in the wet grass, back across the travel lanes, and then rolled the car 360° into a ten-foot ditch. I landed facing 180° in the opposite direction (facing north, when I had been driving south), on the wheels, with the car at the bottom of the ditch and the windshield tinkling down in pieces into my lap.

I just opened the door, stepped out and walked up to the top of the ditch. A trucker who had been two miles behind me – and who had witnessed the whole thing – had already stopped, because he figured I might be dead. We chatted for a bit, and he radioed the state trooper and a tow truck for me.

All I had was a bruise on my elbow where it had banged against the door while I rolled. I still recall that roll and thump in the ditch; it seemed to take a minute or more in super-slow motion.

When I was a kid I was sunning myself next to the woodpile. When I turned over to bake the other side, a brown snake shot out of the woodpile and bit me. For some reason the next door neighbour knew something happened and called the fire brigade- this was many years ago before every city had anti-venom so I was airlifted to Sydney. It was very painful and took about a year to recover. I’ve had bad injuries after that but think that was the worst. Get better @JLeslie and hope you recover your expenses!

The worst pain I’ve been in was when I fell down some concrete steps in the rain and fractured a vertebra. At the time, I was laying there at the bottom of the steps and I couldn’t move or feel my legs, and I was terrified. I was taken to hospital on a spinal injuries board. Thankfully that wore off and I have no lasting effects from it.

A far more minor accident though, has left me with ongoing problems. I was sitting on a bus with my right hand resting on the top of the seat in front of me. The bus braked sharply, I was thrown forward but kept my arm straight and hurt my shoulder. It didn’t even hurt that badly, I got checked out by a doctor, he said it’s just a sprain, it will be fine in a couple of weeks. I have no idea what I did but 18 years later I still have limited movement of that shoulder.

In early 2001, I was walking home to my apartment (with a backpack full of groceries) when I crossed a street. It was a T intersection with a stop sign on the street I was crossing. When I got near the end of the street, I saw a black truck in the corner of my eye so my body slightly turned towards it ..then I all of a sudden spun around not realizing what had happened. The truck hit my leg, dislocating my knee cap, and spun me around onto the ground. It was icy at the time and my head smacked on the ice as I hit the ground. I remember opening my eyes and seeing some kids staring down at me.

I was taken to the hospital and had some tests done on my head (and of course fix my knee). I was bruised up – looked like I had gotten beat up. It was very painful. I felt like ..well, like I was hit by a truck, lol. That is when I found out I had multiple brain tumors. It is odd because if that person didn’t hit me, I wouldn’t have found out about the tumors. The person didn’t stop and they drove away. Police never did find out who it was.

As horrible as it was, I am lucky it happened.

On a funny side note ..I was more worried about the milk in my backback when I woke up, lol.

I was in my car waiting at red traffic lights when some prick who was paying more attention to his mobile phone than to the road drove straight into my back-end. I had whiplash and was in serious pain with my back, and I had to wear a neck collar for three weeks. My car was a write-off.

@Coloma

“Do you need insurance to drive a gold cart on public roads?”

Unless one is majorly wealthy, they probably can’t afford insurance after paying for a cart made from any precious metal. ;-)

….I got nuttin’. Geez you guys! You’ve been through some stuff. I mean, I got stitches on the front side of my ankle once, when I was about 14. Sliced it open with a bike fender. The first thing Mom always did when one of us got a decent cut was to shove the cut part under running water while she called the doctor. I was in pain, but also fascinated with the fact that when I moved my foot I could see the tendon moving back and forth in the cut because the running water washed the blood away. So that’s what I did to take my mind off of the fact that I’d been sliced open like a sausage…wiggled my foot so I could watch my tendon moving back and forth. I feel so lame. haha… :(

@trailsillustrated

“When I turned over to bake the other side, a brown snake shot out of the woodpile and bit me.”

Aussie fauna is sooo scary; even one of your mammalian species is venomous.

@Dutchess_III if it was cut deep enough for you to see the tendon it counts as serious bodily injury! Not lame! I’ll tell you what though, this thread has made me truly thankful for my own lack of serious accidents. Now if you’ll excuse me I have go find some wood to knock on!

I agree with Dutchess’ assessment of herself.

A car accident. I wasn’t seriously injured but it scared the crap out of me.

Hmmmm… worst accident I was in is a toss up between a “friendly” grenade going off pretty much right next to my head and getting hit by a car going around… 40–45 mph. The injuries sustained from both weren’t as bad as they could have been with the grenade only damaging my hearing especially in my left ear and it seems it’s possible that it may have caused some damage to my right eye that has gone unnoticed for quite some time. The car that hit me left me with that cracked rib I was complaining about a while back and some scrapes, maybe some bruising on my back.

However worst injury sustained is probably from wrestling, I pretty much do not have a functioning labrum in my right shoulder, but the incident that caused the injury was definitely no accident.

A dirt bike crash in 1986. It left me with a concussion and a paralyzed left arm, and other stuff. Still feeling the sting of that one.

I was hit by a car while crossing a major road on foot (you know this road, @JLeslie… Rt. 355, and I was hit right in front of our high school). I was very, very lucky and only received a sprained knee. My whole leg was all sorts of ugly colors, and I was in one of those velcro braces and using crutches for about three months.

The most gruesome accident I’ve had was when I fell down on a spike used for holding a badminton net in place. It was an extremely sharp, thin, and pointed piece of metal, and I put my knee down on it, full force, while diving for the birdie. The spike drove straight to the bone (same knee, too!). The good news was, it was a very clean puncture. Didn’t even need stitches. Oddly, though, the scar from this is more visible than the one from the car accident.

Hope your injuries heal quickly!

@augustlan During lunch I used walk across 355 all the time to cross the street, and it had to have been dangerous, but of course at that age I didn’t really take in how dangerous. Did they even have school zone speed limits during our lunches?

@JLeslie Nope, no school zone speed limits and no traffic light at that time. I was hit crossing from the school to the 7–11, going to get a soda before school. I was the second kid hit at that intersection that school year, and I’m the reason there is a traffic light there now! At least some good came of it. :)

@augustlan Exactly, the 7–11. I remember a friend of mine got in a small fender bender driving back from McD’s, and the following year our lunches were longer. I was really glad they made lunch longer rather than making us a closed campus. At least from my teenage perspective I was very happy about it.

@Brian1946 and back then people too! 3 years after that I went to a dance at the local great hall. The party was crashed by bikies and one of them grabbed me by my ponytail. I slapped his face and he wound up and hit mine as hard as he would hit any man. It broke my cheekbone and the orbit of my eye. The white of that eye was bloody red for six months. ah life in a rural town years ago lol

@trailsillustrated Yeah…I tried to do the outraged-woman thing on a guy once, when I was 17. I slapped him, just like they do in the movies. He slapped me back….knocked me smooth across the room and I slammed into the wall. That’s when I learned that you don’t challenge men physically. Women who do that are stupid.