Have You Ever Broken A Bone In Your Body?

Where? How old were you? (If more than once, vote for your first broken bone then tell us about the rest... you Daredevil you!)

-- Allen (broken-bone free since 1960)

I've broken my collarbone and my wrist (twice).

A guy smashed it with a hammer

Was like 6 years old or something..

he was just mean.. I think we played or something.. then he was like..

Put your finger here (on a small wooden piece) then *WHAm*

That's funny!

:(

Not when it happened anyway.


Now it's just a 'nice' childhood memory. (not that I don't want to smash his finger with a hammer)

but it just sounds like something out of a slapstick comedy routine.

Well atleast I can look back at it smiling

I got some nasty bruises but it would seem that my bones were/are flexible.
Now that I am getting old (26) I know that I need to be more careful. There will be a time where I will trip on the side walk or crash my bicycle and I will likely break something. I consume plenty of calcium so I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon.

... in a head-on collision.

wasn't much fun and was in a wheel chair for about a year.

BUT, grateful I can walk again :-)

Broke both big toes at the same time.
Broke every finger but two (don't know which two, doctor didn't say.)
Broke three ribs.
Broke two ribs just under the collar bone (that was a nasty one).
Broke two bones in my foot.
Broke my hand.
Broke my arm.

I was into extreme sports back before there was a name for it. On round of broken ribs and the hand was speed sledding, the foot was swimming over a water fall, the big toes was a bicycle accident, gees, I forget...

every time you walked out of the house.

-- Allen

I was in my twenties before I ever broke anything but my skull.

That worried mom some. I was a freshman in high school and had some friends over for the weekend (lived waaaay out in the country). We were using a bumper jack (I guess you have to be late thirties or older to have seen one) to break down a flat tire to patch it. The jack slipped and split right up beside my nose, all the way to the bone, and chipped the bone above my eye. Mom came in to check on me late that night. I'd started bleeding again, and the eye socket was level full of blood. Mom raised three kids on a farm, and that's the only time that I ever remember her freaking about an injury. It was just too much for her.

I was going down a very steep driveway on a wagon and I out out my foot to stop it (I was very young, 4 or 5) and the wagon ran over my foot sideways :( Not pleasant.

I don't know how to spell it but it's your tail bone.

That was one of the worst pains I ever had in my life when it first happened. and this was after I broke both my ankles at the same time.

Ouch!

I broke an arm as a kid and that hurt plenty. But my coccyx, shit oh dear. I knew when I fell I was in for it. Hurts to sit. Hurts to lie down. Hurts to use the bathroom. Hurts to cough, laugh, take a deep breath.

is in!
:evilgrin:

Still OUCH it hurt so much.

:loveya:

and I had one of those fun cushions at work for a few months.

I hope I never do that again..


waaahhh, I'm gonna have nightmares tonight! :-)

Small fracture during labor.

Ouch!

split my forehead open once. Was pretty drunk and stoned and fell face forward onto a tabel. Took 10 stitches to close it up. Had a concussion too. I think I had fun that night?

Age 68. Recovered and able to have the same range as before. Didn't watch where I was walking.

my dear grandmother broke an arm (indoor slip and fall) and it took her over a year to fully recover and get the range of motion back and her strength. But... she was in her late 80's at the time. Healing time was much slower for her too.

-- Allen

but then Skull&Bones would be redundant.

so technically it was just torn tissue.

Usually that makes me think of the Ginzu knife commercial with the guy punching the watermelon.

Not for the weak of stomach. :)

needed nine stitches to close. My mom said she could see my skull.
I did get to see Star Wars for free all night for it though.

Not the same way as me I hope. BTW I don't drink quite as much as I used to. Thank god.

and hit my head on the opposite one at a movie theater. I was 12 and racing my mom to the car. A cop carrying me in to the theater to wait on an ambulance was the next thing I remembered after it happened.

Have you got a scar? I do, but it's under my eyebrow so you can't see it.

and it's noticeable too. Above my left eyebrow. Took 3 nurses to hold me down while they put the stitches in...lol

Doing sprints, then rebroke it this summer in a mud wrestling-fest at Yale. That hurt. I went and played basketball the next day tho. And didn't have it checked out for a week...oh, i'm so dumb, i still don't have full mobility in it.

And I've been hit by a car twice.

I stubbed it against a cardboard box of typing paper.

Nose when I was 15, got kicked in the face by an asshole at school.

Left leg when I was 19 - skateboarding on a halfpipe.

Right collarbone when I was 30 - snowboarding.

Landed standing on my left leg on concrete. :( It drove my thigh bone down through my knee and split the tibia and fibia apart. 10 hours in surgery and almost a year before I could walk without canes or crutches. I still have steel plates and screws holding my knee together. This was 10 years ago and I was 42 at the time.
Now you know...

(Edited typo)

It's all I can do to muster the courage to climb high enough to clean out the gutters. (And there's still extra ladder length above my head to hold on to).

Glad it wasn't WORSE for you!! A fall like that is deadly!

-- Allen

P.S. Do you set off the metal detectors at the airport?

I was very lucky to be alive, and that the majority of people falling from that height die. Yes I do sometimes set off poorly calibrated metal detectors, so I always tell them I have an implant before going through. Heights never bothered me before the experience, but I have a HEALTHY respect for them now!!

...the little finger on my right hand. I busted both within a couple of weeks of each other in elementary school. The arm in a bike accident and the finger a little while later playing kickball while I still had the cast on my arm.

What hurt worse than the break was when the nurse in the ER got alcohol in my road burns. She was swabbing my arm prior to giving me a shot of painkiller before they set the bone.

Really bent the dang thing backwards, too. I still remember the screams of the girls as I went to the office.

When it was set I was given general anaesthetic. Is that normal? This was probably 1973.

:hi:

Leg jumping off moving subway car 1962
Various fingers and toes in sporting activities... fingers in football, toes in track (shot put+gravity=OUCH)
Ribs, colar bone and wrist during an anti-war demonstration in 1968, thank you very much Washington DC Police for that.
Scapula and frontal bone of skull compliments of Viet Cong AK-47 rounds in 1972
Coccyx, knee and ankle on the ice-covered deck in 1984
Several knuckles in big fight in 1990

Nothing since then. Life is sooo boring now. I need some more excitement in my life.

I'd say you've had more than your fair share. I don't know if I could handle THAT much excitement myself. :-)

-- Allen

keep me from being me. Or am I getting to old to be me? Anyway, you wanna play, you gotta pay.

You say that like it's the most normal thing in the world to do, and that frightens me.
Duckie

This was back during the Christmas break during my Freshman year in college. ..ummmm 12 or years ago. (wow has it been _that_ long. )

I was playing touch football outside my home, in the street. (We lived on a sparsly traveled Dead end street near the end. I was defending and the person I was covering ran right towards me and over me. (He was about 6'3" and I am only 5'3") I fell back right onto my left wrist. I got up shook it off and continued to play for about 2 hours (it hurt a little but not much). When I went inside I noticed that it hurt like a SOB when I went to grab anything in my left hand. I could still move my fingers with out any pain so I my parents and I didn't think that it was broken. We called my insurance and we proceded to go to the ER. Now this was the weekend of the Divisional Playoffs and I was looking forward to going to the Bills vs. KC game the next day. We arrived at the ER just as the second playoff game for that Saturday had started (the actual game eludes my memory now). I get through triage in pretty short order, but I procede to watch the entire game before being called. About 4 hrs later I get called. I go back and wait a bit longer, I get my wrist X-rayed and it turned out that I did have a break in my wrist. They prepare to put the cast on. The cast was going to be a Full arm cast that went up past the elbow (insuring that i didn't turn my arm so the bone could heal correctly). Right before they put on the cast they had to set the bone. When the doctor put pressure on my wrist.. i could feel my entire face go grey. It was the most intense pain I have ever felt. I got a shot of demoraul. They finished up and I got to go home with a perscripton for Co-Tylenol. :-) I had to wash up with out taking showers, washing my hair in the sink. I was so relieved when all cast came off I could take a shower once again.

After about 8 weeks the replaced the full arm cast with a short arm cast. It took awhile for my arm to regain the its entire motion.

The wrist: The neighbor kid, not a bully but big and strong, was swinging me by my ankles around in a circle. It was great fun until he just let me go. I flew out a ways, but instinctively put my hands out to break the fall on the hard ground. I heard the 'crack' and just knew my left wrist was broken. My parents were on vacation in Carmel, and got a phone message in their hotel that their son was in the emergency hospital back home. Boy, were they panicked!

The thumb: I was body-surfing, and went running out into the water during a great set of smooth, glassy waves -- not paying attention, I dove into a too-shallow area. Snap, the left thumb bent back and stayed there. I freaked. Another trip to the ER. To this day, the thumb sometimes get's stuck, and I have to grab it with my right hand and pop it back into place.

I can't wait until I'm old and dizzy and start falling all over the place. Both my mom and aunt died from falls and broken hips, etc., but they were in their 90s.

My brother closed a car door on it. I've broken toes so many times I've lost count. Then, when I was 46, I fell off my mountain bike and broke my arm. That was a real bummer; I was 9 miles from the car and in so much pain I almost passed out several times.

I'm not a daredevil; I'm a clumsy oaf!

Mrs. Venation

:eyes:

My BMX fell backwards and I landed hard on my coccyx. It hurt like hell.

Jumping on the bed. I broke my middle finger on my left hand falling off the swing when I was 11.

it's heartbreaking. I'll bet breaking your collar bone was tough on both you and your parents.

I was a bed-jumper myself but the worst that ever happened was getting stitches in my forehead when I slammed myself into the headboard by accident. After reading the stories in this thread, I was much luckier than most.

-- Allen

steel plate, 7 screws, 2 bolts, a 4 inch scar and and 8 inch scar. The hardware has since been removed. It still hurts, but only when I use it.

They checked my brain to see if they could take the rest of my organs, but debatably found it still functioning. I survived. The Volkswagen did not.

....only time I've ever had a broken bone was while I had the flu...all I did was turn and cough real hard and my 7th rib on my left side snapped...it was miserable as I was racked by coughin' and it felt like I was bein' stabbed over and over again....I was drugged to the gills with hydrocodone for a couple weeks which helped some but it took a couple months before I could sleep normal again. :(

Went to catch the ball, but it was going faster than I thought. I broke a triangular piece out of the middle bone in my right pinky.

I went on to break other fingers, and cracked my left forearm by slipping on an icy sidewalk in 8th Grade. Because the bone broke lengthwise, the doctor did not put it in a cast. No one believed me when I said it was broken - "Well, if it's broken, where's your cast?"

:-)

the bone -- I was pretending to be a horse and was jumping over a sawhorse. I missed. I limped home, and it was the only time I ever saw my mother go over in a faint.

I was 19 at the time, & lucky in two respects- I was wearing a helmet, and the bike had 'highway' bars- a guy in a station wagon went thru a stop sign, making a left-turn, and hit me broadside. I flew over his car(the bike went under) and landed on my head & shoulders(not the shampoo), and then bounced and slid a little.
On the way to the hospital, one of the paramedics rapped on my collar-bone a couple of times and asked me if it hurt- when I told him "no", he said "well it should, because your collar bone is broken!"...which actually made me wonder why then was he rapping on it?
at the hospital, as the emergency room people were cutting away the remains of my clothes, my parents came in the room, my mother was clearly upset, and the first words out of my father's mouth were a clear demontration of the depth of the love and caring I was made to feel throughout my childhood:

"Great! who's gonna pay for this?"

that's my dad...

1956 Rochester, NY fractured left arm..fell out of back yard tree.
1962 Rolla, MO broken nose and right big toe..football.
1963 Iowa City, IA broken rib..football.
1965 Lai Khe, Vietnam cracked patella, two wounds not broken bones
1968 Springfield, MO broken collarbone..motorcycle accident
1984 Current River, MO broken hand, two broken fingers...float trip
accident.
1987 Berthoud Pass, CO torn meniscus cartilage
1988 Coumbia, MO Arthroscopic knee surgury

I'm done, no more.

I have managed to keep my motorcycle intact, however.

Damn school bus pulled out in front of me.

birthday, in January of 2000, I was at a friend's house when I slipped in her driveway, fell, and broke my left wrist in three places. I had to have surgery, pins put in, a cast on almost my whole arm for ten weeks, the whole nine and a half yards.

What a total, complete, royal, PAIN IN THE ASS! It was so painful, and the cast was such a pain-in-the-ass nuisance, especially when my arm itched, that I hope I NEVER EVER EVER EVER break another bone EVER again, even if it's just a toe or finger!

I undid a coat hanger and worked it under the cast. Desperate times.

They warned me very sternly not to do that, but I just couldn't take it anymore. And the world didn't fall apart when I did that, either. And then all the skin that would come off whenever you'd itch it, because the skin cells couldn't shed every day like they normally do, with a cast on.

I'm just glad it happened in the winter, because if it had been summer, I can just imagine how much worse the itching would have been, especially with sweating in the heat!

one of my students tossed his shoe at me yesterday. It was a joke and I provoked it. But dang it hurts. It's all blue and swollen -- I can move it so maybe it's just a sprain.

My fault. I was five, scampering across the street. Anyway, my upper lip was split something awful. All the king's horses and all the king's men were so busy stitching the lip up, they never knew about the collar bone. After complaining about a sore shoulder afterwards, they finally noticed. By then it was practically mended.

A couple sprained ankles later in life. I tend to fall well.

One of the big ones was broken on a curb when I was about ten, and the other two I hit very hard on a chair when I was 13. I still can't bend my big toes.

I was running around like a lunatic trying to get ready, and jammed my left middle toe against a chrome metal chair leg. I had to continue to get ready, and finish getting dressed. I put my shoes on and did the whole wedding/reception without checking the toe, and when I took my shoes off that night, it had swollen to the size of a golfball, and had gone black. I thought it was going to fall off, but I was too tired to deal with it, so we went to bed.

The end.

Didn't your toe hurt during the wedding? Or were you too busy to even notice? Hope it didn't mess up the honeymoon.

I was in College and playing intramural football with converse tennis shoes each time.

that you'd find a better pair of shoes... ya nut! :hi:

-- Allen

I was a very active, very clumsy kid/teen/adult, and was constantly at the doctor getting SOMETHING x-rayed.

I've broken my nose, my arms five times, too many fingers and toes to remember, an ankle, and sustained a concussion (or two). I have one toe on my right foot that I have broken sooo many times -- I'm surprised the poor little thing hasn't just fallen off. I one broke it TWICE in just a little over a month!

Luckily I've mellowed as I've aged, and the breaks/sprains/rips have pretty much slowed down to one or twice a year. :)

I broke my wrist when I was 4, fulfilling a dare to jump off the back of a friend's dad's monster truck. Didn't stick the landing, and fell backwards on to my right hand. It looked a whole lot worse than it felt, in fact I didn't think anything was wrong till friends suggested I look at it. If you hold your forearm in front of you, where you're hand extends flatly alone the same plane as your forearm, you get a good basis. Now, imagine your flat hand raised 3 inches above the arm, but still parallel to the arm. Kinda like this ---_______, my wrist was broken cleanly in two, with the two pieces several inches apart on the Xray.

Second break was my pinky, same hand as the wrist when I was in seventh grade. Got into a fight with a punk, I threw a punch, he ducked, and I connected with the front top of his head. (hardest part of the body) It hurt the entire weekend, though dad thought I was being a cry baby about it. When it was still swollen monday morning, mom to me to the emergency room, Xrays proved that it was smashed pretty good. The pinky was swollen to twice the size of my thumb, heh. That finger is shorter than my other pinky, and its not quite as strong either.

Last break was my pinky toe. Happened because I was in a hurry down the steps of the deck. That hurt like a mother. Limped for a week and a half.

Though my younger brother takes the cake on broken bones in our family. He broke his femur......imitating me of course. I was at the phase where daredevil is a better description than kid. I was into jumping off ridiculously tall things. He jumped off the top platform of a slide I jumped off of many times. To this day, I wonder how he broke his femur, ended up in traction, in a body cast for months, and had to relearn how to walk, and I never got so much as a bruise from doing the same thing.

6x nose
1x cheekbone
2x eye orbits
1x left shoulder
1x right shoulder
1x left knee
1x right knee
1x left ankle
1x right ankle
1x finger
1x wrist
1x toe
1x rib
===========
19 broken bones

Before you ask, skiing and being a passenger in everyone's first car accident in high school. I creak when it rains.

Glad you're still with us, Will!

-- Allen

Hit by a pitch while playing baseball. Thought it was a fastball, stepped in to swing, and it broke right in on me (it was really a slider.)

actually 2 vertebrae in my neck, both pelvic bones, broke my tailbone in half horizontally when I was 16 and in a motorcycle wreck.

Wrist, collar bone (fight over a girl!), 3 fingers, , rib.

radius and ulna. * broken ribs, left collarbone and two vertebrae since then. Been rough.

If my sisters saw this thread they'd laugh hysterically.

left arm twice
left wrist once
a bone or two in left hand three times (don't ask, it ain't pretty)
several toes (who hasn't?)
ribs
right ankle

And I didn't vote for the first one (the arm) -- I voted for the last one, because it's caused me the most fucking misery!

1. broke ankle when I had no insurance, so it was off to the welfare hospital
2. sat w/ best friend in ER until 3:30 AM before I was seen (shootings, don'tcha know)
3. ER doc asked my best friend to leave the room then asked me, "did your boyfriend do this to you?" (ROFL)
4. they said it wasn't broken, "ice, wrap it, stay off it for a few days"
5. learned a week later, after no healing & new bruising, that it was broken
6. remember, no insurance . . . imagine the implications
7. surgery two years later (now with insurance)
8. surgery again a year later (the implant "slipped")
8. more surgery two years ago ("what the hell did they do to you on the west coast?")
9. more surgery to clean terrifying infection 6 weeks later
10. six weeks of two kinds of industrial-strength antibiotics in the form of horse pills
11. six months of Mrs. V. changing my bandage, first every four hours, then every six, then every eight, then twice a day, and applying a miracle drug to make the tissue grow back more quickly
12. now: constant pain all the time and
13. can't stand the slightest touch on a four-square-inch area of my ankle

The moral: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE NOW!

</rant>

I was well into my 30's. I was arguing with my husband, grabbed the front of his shirt, he pulled away, and my finger got caught and twisted between two buttons. When it was still swollen a couple of weeks later, I went to the doctor and he did an X-ray, which is how I know it was broken.

There was also the time a few years after that when I walked behind a fat lady who was tilting forward on her chair. She leaned back and set one of the legs down right on my instep. "Oh, are you okay?" she asked. "It hurts a bit, but I'll be fine," I replied gamely as I limped away. I didn't take that one to a doctor, but it was maybe 15 years ago, and it still hurts occasionally, so I figure something got broken there as well.


On edit: Come to think about it, I probably broke my tail bone when I was about 10, falling off my pogo stick. (Don't ask.) I didn't take that to a doctor either, but it hurt for about a year and still can still get sore if I have to sit for a long time on a hard folding chair.

Let's see. First was a broken femur in like 1979, or so. I was a kid. The bastards put me in traction because of it. Not real fun. I had to lay there for like 10 days with a pin through my lower leg attached to weights. A year or two later, broke one of my front teeth. That really really sucked. When they attached the new tooth, the crazy dentist totally tore up my gums trying to smooth out the new tooth. He was later accused and convicted of selling bogus perscriptions. Lets see, then probably 6-7 years later, in the late 80's broke my clavical (collar bone). I went to one of those minor emergency clinics (Doc in a Box). The doc said my collar bone was broke, and to keep my arm in a sling until monday til the radiologist could look at the x-ray. The radiologist, called and wanted to take an x-ray of my other shoulder, because apparently he didn't know that much about shoulder structures. Then in 1990 about a month before high school graduation, I tore up my ankle and broke my fibula. Got surgery for that one, and graduated high school with a cast up to mid thigh, and on crutches. Spent the following week celebrating my graduation with friends in Savanah GA, drinking olympia beer, margaritas, and popping pain pills. What I can remember of that, I won't forget :D ...Kevin.

I was four when I broke my left arm, I fell off a swing in Richmond, Virginia.

I was 9 when I broke my toe, stubbed it really hard, in Oceanside, California.

I was 11 when I broke my right arm, I rollerskated down a steep hill in the mountains in Golden, Colorado.

One car accident twelve years ago resulted in a compressed second lumbar vertebra. That's having repercussions in my life now as degeneration begins in that area and pain is increased.

The three ribs were from a rollover accident about 3 years ago. They mended in about 8 weeks and, so far, no further pain.

I don't recommend breaking bones, though. Nasty business.

All at separate times.

I'm not exactly graceful. :eyes:

all during the childhood/young teen years, by just doin' kid stuff. More recently I've had 2 knee replacements (well, they broke my bones by basically cutting them apart with hacksaws) and a toe amputation. Do those count? :evilgrin:

I can't believe how many people have never broken a bone. Glad my parents won't see this thread because I trained them to think everyone breaks bones.

Car accident in high school:
Cheek bone in a few places
Eye orbit in a couple places
Nose (not a bone, but it completes the mental picture)
Both knees

Also, several fingers and toes. On the plus side I've never had a plaster cast. From what I've heard soft casts are incredibly less annoying.

Falling backwords off a porch and landing wrists first on concrete sidewalk.


Yes, it hurt like hell.

High school:
broken finger paying ball
broken nose playing ball
broken ribs, dirt bike

Government work:
Broken back in two places, broken left arm, elbow,both legs and nose,skull fracture, RPG round into our Jeep, El Salvador. I was with God for awhile. I still have little pieces of shrapnel and bone (the driver) coming out of me in odd places at odd times.

Government fault :
broken wrist , Three toes and nose, motorcycle vs gmp Mercury sedan on a Langley,Virginia dirt road. Wasn't their fault. Sun was in their eyes.

Some Broken bone related highlights:

5 years old, I climbes on a 66 bug and fell between the bumper and the car, snapping my thigh right above the knee.

9 years old, I jumped out a tree and broke both bones in my left wrist.

9 years, I stretched the new tissue from above arm injury in a biking accident (my left hand is slightly askew).

12 years, I had a stress fracture from playing tug-of-war (veritcally out a second story window...)

14 years, I broke a finger wrestling in gym class.

Now if you want to talk about non-bone related injuries....

6 years old, I popped a vein in my right knee after a biking accident.

8 years old, I split my head open and got stitches playing "Tag" around the St. Louis County Bookmobile which was at my school.

12 years old, I ran into a non-visible barbed-wire fence at full speed at Beaumont Scout Ranch near St. Louis.

I fragged my knees so many times, I quit keeping track.

14 years old, concussion -- bombardament -- gym class

I fell off our swing set when I was 2 or 3, breaking the collar bone. No memory whatsoever.

My right elbow cracked in two places, smack on the joint, when I was submarined while on a fast break during a pickup basketball game as a high school senior. I walked home in agony, after my friends insisted nothing was wrong and I should continue in the game.

That elbow still gives me trouble while lifting heavy objects or when fully extended. I was supposed to refrain from golf for at least six months, but couldn't resist a breathtaking Lake Tahoe course 3 months later. After hitting behind the ball on my second swipe on hole #1, I treated everyone withing miles to a remarkable shriek, walked back for a refund, and didn't play again for 9 months.

Between my car accident, and 'extreme' sports (god I hate that term), I am used to wearing casts.

When I was in the second grade, I was skating on the icy sidewalk before school. Down I went breaking my left wrist and spilling the popcorn treat I had just bought on my way to school. All I remember about that was an itchy cast and popcorn all over the place.

A few years ago I tripped over a speed bump, fell flat on my face, broke my glasses and my right arm near the elbow. I was a hundred miles from home. The emergency room crew took and e-ray, put a splint on it and sent me on my way. I remember a lot about this one, because I never got a cast. My local surgeon wanted me to go into therapy right away to keep my joints moving. I did heal, but do not have complete range of motion.

When I had an in-depth interview with a new doctor, he asked me if I had been in some sort of accident. No, I told him. I broke one arm at age seven, falling down the stairs, the other twenty years later for the same reason, though it was winter and the steps were slippery. I broke my foot running in place in gym class at my boarding school. I was on crutches for quite a while in the dead of winter, no easy feat. LOL! I guess some of us are just born clutzes.:shrug:

and not for lack of trying on my part. I played a lot of sports as a kid and I played rough. I was also kinda accident prone as a kid but I always managed to escape unscathed. :-)

One plus to being a fan of pro wrestling is you learn how to fall the correct way.

I don't know how many times I ended up with bruises/scrapes/wind knocked out when I should have had broken bones because I fell properly.