I have never broken a bone in my body. I’m quite proud of that. My brother? He’s broken every bone in his body. Broken wrist, broken nose, broken collar bone, broken jaw, broken cheekbone, fractured skull. Unbelievable. What’s the worst injury you guys and girls have sustained?
I guess the worst for me, bizarrely, is just a bruised ligament in my ankle. That’s as bad as it has ever gotten for me, which is weird because I played a lot of sports growing up and I still do. I’ve also done a lot of stupid stuff that should have resulted in grievous bodily harm. Guess I just got lucky!
Let us know what crazy injuries you’ve had in the comments below.
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51 responses to “Off Topic: Broken Bones”
Never properly broken a bone, had my nose broken by a hockey stick but that was just ice and rest to fix that.
Probably the worst I have had is stacking my bike heading rapidly downhill on a gravel road. Terrible gravel rash, still have chunky lumpy scars from that.
Either that or when I stepped backwards onto a piece of glass embedded in dirt and sliced right up the centre of my heel about 2 inches long. Lots of blood and some s stitches
Broke my right leg below the knee when I was 14. Hit by a car.
Broke both thumbs at the same time. Fell backwards and put my hands back to stop myself, but landed on both my thumbs.
Permanently dislocated collar bone. Judo tournament when I was 14. Doctors couldnt put it back in place, so had to leave it.
Fourth finger on left hand. By a ball.
Broke two lower ribs on my right side. Hit a wall speed skating.
Cracked three ribs on my upper left. Judo, again.
Thats it for me.
The worst injury was two years ago.
Was getting a ceramic put down from the top shelf, holding onto the rim. The rim broke and the pot fell. Instinctively I tried to catch it with my left hand and the sharp edge punched into my hand, severing the nerves and tenants to my thumb and first two fingers.
I still dont have full feeling back, my thumb doesnt have full range of movement and my left hand grip is not what it use to be.
I was laying on a mattress on the ground when I had some friends staying over. My 110kg overweight friend tripped over the rug and fell right on my arm that was leaning half off the mattress, and snapped it clean in two. The next scene was similar to the Harry Potter movie when he breaks his arm playing Quidditch. My friend went white as a ghost when he saw it!
Was snowboarding in NZ during a bad season, so hardly any snow. Decided to do a jump, went way too fast and rotated in mid-air. Landed sorta face-first, shoulder-first into the ground from 2+ metres in the air, onto a boulder covered by <5cm snow. Sat up, went to brush the snow off me and get on my merry way, but my left arm didn't work. Ended up breaking the upper-arm bone just under the pivot. 🙁
Other various childhood and not-so-childhood stupidities somehow magically didn't end in grievous bodily harm and/or death.
Lucky enough to have never broken a bone too. It has always incited a real curiousity though as to what the pain would feel like.
My worst injuries have been in the form of deep cuts. One slicing my toe open on broken glass, once my finger on a smashed plate and once a giant chunk of deep skin tissue from the inside of my leg when a bike pedal spun round and caught it. That was the worst, I could see little springy things and fatty tissue inside my leg. However, it was so deep I don’t remember it hurting.
I’ve had a lot of back problems, but that’s pretty boring.
I’ve never broken a bone either! WOOOO!
Never been injured really. Maybe I’m Bruce Willis from Unbreakable! I did almost drown once!
*mind blown*
My mum once drove over my foot by accident.
Didn’t really hurt but I pretended it did to get out of sport the next day. XD
DAMMIT, STOP BEING ME!
My mum drove over my foot too. I stepped out before it went into the garage and for whatever reason she didn’t realise, had my heel kind of under the car for balance as I was getting out. Luckily I was wearing these chunky-arse sandals and the sole managed to stay vertical and take the weight of the car as she drove forward. Knocked me to the ground and I yelled out at her. Then she panicked and reversed back over it again, thinking she had stopped it on top of me 😛
Ha, I got my heel run over too. 🙂
No broken bones either. Worst I can think of was when I was an infant and I was thrashing around in my mum’s arms, and slammed my head into the corner of a wall, then needed stitches. And around primary school age I tripped and fell mouth-first into the back of a chair, had a nice swollen lip for a good while there.
No idea how I haven’t managed to have any serious injuries with all the stupid things I do.
One rainy night I was sprinting up my driveway to get out of the wet. My thong slipped in the wet and I rolled my ankle, putting all my weight and momentum on the side of my foot. The concrete on the driveway was rough as guts. I was left staring up at the rainy night sky, saturated, with a hunk of foot missing…and somehow my pants had fallen down in the effort, so theres that too.
Despite my best efforts and medical knowledge (I’d been watching a load of Scrubs at the time) my foot became heavily infected. After some serious antibiotics it actually healed up quite nicely and I only have a scar the size of a 50c piece of the side of my foot now.
Lesson learnt, don’t sprint while wearing dodgey thongs.
I haven’t broken any bones, but had a few crashes on bikes and things. I think the worst is I slipped on wet tiles and landed directly on my elbow, splitting the skin deeply and doing soft tissue damage which makes it still hurt and ache years after the fact. Strangely, all my serious injuries come from the tamest things. I can crash a motorbike (granted it wasn’t super powerful) and get a grazed elbow. I crash a push bike and get a hole in my elbow (same as the one I fell on…), a jarred arm and a suspected fracture that turned out to be a false alarm…
By the time I was 18 I’d been in hospital 22 times. 13 times were from accidents.
Worst bone broken? Sternum. I was in Grade 2 (which saved my life, keep reading to find out why). I was on some play equipment, called a “Rocket” which is like this only it also had ladders in the middle to try and hide from the current ‘it’ people (it was a massive game of chasings, with two people being it).
One climbed up one side, one climbed up the other. I was trapped and panicked. My feet and upper body slipped through the gaps on top of the equipment. I remember hanging by my armpits, before feeling them beginning to slip – and then I banged the inside of both elbows above my head. My sternum was ripped from bottom to almost top. If the sternum is broken completely, there is a real chance of death as your internal organs fall out of the places they are meant to be in (long story short, you go into shock as tonnes of vessels are torn and bruised). Luckily I was young, so it was a green stick fracture so as long as I was nice to it, I wouldn’t end up in that situation.
“Nice” ended up being 6 months of being bedridden with tight bandages across my chest. Nice also meant my dad, worried I’d get bored, bought me a Sega Megadrive and Sonic, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Today due to how it healed I literally cannot benchpress the weights bar. I have no chest strength. But I can still finish Sonic 2 without losing a life, so I regret nothing.
What exactly does your brother do for a living? Nitro circus? lol
When I was young I was walking across a couch and my feet got caught between the seats; I fell face forward onto the wooden arms and broke my nose. Another time my sister slammed a glass sliding door on my middle finger and fractured it.
The worst was when I was doing something particularly stupid. I had a friend in primary school who rode motorbikes; for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to tie (with a ROPE) one of those battery-operated little buggies to the end of the bike (the batteries were dead). It was good fun until my friend turned a sharp corner and the buggie flipped onto its side, my foot got caught in the rope so I was dragged underneath the buggie and along the road a little while until my friend noticed. Broke my arm. Only do stupid stuff once 😛
Apart from that I consider myself lucky; most of my breakages happened at a young age. I suppose it depends on what you do for a living after that.
That sounds fairly familiar except we tied a BMX to the back
i got through most of my life without a scratch then for about a 2 year period i had the worst luck
hmmn, lets see;
broken both hands (few times)
5 ribs
ankle
5 toes (same one 3 times lol)
multiple fingers
fractured skull
2 broken vertebrae (work related)
most of the bones never healed properly (hence the repeat breaks) because i never went to the hospital except for the noggin and the back
Winter sux because the cold weather just seizes up the joints
Ah! Ribs!
Forgot I did my ribs. Have to add it to my post above.
I guess I’m lucky enough to never have been seriously injured. Worst would be one of the following:
A sliced open pinkie that required three stitches (pro tip: don’t wrap your hand around the knife when you’re cutting a sandwich – pain will ensue)
A ripped open inner leg (foot slipped off the pedal of my bike, fell over, and the gear ripped a jagged hole in the back of my knee, and apparently bounced out to slice the front of my other knee in the time it took me to fall over – I still can’t figure out how I managed to do that).
Yea… I lead a very safe life; although I do remember whacking myself in the forehead with a rusty iron pole at some point, trying (and failing) to emulate the higher belts practising their bo patterns… was hard enough to draw blood and leave a bruise, but not serious. Hilarious in hindsight, tho.
Fell out of a 12ft tree broke my arm and fractured my elbow. funny thing is, i had no clue at the time that i had broken my arm, i just went back out to the school oval and started playing soccer until a teacher scream and said look at your arm, its broken. That’s when the pain swooped in.
Far as I know never broken a bone. Fell off the top floor of the house once landing on pavement didn’t bend my legs on impact. Badly sprained both ankles (maybe fracture not sure) living in Papua New Guinea so never went to doctor for it. Took a few weeks to recover.
Late last year, I was sitting on the couch reading. I have a bad habit of sitting with one foot tucked under the opposite leg, which i had been doing for about an hour and a half on said evening. When I tried to stand up, my foot had gone completely numb from lack of circulation, not realising this, I put my full weight on it toes first. My foot rolled awkwardly and I hit the deck, hard. Went to bed with an ice pack on it, but woke up not being able to put any weight on it whatsoever. X rays revealed two fractured metatarsals.
Basically, I broke my foot trying to stand up. Easily the stupidest injury I have ever sustained.
The worst though, I broke my tibia skateboarding. My foot (same foot) got caught up and I landed my full body weight on to my leg which was lying half on the board, half on the concrete. My orthopedic surgeon told me it was the worst leg break he’d seen in 35 years of practice. 8 months in a cast and my right leg is now 1 1/2 cm shorter than the left.
dont worry mate, i sit like this too, but iv never been unlucky enough to stack the landing lol
Did you mates laugh at you when you told them you broke it trying to stand, mine would of
Oh I copped it from pretty much everyone. Deservedly.
Ha! I broke my left big toe getting off the couch. It got caught in the carpet and went under my left foot. Really bad break and my toenail has never been the same since.
I’ve been pretty lucky in that regard… worst injury I’ve had is 2 hernias (does that even count as an injury?). Minor surgery to fix them both up, was back up and about in a couple of weeks, back up to full capacity in about 3 months.
Rolled my car. Went down a small bank and into a tree. The tree is dead now so I think I won. I should have died or been seriously injured from the look of the car but came out with a few cuts to my left arm just below the elbow. A few small pieces of glass had to be pulled out in hospital.
I’m sure I’m on some sort of list for this but I blew up a bottle filled with home made rocket fuel. We’d been shooting off rockets made of PVC pipe and got bored and decided to burn off the rest of it. We (stupidly) expected a bit of action coming out of the top of the bottle but it apparently couldn’t exit fast enough and the whole thing exploded instantly. I got a couple of nice big cuts on my legs (wearing shorts and standing directly in front of it) and my friend got a little piece of glass in his arm. We quickly drove back to my friends place and his mum called the ambulance and when asked if it was a pipe bomb said “yes”. Got out of the car and left footprints of blood in the driveway. Legs were totally red.
Ambo stopped a few streets away and then came up with a police car. Got asked some questions and they went to my house and took the rest of my ‘fuel’. Was asked if I had ever thought about blowing up buildings. What idiot would admit to that anyway?
Went to hospital, officer came and took photo of my injuries and I never heard from them again. Nice scars on my legs, thankfully missed my tattoo.
You were old enough to have a tattoo but not mature enough to know better than to make a stupid homemade bomb?
I hope you got that tat when you were 12!
Were you 18? I’m really surprised you weren’t charged with making an explosive.
Yeah, I was over 18 when I made it. Apparently the whole neighborhood heard the explosion. Good bit of fun in the end.
Like I said, I’m probably on some secret list somewhere. Friend who works in the police couldn’t find mention of it though and I’ve flows to the US several times.
Hrm let’s see..
Broken collarbone from skateboarding (which my next door neighbour thought was a dislocated shoulder, so he tried to pop it back into place by violently shaking it up and down).
Twisted testicle (had to be airlifted to hospital and have surgery).
Got suckerpunched one night out, and with one hit the guy did the following: Shattered my right eye socket, shattered my right cheekbone and fractured my lower jaw. The doctors said there was 90% chance I’d lose my right eye, but luckily I didn’t. Anyway, now I have titanium plates in my head so that’s kinda cool.
Rolled a go-kart, fractured my wrist which needed a screw placed in it. (not to mention taking chunks out of various parts of my body. They didn’t clean my knee properly and I had to get it re-opened and cleaned out).
There’s a fair bit more but they’re more to do with bad cuts needing stitches and operations (hernias, appendix out that kind of thing).
Come again?
No bones broken unless you count teeth. A few scars and dislocation, some permanent muscle damage in my shoulder but nothing that impacts overall capability much/at all (physio said compensating muscles grew around the destroyed muscle – could still use some work though to prevent looking so lop-sided).
Broken a finger and my thumb. That’s about it as far as broken bones are concerned.
My worst injuries were not actually broken bones. I’ve screwed both of my ankles playing soccer over the years and did everything possible to both of them at one point or another without breaking a bone. Snapped tendons, burst blood vessels, torn ligaments, you name it. The worst one put me on crutches for a week and needed 7 weeks of physio before I got back onto the field. Had bruising halfway up my leg. It might have been better if I had actually broken it because then I would have at least been able to have it in a cast.
Firstly I just want to make a comment. All this crap about health care costs. No one ever factors in that for a large chunk of life up until the 30s/40s a hell of a lot of health care costs is from ‘active’ and ‘fit’ people who get injuries as a result.
It’s just interesting no one ever talks about this aspect of health care. It’s easier to go after the fatties. Maybe over all in the long run. However it’s just interesting.
I broke my right hand. Third metacarpal snapped in two right in the middle.
I was out in a night club, chatting up a girl, a bit drunk. She whispered in my ear, ‘i want to fuck you tonight.’
I was all, ‘well lets get out of here then, I’ll be right back.’
Went to the bathroom all excited and in a hurry and I slipped down some stairs. I then have no memory except being back at my place with her. Let’s just say she got what she wanted. The next day my hand was blown up like a balloon and a I had a trip to the emergency room.
Which then the realisation was incredibly depressing that I had broken my hand. The doctor then lectured me about being drunk and wreckless.
A few days later after the surgery of getting screws and wires put in, i woke up after wards and it felt like my hand had been ripped inside out. So I got more pain medication and promptly was overcome with such a horrible physical feeling that I throw up and it was horrible. I got given something to counter act that pain medicine and then something else.
It was about two months of no right hand. I learnt to use the computer with my left hand. Nothing more depressing than being an adult, moving into your parents place and having them cut up your dinner for you.
So yeah, good times. Several years later, my hand still gets sore and uncomfortable at times. Movement is still a bit restricted. I can’t use a pen to write with out my hand quickly getting quite painful.
A side not is, my hand feels dryer. When i rub my thumb on my fingers, it’s always just felt slightly rougher and drying than my left hand. I don’t have sweaty hands, but yeah.
Oh and it fucked up my ability to type. I now frequently type the wrong words. When i type i now pretty much favor the right index and middle fingers. Due to the slightly restricted movement of my right ring and pink fingers. This tied in with many years of typing muscle memory means that I will just sometimes type the wrong world. I think that what happens is, the fingers are slightly off and muscle memory thinks i’m typing something else and so it just goes ahead and does that word.
So that’s my story.
Left wrist x2 (separate occasions).
Right wrist.
Shattered knuckle on left hand/little finger.
Big toe on right foot.
That’s about it.
Broke a rib falling off a skateboard.
Broke my collarbone falling off a bike.
Broke a whole lot of things when I was jumped by 7 guys. Broken rib at the back to the right of the spine, shattered septum that needed two reconstructions to even be semi functional. Fractured both cheekbones and my right eye socket. It happened a week before my 18th birthday. All my birthday pics are me with a huge, swollen face the colour of a spanish olive.
Nowadays I sniff all day like a coke fiend and I occasionally tap the cartilage in my nose the wrong way and refracture it. It doesn’t move the way it should anymore. Just sits rigid.
Shattered fibula.
two reasonably mild ones compared to some!
School ski trip to NZ when I was in about year 11, was snowboarding for the first time. I was ok on the board, but absolutely hated the chair lift where they made you drop your trailing leg out of the board so only one leg was attached. I always fell coming off the lift, anyway, towards the end of the day I went up the lift, prepared to get off/fall again, unfortunately for me, my legs and my body disagreed on which direction to go, which resulted in the board going left and my body going right, which totally inverted my knee (which was connected to the board) as the weakest point. End result was my knee cap pointing 180 degrees in the wrong direction and tearing all the tendons to pieces. Got a run down from the top of the mountain via the ambo skiers for my trouble and quite a long recovery period.
Luckily that happened towards the end of the trip, unlike our group doctor who, on the first day of the trip, stepped off the tour bus and slipped on black ice, broke his leg in clean in two.
My second one was considerably more painful, as a kid at my parents house we had a MASSIVE rope swing, this thing was at least 15m high worth of thick rope with knots every metre or so hanging off a huge gum tree.
One day I had managed to climb near the top, and feeling quite proud started to slide back down. Somehow (and I really don’t know how), one of the knots was slightly loose, and as I was sliding back down, my little finger became caught in the knot. At which point I decided to let go of the rope. This, coupled with my weight let the knot tighten right around my pinky finger, leaving me hanging and screaming. I guesstimate it was about 10min before my dad heard me and could get me down. My finger was shattered into a number of pieces and stretched out a little longer than my middle finger.
To add insult to injury, I’m at the doctors and they are trying to set the bone, they tried to give me a local anesthetic, I clearly remember him saying ‘it will feel like a little bee sting’ when the needle goes in, then it will be fine. Unfortunately for him, although he was aiming for one of the finger joints, because the bone was so badly shattered the needle went into the bone, at which point I jerked my hand back from the paint, which then managed to snap the tip of the needle off! It was definitely worse than a bee sting! My finger never set completely straight after that and is still bent a bit to this day!
Most painful injury I’ve ever had was when I was around 7.
I was sitting on the back seat of my mums bike and I accidentally let my foot swing into the spokes. It shredded my achillies tendon and almost cut the bottom of my foot off :S
My mum had to tie the bottom and top of my foot together with a sock while she drove me 45 minutes to hospital :S
The doctors thought I was a burns victim because of all the black grease in the wound.
It’s all good now though! 😀
I feel lucky. Worse that has happened to me was a fractured skull in 2 places from falling backwards off of our back fence and landing on a stone garden ornament when I was 5.
First Knee Injury: Complete rupture of ACL, stage 2 MCL tear, torn meniscus torn cartilage.
2nd Knee Injury: stage 3 ACL Tear.
3rd Knee Injury: Stage 3 ACL Tear. ( Same leg as second)
Broken ribs to date: 9 Including 4 submerged under my sternum
in 2010 i had 18 stitches put into my face after getting assaulted by someone and not fighting back because i didn’t see the point.
When i was 15 i tore my acl stage 2.
Torn rotor cuff after dislocating the same shoulder twice in 10 minutes from high impact AFL and then driving home and playing for a further 3 weeks with the injury.
think thats it 🙂
Both ankles, both wrists, 2 ribs (at the same time), 4 toes, 2 fingers, nose, collar bone, (snapped achilles count?) In addition a total of ~200 stitches in various places.
All on separate and equally mundane occasions. Just clumsy/reckless/stupid I guess 🙁
I’ve had 3 broken arms, 5 or 6 broken fingers and a broken toe. I’ve also just found out I need to have corrective surgery for my nose which apparently is mutated and weird inside to the point where I only have one functioning nostril
Broken nose and 2 ribs in a car crash.
Fractured skull in bicycle crash in London.
Broken elbow in (world’s lowest speed) bicycle crash.
Broken ribs tripping over when running to catch up with friends in the way to AFL match at the MCG last year. Missed the first half in the first aid room, missed the following week from work…
Several broken toes playing frisbee barefoot in my student days (left big toe, left little toe 3 times…)
Chain snapped on Ride To Work Day last year, just before the Roundabout Of Death (bottom of Royal Parade), sliced calf open on the chainring. 5 stitches. Completed the Around The Bay 250km 4 days later. Got a lovely chainring teeth tattoo on the back of my leg now from the chain grease.
Astonishingly, and despite having ridden well over 100,000km on pushbikes in my life, I’ve not yet done a collarbone. It’s only a matter of time.
I might have broken a finger once; not sure. It hurt for at least a week and was very bruised and swollen, but I never got a professional to look at it.
Every single finger and toe on both hands/feet (more than once). Ribs more than one occasion, Cheekbone, Hand (more than once from memory), and the bad one was a fractured skull resulting in a blood clot on the brain (similar to Michael Schumachers injury just not as severe and i wasn’t skiining.). However i have osteoperosis so that may explain the breaks some of that have simply been from being picked up as a kid or kneeling on my hands to play with a toy.
I’m currently at home nursing a broken wrist I’ve had to have pinned, there other wrist either had a minor break or is sprained and no skin on a knee care of a motorcycle accident.
Worst part is I’m stuck at home bored out of my brain and can’t game. Can’t hold a controller, can’t use a mouse, and the only way I can really type is swipe keyboard on windows phone 8.1.
Civilization 4 time. Can be played with one finger poking gently at a keyboard… All movement on the numpad, and there are keyboard options for everything else. 🙂
Edited: Oh, and get well soon! 🙂
Lost marathon at this point haha. Never saw the end because the tv networks screwed the schedule up, and missed bits and pieces here and there.
About 6-8years old on holidays fell out of a top bunk on the way down used my jaw to try and slow my self down didn’t work so climbed back up into bed crying with blood every where,went to ED the doctor said I was just being a sook sent us home 3 weeks later went to the sick bay at school for a swore jaw and was told I had my jaw fractured in 3 spots
I got turned I to a Newt. I got better.