Do you have any crazy scars?

I have a stupid scar on my belly. I was a kid, playing with pinking shears, For some reason, I thought it was cool to cut up the elastic of my underwear while I was wearing them. I accidentally cut the skin on my belly with the scissors. It bled for a few days and I was terrified I’d need stitches. I didn’t want to have to explain to my parents or the doctor how I cut myself.
—EDIT: I was six when this happened. I didn’t want anyone to think this happened when I was 19 or something.

You’d be further ahead asking where I don’t have scars.

I’m answering this because it reminds me of that scene in Jaws.
I have a two inch scar running horizontal across the back of my head, I was run over by these drunken morons as a young teen & my head shattered their windscreen.

I was on the hill behind my Mom’s house, trimming a tree. I was up about 30 feet, with one hand on the chainsaw (mistake), and one hand on the tree branch.
While cutting the branch, it suddenly jumped into the chainsaw blade, taking my hand with it.
I pulled back immediately, but I could feel the shudder of chainsaw against my hand/glove.
I looked at my glove, and the thumb was all torn up.
I immediately turned off the saw, and lowered it down by rope. I then climbed down from the tree.
When I got to the ground, I took off my glove, expected to see the bloody stump of a thumb.
There was no visible damage.
I looked at the glove again. Yes, it was the right one. The thumb was all torn apart.
I looked at my thumb again. No damage.
I looked at the glove again. I wasn’t going crazy. That gloves thumb was torn apart.
I carefully looked at my thumb, and found that the chainsaw had torn off about 1/16th of an inch of my nail, and bloodlessly scratched my skin, just below the nail.
I told my Mom to hire someone else to trim the rest of the tree.

That little scratch did scar. It is damn difficult to see, but it is there.

Do you mean besides the vasectomy slits?
And now they’re joined by the tiny prostatectomy incisions. I think they should have given me a rebate for the V-snip job.

@LuckyGuy Ouch, that’s like pouring salt in the cuts. Where is the fucking justice in that?

Not “gnarly” but scars yes. A small, ( almost invisible now ) half moon scar under my right eye from being bitten by a Doberman Pinscher at age 11. Hate those dogs!
A slash scar on my outer left calf from an evil Siamese cat that attacked me at age 9 when trying to break up a cat fight.
A 3 inch scar on my left shoulder from surgery to pin a severely dislocated shoulder from a horse wreck at age 21 where they sawed off a piece of my collarbone to fashion an immoveable shoulder joint.
The biggest is a 10 inch scar on my right side from kidney surgery to repair a blocked ureter in my right kidney at age 22.

All of them are faded and barely visible these days.

Looking quick I come up with about 30. The gnarliest one is the one on my esophagus from drinking the pipeline acid cleaner when I was 4. Can’t say I’d recommend that to anyone else.

I have a one inch long scar on my palm just below the thumb that I cut accidently with an Exacto knife. It was the first time I had a really bad cut and it happened so fast that one, I did not feel it happen and two, it was such a clean cut it didn’t bleed at first and I got to get a good look at the inside of my hand. That was pretty cool for a short second or two and then it was like a dam burst and blood was suddenly everywhere.

My mom was a nurse and put 4 butterfly bandages on it. I won’t bore you with the other dozens scars.

@Adirondackwannabe THAT is brutal!

Dumbest scar is above my right eye from when I simply walked into a pole and my wire rim glasses frame cut my eyebrow. I was about 12.

Scar that hurt the most, when a neighbor kid pushed me off my bike and the fender ripped into my ankle right above the top of my foot. Mom set me on the bathroom counter and put my foot in water in the sink while she called the doctor. Don’t know why she was calling the doctor instead of taking me straight in. I obviously needed stitches. Through the haze of my shock I couldn’t help but notice that I could see the actual tendon moving back and forth when I wiggled my foot. I remember thinking that was really cool and I wiggled my foot a lot.

Two surgery scars: One on my back where they removed a lump from my back. I discovered it on a Friday night. I was 7 months pregnant. Spent the entire weekend wondering if I was going to live to see my baby grow up. Turned out to be just a fatty lump, not cancerous, and they waited to operate until after I had the baby.

And last but not least, a scar on my right side where they inserted a tube to drain my lungs when I had pneumonia a year ago. Kinda like doing an oil change

A surgical scar running down my chest from open heart surgery at 11 months old. That one I’m pretty fond of since without that operation I would not have survived infancy. A circular scar on my knee that I got when I fell off the back of a car I was stupidly riding on top off (I think at the time I told my parents that it was a bicycle accident). A three inch scar running down the front of my shoulder that I honestly have no idea how I acquired. Numerous others that I’ve gotten over the years from general roughhousing, drunken shenanigans and being an idiot.

@Adirondackwannabe I have always wondered how or why a little kid would drink bleach or acid like that…..?

It was a really pretty pink colored liquid. In a jug on the floor. I’m four. Need any more info? And yes, my last doctor visit had him asking if I was a clutz or prone to screwing up. Although I only did it once. I’m not quite that stupid.

I have a scar on my knee from failing to jump a mud puddle containing broken glass when I was 4 years old. Oops. Guess I’m not competing in the long jump at the Olympics.

My daughter has a scar across her forehead. She got her head stuck in the bottom of a lazy boy recliner when she was 8 months old. Luckily, it is very thin and nearly invisible.

Head stuck in the bottom of a lazy boy? I’m afraid to ask for the how.

Ok.. Well, she had just started crawling. My hubby ran an errand and left her with Grandpa. Grandpa had changed just her diaper and went to wash his hands. He had left the recliner up and she crawled under it, stuck her head in, and couldn’t get out. If you’ve ever checked out the mechanics of a recliner, it seems the bottom compresses as the foot rest is raised. Grandpa was panicking trying to get her out. I think he lifted the foot rest thinking it would give him enough room to get her out. When my husband came home, Grandpa was screaming to call 911 and my daughter was crying hysterically. He had grabbed a saw and was tearing the chair apart. My hubby went to the chair, pushed the legs down and she popped right out.

She spent the night in the NICU and we had a fun time explaining the injury to DCFS. (8 month old with a head injury, you bet they investigated!) When I got to the hospital, there was a huge blue/purple/white lump on her head. The corner piece of wood that pressed against her forehead didn’t even break the skin but it still scabbed over and left a scar. Grandpa broke 2 ribs trying to get her out of the chair. We still have the recliner. It belongs to my daughter now, she earned it.

HA HA! That reminds me of my own kids. Had a kid whose tongue got stuck in a refrigerator. Another kid got stuck in a mail box. It just goes on and on.

I’m really glad everyone survived, so I don’t feel terrible laughing at that picture. I’m really good in a pinch, but I know a lot of people crack under pressure. At least you’ve got a story to pass along.

@Dutchess_III How do you get your tongue stuck in the fridge? Was it a triple-dog-dare?

Any new doctor always looks askance at my arms because of the scars, and then sighs in relief when I tell them that I work in veterinary medicine. I’m a roadmap from knuckles to elbows.

I have a deep scar on my calf from my first week at work with exotic cats – an ocelot sank a canine in and sliced me cleaner than any scalpel. In hindsight, I should’ve had it sutured.

I have hammer finger from a binturong bite; the bite itself wasn’t that bad, but the infection nearly lost me my arm (and two new organism unknown to science were cultured at the CDC – I’m in a textbook!).

Amazingly, all of my scars from my time working with exotics are from the smaller animals, none from the big cats. Although my sister had the end of her finger neatly taken off by a snow leopard (same hand and finger as my hammer finger, oddly enough.)

What was my most dramatic scarring actually looks pretty good now, from my breast reduction surgery. They’re unnoticeable.

I don’t have many scars and the ones I do have don’t have interesting stories, but my husband has a few that make me wonder how teenage boys can be so stupid.

He’s got a verticle scar on the tip of his right index finger from where it went through a saw in carpentry class and basically cut it in half from the tip of his finger down to the first knuckle. He’s still got the whole finger, but there’s’ no feeling in the tip.

Another he has is a pretty gnarly one on his forearm from where, in his words, “I was showing a friend a knife I bought and he tried to take it from me as a joke, so I had to wrestle it out of his hand and it caught me on the arm.” Oy…and then he didn’t even get stitches, he put tape on it until it healed.

The last interesting one is on his foot and also involves a knife, but this one was some type of sword he had as a teen (that suspiciously disappeared shortly after we moved in together – hm, I wonder where it could be). He said he had a box fan going and it was propped up by the sword. He accidentally kicked the fan, slicing his foot in the process. I mean, how dumb can one boy be?

I hope think he’s a bit smarter than that now, but he’s still a dumb boy. The only difference is that now he has me there to tell me which ideas are stupid and which aren’t.

@Juels you paint a great picture!
@Darth_Algar I’d give you the winning scar, in more ways than one. Glad you were a tough little guy!
@LuckyGuy Remind me not to be comparing scars with you.
@Cruiser I have a scar on the front and back of the fleshy part of my palm between my thumb and finger where I stabbed myself using a very poor avacado pitting technique. It had clean edges, too, so they flushed it and butterfly bandages worked great.
@Adirondackwannabe ouch! There went your opera singing career.
@Coloma has it been hard living with a fixed shoulder on a farm?
@Dutchess_III I’ve always thought it would be hilarious to put a baby in the mailbox right before the postman got there. You have deterred me.

@GloPro Might explain why I can’t sing. Hadn’t thought of that before.

I have scars from some drunken episodes before I got sober.

There’s the half inch long one on my left palm from when I fell into a gutter between a car and a curb. There’s the L- shaped one in the middle of my forehead from when I fell into the corner of a cast iron railing. It bled a lot but was not deep.

And I have a long scar on my right ankle from where my right leg was put back together after falling down a 65 foot cliff to the beach while in a blackout.

I have an 8” vertical scar from deep incision over left knee. It is quite tidy and beginning to fade, after 21 weeks.

@gailcalled Any discomfort from that still or did it go away? I may need that done someday.

@Juels I had a used fridge and the roof of it was missing so the cooling coils were exposed. They were covered with frost. My daughter was about 4 and tried to lick the coils…..OMG, the screams! Not only that, she was stuck standing on her tip toes reaching waaaay up! I called 911 and even the dispatcher was panicked. It was pretty awful.

@GloPro We had gone to visit a friend who had one of those mail slots that go directly into the house. As we walked to the door my 3 year old son got the bright idea to stick his arm in the slot to wave “Hi!” inside the house. He couldn’t get his arm back out. It wouldn’t come past the elbow. OMG. My friend and I tried for 15 minutes to get his arm out and the 3 other kids were inside playing Adam’s family and Chris was the Thing. They kept shoving mail in his hand for him to “deliver” and that made him cry even harder. We didn’t know they were doing it until he wailed “I DON’T WANNA BE THE THING!!!”
Then we decided we had no choice but to call 911. Well, when we had gotten there my friend had been frying potatoes on the stove and she’d forgotten about them for some reason. Just before dispatch answered, they started burning and set the smoke detectors off. The other three kids were running around the house flapping towels and screaming “FIRE!! FIRE!! FIRE!!” My friend was teetering on a chair trying to knock the smoke detector off the wall with the handle of the broom, phone cord stretched as far as it could go, telling dispatch, “NO! There is no fire! There is a kid stuck in my mailbox!” She recounted all that to me later. All I knew from my position on the porch, consoling my son, was that her smoke detectors were screaming but I didn’t know why. THAT was a freaky moment for me. For all I knew her house was getting ready to burn down and my baby was stuck in the wall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, they sent EMS, but they also sent a couple of fire trucks too, just in case.
Oh Lord. All but one of the kids had a BLAST that day.

Want to hear about the time he got stuck in the VCR?

@GloPro I have over compensated with my other arm/shoulder and it is the one that gives me more problems these days. My range of motion is compromised in the bad shoulder and it is easily fatigued from any repetitious actions.

@Dutchess_III That’s hilarious. “I don’t wanna be the Thing!” hahaha! Of course, keep going!
@gailcalled Ah, the zipper knee. Just one, huh? I’ve heard it’s a must do when the time comes. At 21 weeks you can probably vouch for that.

At 21 weeks I still have a lot of moderate achiness, stiffness and general discomfort, most noticeably going up and down stairs and levering myself on and off a chair. No miracles so far, but the surgeon says to wait until the six-month mark, in late March, for snowboarding competitions. (I watched the knees of the Olympic competitors last night and winced). I have said adieu to Aleve and am able to use less-than-maximum dosages of Tylenol as needed.

I am switching from heavy knee-only exercises to a more general program of of stuff, including the treadmill, where I am at 30 minutes at 2.5mph., a personal best.

If you want more details (and I cannot imagine why) PM me. It is still my favorite topic of conversation.

@gailcalled hang in there. My knee injury was so severe I went through 5 knee braces over 18 months. A replacement is obviously different than a reconstruction, but as long as you push yourself you’ll never look back with regret. Side note: my surgeon is in Sochi right now. He’s the USA Ski and Snowboard surgeon. Can’t do better than Dr. Orr

The VCR was no thang, really. For some reason he decided to stick his finger in the flap. When he went to pull it out of course it pulled the flap down and he couldn’t get his finger out past the joint. It was no big deal, but he didn’t know it. For all he knew he was trapped for life in the VCR. He didn’t like that.

He also got his head stuck in the stair way railings once. He didn’t like that.

One time he said, “Look Mom!” I turned around just as he threw a half a brick straight up into the air. He had this goofy, proud grin on his face…until the brick came down on his head. He didn’t like that.

I don’t know how that boy stayed alive long enough to make it to adult hood. The other day his daughter was holding on to the rails of the her junior bed, that used to be a crib, and she was jumping up and down like mad. Chris said, “Adrionna, don’t jump on the bed. You’ll get stitches.” He did not like getting stitches and he got them a lot.

@GloPro; But is Dr. Orr actually using a snowboard or putting his knees through the mogul run? Probably not.

@gailcalled not snowboard, skis. And you bet he is. Not in the Olympics, but he gets his time in on the mountains here

You don’t want the hear the story about my son and the first and only time he used a snowboard. The snowboard attacked him. He had to have stitches.

I had surgery 30 minutes after being born, which left small scars on either side of my lower abdomen. I also have a small burn scar of my left index finger that is either from the time it was held against a toaster wire as punishment or from when someone dropped a concrete block on it for fun. And, of course, the psychological scars that come from having been regularly beaten for a period of time when I was very young.

Oh Jesus @SavoirFaire. :( You said “For a period of time.” When/how did it end?

I was in a bad accident almost two years ago and from it I have scar that is almost 3 inches long (like a knife slit) across the top of my right breast. I also have a bad scar on my right shoulder that is messy and jagged and looks like when someone heals from a burn. Same type of burn looking scar on my right knee. Also, multiple scars on my right elbow. A few others from that accident that you wouldn’t notice unless I pointed them out to you. I’m pissed the hospital did nothing, NOTHING to reduce scarring. They didn’t even clean the wounds at all in the ER. I literally had to pull a piece of asphalt out of my shoulder my second day in the hospital. My husband told a nurse about it and she said she could not do anything. Ugh, I pulled it out myself. Idiot.

From years ago I have a small scar in my right eyebrow that no one would ever notice unless I pointed it out. It was stitched up and I have fairly thick eyebrows so it is hidden.

Got one on the inside of my wrist. (no, not a suicide attempt lol)

When I was a kid I climbed up on a chain link fence. It was pretty high, way taller than me. There was a powerline pole against the fence, with a wooden box attached to the pole. Stood up on the box, while holding the edge of the fence, and the edge of that was all twirly little bits which end in small spikes. So I pushed myself off to jump backwards and then sort of twirl around in the air to land on the ground. Except while doing this my wrist got caught on the twirly spiky ends and made a nice tear. Worse is, when I landed, I landed frog like on the ground with the palm of my hands down. The same hand with the wounded wrist landed right on some broken glass. So I had a cut up wrist, AND the palm of that hand was all cut up from the glass. It bled like a bitch. Still have the scar on my wrist after like 20 years haha.

Good grief! Chris? Is that you?? (Yes, he hurt himself on a fence too. That was the first time he got stitches. He was 2.)

Yeah I was like 10. Sorry, not Chris lol. XD

@Dutchess_III I bet he didn’t like that

No, he did not! Since it was his first time, I was pretty freaked out myself. After about the 3rd time it was just another day. The blood and gaping wounds with bone showing through didn’t faze me a bit.

@Adirondackwannabe Yes. There is no justice.

Good thing I’m an engineer and have career choices. The scars are quite visible with Naired ‘Nads which completely rules out my chance of ever being a porn star.

Damn! I would have started watching porn if you were in the movie, @LuckyGuy! Damn damn damn!

@Dutchess_III It went on for about a year when I was around three. It’s the same story I shared here.

Oh my God. I can NOT imagine finding out that my babysitter was abusive. It would just kill me knowing that I had sent my baby back into that house, time after time. Poor helpless children. Now I’m going to cry….

One scare on top of my head ware a kid hit me with a metal rod when I was in kindergarten. Three 2–4” scares on each side of my chest from heart surgery last year. Two wide 3” scares on my back were 2 very large and hairy nevi were surgically cut out. Medical personnel sometimes ask me about them.

Back in the 60’s milk came in gallon glass jugs. I was in the kitchen and a jug started to fall into the sink. I went to catch it and it broke in my hand. I still have a three inch scar along my middle finger and between my little finger and my ring finger. I am still kind of mad at my mom for not taking me to the doctor. It was really deep and should have had stitches. I probably wouldn’t have such an ugly scar if it had been stitched. It also made me look stupid at school with a high homemade bandage. Ot her kids were cool when they got stitches. I got teased.

I have a lot of scars.
On my stomach, from when I got shingles at age 11.
My entire right arm is pretty jacked from self harming from age 12–17.
I have a sunken scar on my shin, from falling out a chair. I don’t even know how that happened.
One on my lip, from hitting my face on a coffee table when I was very small. I’d just learned to walk, I think. My tooth went through my lip.
There’s one on my ankle from shaving off a HUGE chunk of skin once…
Three on my left arm from a kitten called Happiness. I named my kittens Cyanide and Happiness after the comics. Happiness was a bitch, and Cyanide is a sweetheart. XD
One on my forehead from running into the wall at age 7.
There’s a small scar, barely noticeable on my left shoulder from being bitten by someone..
And I have hundreds of them from picking at my skin.

OK. I’m pretty sure I have a scar on the inside of my lip from when I was in a corral with a yearling foal and he/she started to buck wildly and in a panic, hooves flying at my face, I ducked out of the corral through the corral bars and mis-judged a bit and put my braces through my lip and Mom let me stay home from school the next two days cuz my lip was black and blue and swollen. I think, in comparison, I had a pretty decent mom.

It’s not crazy but I got it when I was 6 (over 40 years ago) when I pissed-off my cat and she caught the back of my hand. I remember the incident, but not the aftermath in terms of whether I had been brought to the doctor or how it had been bandaged.

My son walked into his tailpipe while his car was up on the lift, so he went to the ER for stitches. Afterwards, there was a blue line where the injury was, and people would tell him he had pen on his forehead. It didn’t seem to be fading nearly a year after the incident, so we had it checked out and the Dr. said he’d never seen anything like it. We had pictures of the wound after it happened and after the ER had cleaned it, and there was no obvious debris. The Dr. cut out and re-stitched. There is still a small blob of blue, but the Dr. said he had taken a lot from that area already, and couldn’t take more and still be able to stitch it. We’ll reconsider having that last bit cut out later.

Well, I cut the hell out of my hand on a rusty metal trash can in the bathroom last night. Don’t need stitches but wondering if I should get a tetanus shot. Wondering if I can write it off to workman’s comp. I WAS working, after all, emptying the trash.

I broke my leg a while back, it was stabilised with an external fixator, and as a result I had four round, concave scars, and two linear ones.
I was given the opportunity to have plastic surgery, paid for by occupational insurance, to make them less noticeable as soon as I was 18. Although I had had them for 11 years at that point, and was rather used to them, I had the surgery. Now all the scars are just straight lines. One opened up again after the operation, due to a fistula beneath it, so they had to cut it away, and now that scar will probably turn out to be a little dented again. But nothing compared to the rather unflattering scars from before.
Not that I really minded having them, but they did look quite unusual to anyone without knowledge of the kind of scars screws leave behind. A friend of mine once said that the largest scar looked like “a dog’s butt”...which wasn’t too charming. ;)
I don’t really indentify with my scars, for me my leg just looks like this, they belong to it. They make me glad that I was lucky in that accident though, because it could have turned out worse.

I have a scar between my eyebrows that I hate! As I get older, the scar gets deeper. I try and hide it with my bangs. I got it when I was very young. I fell on a pile of wood that was sitting next to a fireplace. Needless to say, I was jumping around in excitement because it was Halloween and I wanted to see the trick r’ treaters. I also have 2 scars by my ovary area. I had a double hernia when I was about 10 yrs old. That was a very sad time for me because my Dr. told me that I had to stop doing gymnastics. I have a bigger scar there now from having a C-section. I hate this scar because my ob/gyn tucked my skin in when repairing it and I have a little pouch now. @Adirondackwannabe I did the same sort of thing when I was young. I drank some back pain liquid that smelled like menthol. My cousin and I were rushed to the hospital to get our stomach’s pumped. Luckily, no scars from that. What’s weird is that I still like the smell and taste of menthol and peppermint.

My son has several other scars on his face and head, including one between the eyebrows, @SnoopyGirl; he got it at 2, and after 20+ years it has faded so I have to really look for it.

@Adirondackwannabe: I had my stomach pumped at age 5 because I had the incredible luck of finding a mushroom growing in the back yard! How awesome is that! “Mom, there’s mushrooms growing in the yard!!” She then made me drink vinegar and mustard to try to induce vomiting before rushing me to the hospital. Unlike @SnoopyGirl, I did have an aversion to mushrooms, vinegar, and mustard until I was in my 20s.

I guess you’d call a permanent dent in my ass cheek a scar. It’s about 3 inches long, about an inch wide, and about an inch deep. It runs horizontally on my upper portion of my glute.
I fell on a wooden step, very hard, and landed right on the edge. The dent represents the edge of the step. It was really swollen for several days before even bruising, then my whole ass cheek turned black for a couple of weeks.
It’s been there for over a year now. I hate this dent. You can see it in dresses and snug pants. I guess it just looks like weird cellulite.

@SnoopyGirl Get the scars fixed. Maybe they can reduce the appearance with lasers instead of needing surgery. Although, even durgery should be fairly minor and just done with a little local numbing right in the doctor’s office. If they can do it with a laser a dermotologist might be able to do it. Next time you get a body check at the derm you could ask.

I saw something one time that said “Scars are tattoos with stories”.

I like that.

I have no crazy ones. At least none that are visible.

@hearkat and @JLeslie My scar in between my eyebrows is about 40 yrs old (wow…a 40 yr old scar) and it has faded. I have a wrinkle that has developed near the scar that I hate. I think I hate the 2 wrinkles in between both my eyebrows more than the scar. Hmmm. I never thought about a laser to reducing the appearance of the scars. Thanks for the suggestion.

The laser will get rid of the wrinkles between your eyebrow also. Or, at least greatly reduce them. I did a laser for wrinkles, it was a tightening laser, and overall I actually regret doing it, but between my eyebrows it was very effective at reducing the wrinkles I had there. The reason I am unhappy with it is I feel immediately under my eyes I look even puffier, because the laser cannot get very close to your eyes and with the skin tightened around it exaggerates the looser skin more. It’s minor, but I notice it. But, between the eyebrows the skin is fairly taught anyway.