Injuries (not for the faint hearted)

[Medsker]

So about a month ago I had surgery to fix some nerve damage on my arm. I got the stitches out on Thursday a week ago and when I woke up on Friday I awoke in a puddle of blood and the first pic is what my elbow looked like. It had torn all the way to the bone. My doc said he had never seen that happen (the sutures broke, not pulled thru). So I got re-stitched and then last Thursday I was cleaning out my garage (my wife bought a new TDI Jetta I had to make room for). A few years ago I was cleaning a trail and found a manhole cover. Well I was moving it and dropped it, of course I had to be wearing the shape-up shoes that my wife bought me to help get me in shape rather than the steel toed boots I always wear. Anyway it fell on my big toe. It shattered the bone and the nail bed. They had to rip off the toe nail, then suture the nail bed up and then they put the nail back in and stitched back to my toe. Here is a pic of when it happened, with the nail off (all the lines are breaks that had to be stitched up and then a pic of it back on. The green thing is a tourniquet. Anyway, I thought I would share. Wear those steel toed boots folks.

Medsker

 

[Corban_White]

WOW! Sounds like tons of fun!

 

[Greg]

Damn! I'm not going to click on the pics, small is good enough! :sick:

Hope you're healing up, steel toe boot work wonders some times! I've worn my hiking boots to work once and dropped a 60 pound joint bar on my toes... it didn't take much for me to remember to grab the right pair of boots early in the morning.

 

[crawldaddy]

I feel for you, a few years back I dropped a big peace of metal on my big toe. The Dr compared it to popping a zip. It popped it right off of the bone. He slid it off of the bone took the nail off and punched holes in the nail. Then he stitched the toe back on and finished by stitching the nail back on. My toe looked like a freak show and hurt worse than any thing that I had ever felt. Good luck healing up!

 

[Tacoma]

you're a hot mess, man. LOL

I smashed a toe pretty much the same way, but with a 3/4" sheet of T&G OSB-- wind caught it just as I had stood it up to carry it over to the house we were building, and I had pretty much the same injury... without the doctors. That hurt.

 

[sLcREX]

Ouch, those look pretty brutal, that must've had your whole leg and head pulsing at each heartbeat. My goodness, steel toe boots are amazing. Back when I was welding I accidentally set down a wing plate roughly 400 lbs on my toes but the steel toed boot saved my toes 100% with only a slit on the leather covering the toes.

Typically when I went to work without steel toed boots I would feel pretty paranoid and 'naked' because I know how unprotected my toes were. Another time I was cutting a small beam with the torch, maybe about 500 lbs and I had spaced out and didnt think to place the carts underneath so the beam wouldnt fall down the middle when I cut through it, so my hip was right next to it and my foot underneath the beam, when I completed the cut, the beam fell in a V shape to the ground and the edge of it landed on my toes, since it was only 250 lbs roughly, I was able to just push it off my toes, thankfully the steel toe saved my toes again!

Ahhh, yes, I definitely know the importance of steel toed boots.