Hey folks,

I was just wondering, how many of you have had a serious accident in your lifetime? The reason I ask is because when I was 19, I worked in a factory making foam rubber insulation for copper tubing. The extruder I was running didn't have a safety guard on it and when I was feeding the raw material into the machine, my right hand was pulled into the machine pulling off my 4 fingers on my right hand.

The point to all of this is that my wife who I married after the accident, my family, her family, my co-workers, etc, feel like they should walk on egg shells around me about it. They act like there are things that I just can't do. Truth be known, I can do everything I used to do and can actually type better and faster than I did before!!!

I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this with family, friends, etc.

 

Not to make light of it, but I knew a man who made his wife a homemade firecracker for her birthday (more like a pipe bomb).
It went off while he was holding it and took off his right hand. Afterward, when he met someone new, he would reach out to shake hands and "miss" then say, "sorry, I'm a little short-handed today!"

I myself have never been in an accident that serious, although I've seen a few. And I've had enough near-misses to wonder how I'm still on this planet.

 

Haven't had any severe accidents, but have had plenty of close calls when back on the farm. You know how it goes, you take all the shielding off the equipment so it's easier to fix things, then don't put the shielding back on. How that baler never got me, I will never know.

 

Dec 22/1967 ( I was 17 )
I got my right arm caught in the drive roller of a 500 ft conveyor belt that supplied sand & gravel to the top of a 100 ft building.

They had to cut the 30" belt until only 4" was remaining to hold it from slipping while getting my arm out.
It was completely useless for months.

It took me close to a year get my dexterity back.

I was scared to almost death.

 

This past summer, I was riding top speed on my fourwheeler (~55mph) through a field that I didn't know very well, and I didnt see the small ditch that was in the middle of it. At the last possible moment I slammed on the brakes, but I still hit it head on at about 45-50mph sending me flying a good 10' into the air. When I came back down, I landed on the front rack of the machine. I cracked my skull just above the bridge of the nose (even though I was wearing a helmet) and my goggles sliced a 2" gash between both eye-brows down to the bone. 100+ stitches later and I was back on it riding it like I was a bat out of hell again. And, Yes, I do know how people treat you like you are a peice of china after a major accident...even when you are back to 100%...

 

the first story reminds me of my friend Les, he did almost the same thing, his hand was mangled in a machine at his job, last i saw him he was still a happy go lucky guy with a bad hand.

the atv wreck story is just about the same thing OZZY did wasnt it ?

as for me, well my mom will tell you all her gray hairs are from me

when i was in 6th grade i was rockclimbing by myself about 1 1/2 miles from our house, i fell 70 feet down a cliff face, my leg got caught as i was falling (probley saved my life) i was flipped backwards into the side of the cliff, knocked out, when i awoke i somehow got free and crawled all the way home, leg broke in two places. when i was 14 i was riding my motorcycle in a hare and hound event in northern minnesota, i was looking for a short cut on lap number three and i cut threw some low laying trees, i thought i could cut around this real hilly area and make up some time, when i came out of the trees just as i sat back up from laying on the tank, i went over a pretty severe drop off at about 50 mph. and all i saw then was the sky because i was rolling over backwards bike and all. i pushed the bike away from me and got ready to die. i found a tree the hard way about 7 seconds later, i bounced off of it splitting the helment in two, then continued falling down the hill, i hit another tree and instantly broke three ribs and my collar bone, i also bounced off this tree as well which was dumb luck because two seconds after i left that tree and started tumbleing down the hill again, my bike wrapped itself around that tree, pretty much the tires were almost touching it was a big U, i rolled to the stop at the bottem of the ravine and i felt no pain, blood was pouring out of my head ( took 172 stiches to reconnect the flesh to the bone and another 134 to close the cut) and i could barely breathe, i remeber hearing someone coming up beside me and talking to me, he then reached out and grabbed my helment strap and shook my body asking if i was all right. i pretty much passed out then. i understand that my dad beat that guy pretty bad for shaking me when i was hurt. well i woke up three days later in the mayo clinic in pretty much a body cast, i broke 11 bones in that wreck. i still feel it on cold days

 

dang

 

when my father was in high school he got his hand caught in a wood joiner, lost 50% of his pointer finger 25% of his middle finger and about 10% of his ring finger on his right hand.

 

If you dont mind me asking....... DO you still have your fingers?? Or were the doctors not able to re attach them??

 

I had a friend that had his middle finger blown off by a firecracker. He used to get us thrown out of restaurants by sticking the stub up his nose - really grossed some people out.

 

AMSNSS wow what a story mine is not as severe as yours but kinda simalar. When I also was 19 I worked in a factory that made screws and revits my job was in the plateing dept running a large automated machine. My job was to maintaining fluid levels and watch the machine run itself. I had maybe 4 weeks at most on the job when I poured about 2 gallons of HCL in to a tank that I had thought was HCL well it was something else and the chemical reaction instantly caused a large white mushroom cloud with a large plume following up to the ceiling anyway I luckly got out off the way but my supervisor came running over screaming WHATS GOING ON HERE and at the same time he sticks his head in the cloud and imediatly falls back he ended up being treated for resporitory burns the building was evacuated and FD called. I had a little meeting with the top manager to discuss my screw up thought I would be fired but was,nt but still was so unnerved by the exsperience that I sign up for a 3 year stint in the Army.

 

In 1985 while stationed over in Germany (US ARMY) I was involved in a car accident. Going a little over 100mph, the front tire blew out, car flipped multiple times, came to a stop right up, but in the fast lane and got t-boned by a BMW.

I broke my neck, pelvis and busted open my head (over 80 stitches). But I'm alive.

Also in 1988, I was setting trusses on a house, crane tipped over and the boom missed me by a couple of feet, but took out the trusses. I ended up falling to the concrete (~18 ft) and landed on my back, breaking two vertebra.

Still Here..

 

last year (2002) i was snowboardin up at winterpark and there wasnt much snow on the ground so there werent many blacks runs open which i like goin down cause they usually have good places to cut off into the trees. well i found a black that was open so i got all excited and i cut down it. well bout 100 yard there were a bunch of moguls and i cant do moguls very well cause i got a bad knee (thats another story). so im like well no biggie ill just cut off through these trees. well it was all good and well i was havin a blast cuttin through trees with spaces of about 3-8 feet in between each tree. well cause theres not much snow on the ground im havin to dodge a few boulders and rocks here and there. still fun. well im goin and i cut around this one tree and all of a sudden i come upon a drop off of about 15 ft. i came up on it so fast that i was barely able to set up and jump. well i jumped and landed fine...but i landed right in front of a tree and when i went to cut around it i cliped a low branch and it clothes lined me and when i fell my arm caught a boulder and i broke my wrist in two places. i tumbled for about 30 feet and ihit my head again. i had a cut across my face and my head hurt really bad. i was barely able to get up cause of my wrists and i boarded down the the lodge and they excorted me to the "er" there at the base of the mountain. took 4 stitches on my face and when they took my glove off u could see the skin buldging out from the broked bone. now i wear a helmet and my new gloves have built in writs gaurds.

 

I was jumping my ATV and was going progressively faster after every jump. Well my ATV was front heavy and right as you get to the jump, you have to gun it to get the rear end down. Well i had it pinned and couldn't gun it. I hit the jump and landed on the front tires with the ATV almost 90** to the ground. I was thrown 25-30 ft and broke my thumb. Good thing i wore my helmet too. I had a mouth full of dirt from when i landed. Could have been a cracked skull. I had to get 2 3" long pins in my thumb and a cast. Had to put me under when the positioned the bones/pins.

Almost fell off a combine (15-20').

Fell backwards down a flight of stairs when i was little. 40 stiches on my forehead.

Another ATV accident. Was riding on a grass path that connects two parts of my farm. Road on one side and corn on the other. I was going full speed and caught one row of corn. It pulled me in and i flipped over. Flew 10 ft in the air and landed on the upper portion of my leg. Didn't break anything. Huge bruise. 5 years later, i still have a "clot" of "thick blood" there.

 

In April '96 my wife was traveling south on I 75 north of Chatt. TN when she came upon a tractor trailer on top of a car in the north bound lane.The accident had just happened and there were no emergecy vehicles on the scene. Being a RN she pulled to the shoulder and crossed the S bound lane and began to climb the 5 ft high median wall. A tractor trailer speeding (80 mph) south ran over a car that was rubbernecking and jackknifed. The TT weighed 40K lbs and was carrying 40k lbs in cargo. The TT drove directly into the median wall exactly where my wife was climbing over striking her. An 8 ft chunk of concrete was knocked out of the wall.She was thrown across the N bound lanes (3) bouncing off a couple windshields landing in the grass on the right side of the N bound lane. She was airlifted to a nearby trauma center where she stayed for a month. Shes got bolts holding her back together, plates and screws holding her arm together and scars all over. After she got home she spent 2 mos. in bed before she could try to walk again.
Now the good news: She can walk, she can talk ,she is scarred up pretty good but her face was untouched. There is a God!
She has a lot of chronic pain but she says thats better than being numb from the neck down. After all of this the truck driver and trucking co. had the nerve to sue US! They didn't get anything but my insurance co had to hire a lawyer and we spent 2 yrs. in and out of lawyers offices. Sorry bout the novel but I really did give you the short version.-Jack