Can You Hear Me - Ow!

The scar is 20 years old, and almost completely faded now, but the story is so annoying that my husband still tells it. I was out of town on a business trip, so here's his own tale:

He was occupying himself one evening working on his motorcycle. He was securing a spring when the wrench slipped somehow, and spring-driven it struck his forehead between and just above his eyes. It made a nasty gash and bled freely as it started to swell. At the time we lived just five blocks from a hospital emergency room. Not trusting himself to drive, he held a thick paper towel pad to his forehead and walked to the emergency room. He finally got there, feeling dizzy and in shock, and walked up to the reception desk. He let the pad down, because it took two hands to keep himself upright at the counter, and the bleeding immediately started again. The nurse/receptionist looked up at him and said, brightly, "Now, sir, what problem has brought you here?"

He let them stitch the wound, walked home supported by painkillers, and refused to visit that hospital again. It moved a few years ago, though we're still only a couple of miles from the new site; yet on those rare occasions when emergencies or other hospital-related needs have required, we've gone to the better hospital 10 miles away. At least there, the emergency nurse/receptionists can spot a bleeding forehead.

My injury was a puncture wound, and actually didn't leave a scar. But the blood... I was sitting outside one night in late December, a very mild night here in coastal California. My neighbor's cat, who is a complete scritch whore, spotted me and hopped up on the bench, demanding attention. He's a very sweet cat, and so I scratched his favroite spots. But he got that "this isn't fun enough!" look in his eyes, and playfully chomped down on my hand between my thumb and forefinger.

Blood bubbled up like an artesian spring, cascaded down my hand and onto the concrete below. I stared at it for awhile, too in shock to do much besides watch the puddle grow. Finally I called my husband, and asked him to bring me a paper towel. The shock on his face when he opened the door and saw the puddle was downright frightening. I was afraid he'd pass out. At that point I had to become the reassuring one, insisting it was just a play-bite, I'd be fine, and would he mind hosing down the porch before it stained. Meanwhile the neighbor cat, sensing that something had gone wrong but not exactly what, crouched behind a planter box.

Of course it was infected, but nothing that a quick course of antibiotics couldn't deal with effectively. Within two weeks, healing was complete. The cat still comes around for scritches, but I'm careful not to spend too many minutes at a time with him. (I wish his own people would attend him well enough to teach him that biting is NOT fun for people. My own cats all learned this just fine.)

I can close my eyes and still see that absolutely surreal pool of blood. It still amazes me how fast it could flow from a tiny puncture wound.

My scar stories:
1) Long, long, long ago I was a figure skater. Made it to Nationals and everything. Anyway, during one of my practices, I was doing an aerobesque, which has always been an easy maneuver for me, except that this particular time the leg I was balancing on gave out on me for reasons I still can't explain. I fell on my chin, blood was everywhere, I was screaming, and if you look closely, you'll see that there's a small scar there today.

2) When I was 8 or 9, I was on a farm in Oklahoma wandering around with a friend on the many acres of undeveloped land. We decided to race back to the house. On the way back, I decided to veer off the road and run across the ditch to cut the driveway corner. I was running as fast as I could, downhill, at dusk. The light was diim, the sky was gray, and so was that barbed-wire fence that I hit at full speed. There are three scars from this incident: one across the top of my right eye (now covered by my eyebrow), one on my right shoulder, and one on my right thigh.

3) When I was 10 or 11, I was at a beach scavenging around the ruins of an abandoned resort - the old Carlton on St. Croix! I tripped across a sharp, splintered limb that was sticking up out of the sand and sliced open the arch of my right foot. I went crying to my dad, got scolded for being a crybaby, then he dragged me out to the ocean to wash the salt water into the wound. Of course, I cried and screamed even more, which wrought more disciplining from my father. So I resorted to reason, explaining that washing a wound with ocean water was not sanitizing because of all the microbes in the water and such. Well, that's when I got half a bottle of rum poured over the cut. And people wonder why I'm not all sweet and sensitive.....

I think I was 3 or 4 and holding my cat Nugget while I walked along the edge of my parents' yard. (I don't remember any of this. I've only heard my Mom talk about it.) The neighbor's German Shepard Ginger lunged at me...maybe to save the cat from my over-loving childish grasp...and almost bit my ear completely off. It must have been kind-of flapping around and it was definitely bloody. My mom grabbed a dish towel and pressed it to my head while my Dad drove to the ER. I got stitches and all that is left is a small scar running deep against my left ear.

Mandy U

1) On the inside of my left wrist at the base of the thumb, it's about an inch and 1/2 long. I was using a Dremel tool with a 120 grit sanding disc to rough out a piece of antler for a knife handle. Holding the antler in the left hand and the Dremel in the right when the disc caught in the piece and twisted. At that speed it just took off across the wrist-still at full speed. Fairly deep and - of course full of antler powder. Stung like a bitch.

2) But only if self-surgery counts... I was making a scabbard for a broadsword project for an SCA friend. It involved 2 long thin pieces fot the flat sides and 1 very elongated v-shaped pice to divide and properly space the other 2. As the width of the area where the pieces came together was at most a quarter-inch wide, I was using contact cement to join them. 1st side-easy as pie but as i fitted the 2nd piece, I saw it was getting off center. And contact cement is just that-rough to change once in place(as I'm sure most of us have found out for ourselves). As the area was fairly narrow-though long-I figured that I might be able to slip a THIN blade in and seperate the erring part and realign things. Well... the scalpel that I grabbed worked fine, the pieces were coming apart nicely and then I hit aspot were the cement had set before I mated the 2 pieces. Scalpel went zip out of the scabbard and into my left abdomen. Not deep enough to penetrate the cavity but startling nevertheless (thanks be for the spare tire). I refer to the scar as my 2nd belly button.

And as I only go to this and Jim's blogs with any regularity, I'm afraid I have no one to tag-sorry.

BTW- not all my projects worked out like these 2- but I do believe a little blood always made a project turn out right (elder gods best not named and all that-LOL).

At about age 11, I set my hand on fire and had a lot of blisters, but no scars that I can see.

I was once trying to force a screw in, of all things, a derringer that belonged to my grandmother when the screwdriver slipped and plunged into my hand. Some blood and white stuff oozed out, I shoved it back in, held it tight till it all stopped. There's a slight scar between the first knuckles in my left hand.

My favorite, though, is from the summer of '69, when I was technical director for a summer theatre. While getting ready for opening night, I folded up the stepladder, from the top of which there fell the hammer that I had left up there. Fortunately, it hit me sideways, so I didn't have any puncture wounds. But I've got scars on my lip and between my eyebrows, and I've never left a hammer at the top of a stepladder since then.

Frank Moorman, skeptic

I still have a barely visible scar on the back of my right wrist from childhood, when I managed to take a spill from my Big Wheel toy bike (tricycle) thing.

I also have some scars from getting warts on my hands removed (I had several during my adolescent years), but those would be surgical in nature.

Still have a slight scar at the base of my left thumb from when I was trying to pry out a plastic insert from a liquor bottle so I could put it in recycling. I was in Germany, I was intoxicated, and I was using a Swiss Army knife. I slipped. Gave myself the deepest cut I've ever suffered (knock on wood). And like a dummy, I wrapped my hand up in lots and lots and lots of paper towel tissue and applied direct pressure; I deliberately slept on that hand, then at sun-up caught the first bus down the hill to the hospital ER. The German doctors and nurses were understandably pissed at me (doofe Ami!) for not coming immediately, during the night, instead of waiting until first light (and the first bus) but they patched me up just the same.

I guess I could've walked down the hill (a couple of km at least) or got a cab, but then again it wasn't a sober decision either. And yes, I put the bottle into the recycling bin once the plastic bit came out.

I have a friend whose 8-year-old twins just learned how to ride two-wheelers. One took a nasty spill yesterday and I was just reminding my friend this morning that I still have a line of little scars on my right knee to remind me of a similar episode. I clearly remember sitting on the doctor's examining room table while he - eewwww! -picked gravel out of my knee. Having had a plastic surgeon do it might have avoided the permanent scarring, but back in those days (early 60s), it was just the trusty pediatrician who did everything.

I also retain one little souvenir of my Christmas 1955 bout with chickenpox...a small scar right under my right eye.

I'm just chuckling to myself, because why this would be of interest to anyone, I have no idea!

I'm a bit clumsy so I have quite a few non-surgical scars. I'll stick to two of them. One old and one from my adult life. I was just a young child, still crawling, and at my grandmothers house. I have no actual memory of this event but I get to see the scar every day. My uncle had broken his foot and I crawled on it. He reflexively kicked and I flew through the air into a coffee table smacking the bridge of my nose. That got 3 stitches (most of my injuries got 3 stitches strangely enough) and left a pretty cool scar right between my eyes. My newer scar came from a party just before my unit deployed on the 31st MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) at a pre-deployment party. It was fun, we were all mildly drunk and I'd just finished a round of combat croquette, had gotten a Guinness and had engaged in conversation near the playing area. I wasn't paying enough attention to the ongoing croquette game and one of the balls flew right in to the pint glass in my hand, shattering it. My left forefinger now has a large lump where the glass cut a large hanging piece of flesh in a triangle shape. It severed a nerve (which healed over the course of several years) and also required 3 stitches. It was unpleasant not to be able to feel the tip of my left forefinger but the nerve healing was actually even more unpleasant. *** Note - sorry for the odd formatting. For some reason this comment is not recognizing my paragraph breaks

I have a burn scar on my right wrist from when I was in third grade and my mom asked me to get fish sticks out of the oven. One fell on the bottom and I reached for it. When I pulled my hand back, the mitt slipped forward and I hit my wrist on a still hot oven rack. Instant third degree. I can't feel a thing there. But don't worry, it's a small scar.

I have one on my wrist that I don't know where it came from.

I have one on my right middle finger from where I scrapped off skin underneath a dish washer at my old job.

It's not a big scar now, but at the time...

I was hit the back of my head with the maulsplitting firewood with a 6-lb maul. After a while, I thought I would split some smaller pieces for kindling and tried one-handing it. Holding the block with my left hand, I choked up high with my right, swung the maul over my head, and BAM!

I hit myself in the back of the head with the maul, which then landed on the first 2 fingers of my left hand, just behind the second knuckles. Right to the bone. Man that hurt, both my head and my fingers. But I was laughing so hard because I had used my head to save my fingers.

Now, to figger out who to tag...

"I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion." -G.K. Chesterton

...long as I can answer here, and I tag no one. I was working in a furniture factory in Johnson City, Tennessee, using an ancient shaper machine. The custom-ground carbide cutting head was four inches across turning 40,000 rpm driven by a 7 hp electric motor, and I was feeding a cart full of wood blocks through the guides to make corner pieces for china cabinets or something.

I had to piss.

I cut the power and pulled on the brake handle, feeling the vibration as the shaft rattled against the brake shoe. It seemed like it stopped so I went to the bathroom.

When I came back the head wasn't moving. I picked up one of the pieces and miked it. It was large; I needed to move the guides in. To do this, you position your hand against the guide and turn the knurled screw and feel the small movement of the guide.

Factoid: fluorescent lights, especially old ones, are also 60 hz strobes.

Factoid: the brake was defective. Though the cutting head appeared to be standing still, it was in fact still turning at some speed synchronized to the strobe effect of the lights.

Factoid: The factory was hellish noisy and I was still wearing my hearing protection.

The head caught my right hand between the guides and the shaft, ripping the pads of my fingers. I yanked my hand free and held it closed, blood running off both elbows.

My dad told me later; "There is a moment in every woodworker's life when he is afraid to look, to see what is left." It's strange what you think about at at that moment. I opened my hand and blood ran freely. The pads of my fingers hung by scraps of skin. I could see tendons. I flexed my hand and thought; "Oh good, the adducting tendons are still attached."

The guy at the machine next to mine had to go home early.

They squirted cocaine or something into the mangled mess and began stitching it back together. Recovery was exceptionally painful (think passing kidney stones through your fingers) but I came out OK. Today, it works surprisingly well, though two fingers are stiffer than the others and there are parts that have no feeling and other parts that are oversensitive. A network of scars laces across the finger pads.

I have another scar from something even stupider than that, but it was someone else's stupidity. These scars were all my stupidity.

As one of the "first three" since Hank also hit me with this, and I'll be writing my story up a bit later. I'd been meaning to as a "Jim Downey" saga anyway, and hadn't gotten to it. But suffice it to say that we have something . . . in common. Heh.

Jim Downey

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