TT 14 My weirdest injuries and illnesses

It's been a few weeks but I'm back and better than ever, which isn't saying much, but here goes a rather painful Thursday Thirteen for me:

My 13 weirdest injuries and illnesses.

1…. Six years ago I took a study abroad trip over to London for 2 months, and I was so worried that I would hurt myself while far away from my family. (I tend to be somewhat of a hypochondriac, though generally won't admit it.) The gods were smiling on me during those months, but the moment I got back, they decided to have a little fun with me. A week after my trip, the same day I met my new roommates for the summer, we decided to have a friendly game of basketball in the swimming pool with some guys we all knew. Well, things got a little out of hand--since I'm so small (5'1" to be exact) the guys would pick me up and throw me across the pool to get me out of the game. Things were raucous but harmless, that is until my roommate went up for a rebound and brought her elbow down. . . on my nose. It broke cleanly and left my nose completely crooked. There wasn't any blood, but boy did that sucker hurt. But as I always do when injured, I started laughing hysterically over how stupid I was to get hurt in such a bizarre way. They all thought I was faking it, until they saw my nose, that is. I had surgery a week later to fix it, but for several months afterward it hurt to blow my nose or even breathe. The reason it didn't bleed was because it broke right where the cartilage and the bone meet. The doctor said he'd never seen anyone with a break like that before.

2…. Well, a week after my broken nose, I was driving home from an appointment with the nose doctor just before he was going to operate on it (it was such an odd break he decided he should knock me out since he might have had to cut it open to fix it). Just as I was headed down the street toward home, a car pulled out in front of me and I barreled into it. That's what I think what happened because I can't remember the 30 seconds before the accident happened. All I can remember was the airbag exploding into my face, smashing into my already broken nose. (This was before it got fixed, or otherwise I would have been one angry woman.) My dad's car, which I was driving at the time, was completely totaled even though I had only been driving 30 mph. At least it wasn't on the freeway where a head-on accident like that would have killed me. After that week, some of my friends were ready to stick me in a padded room to keep me from injuring myself even more.

3…. Continuing in the vein of broken bones, I was in a college apartment one night walking toward my bed when I smashed my middle toe in the cinder block holding up my roommate's bed. (Remember using cinder blocks to prop up the bed so more stuff could be stashed beneath? Great for storage, bad for toes.) I nearly cried it was so painful. Actually, I think my eyes did tear up. That little piggy hurt for weeks afterward, and I walked funny for a while until it stopped throbbing so much.

4…. Okay, one more broken bone story and then I'll move on to something else. When I was 10, my siblings and I were playing roller hockey out in the driveway. (Mighty Ducks was popular then, and roller hockey was all the rage in my neighborhood.) Sad to say, wheels on my feet plus my ability to injure myself are not a good combination. While standing still, my feet somehow flew out from under me and I landed hard . . . flat on my tush . . . on the hard cement driveway. Again, I laughed hysterically while my family looked at me like I was some strange child. All I can remember after that is how painful it was to lie in bed. For two whole weeks it was incredibly painful even to lie down, let alone sit. I still can't do sit ups to this day, and I'm sure my butt bone (tail bone, whatever) is still crooked.

5…. Once when I was in 2nd grade, my mom had just dropped us off at school and we were walking up to the building when I tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk, smacking my forehead on the cement. (I really have issues with cement.) My friend Jessica was walking behind me and didn't notice that I had fallen, and she tripped and fell on top of me. Again, my head banged into the pavement in the same place as before. Now, I was a really shy child and didn't like to draw attention to myself, so I pretended like nothing had happened, covered the huge bruise/scrape with my hand and headed into school. My teacher noticed something was wrong when she say me, but I told her nothing was wrong because I was afraid I'd get in trouble. She, fortunately, wasn't put off by that and took me to the nurses station and cleaned the wound and fixed it up.

6…. Later on at the end of my childhood as I was trying so hard to become a woman, I decided that I needed to shave my legs. I didn't ask my mom because I was certain she would tell me no, so I went into the bathroom when no one else was around and proceeded to shave my legs. No one had ever told me that you need to use soap or shaving cream. My dad had an electric razor, so I figured I was good. A few minutes later, with large strips of skin shaved off, my mom came into the bathroom and saw my bleeding legs. She gently showed me the proper way to shave, after cleaning me up of course, and didn't care that I wanted to learn even though I was only 11 or 12 at the time. Now, I can't remember why I ever wanted to start shaving since it has become the bane of my morning showers.

7…. I have very tender skin, and even the slightest bump on an arm or leg will turn into a bruise, so sometimes while I'm getting into the shower I look down and see mysterious bruises that magically appear overnight. Most of the time I can't even remember how I got them.

8…. Many of those mysterious bruises probably come from my lack of coordination, or should I say my poor depth perception. I run into things all the time, especially when I'm groggy in the morning. After I've just woken up, I'm usually pretty wobbly and run into the walls, tables, chairs, whatever happens to be nearby. I also tend to smack my hip into tables and desks while walking past because I misjudge how far I am from the offending items. People at work find it rather funny when I yell because I've run into something.

9…. My parents realized I had OCD when I was in the 5th grade. My eyes had been itching really badly, probably from allergies, but I thought it was my eyelashes making me itch. So I proceeded to pull out more than half of them to make the itching stop. It did stop eventually, but I also looked like a freak until they all grew back a while later. (My OCD is much better now, by the way. No more pulling out all my hair or eyelashes. It's a lot easier to control when you're an adult and understand what's going on.)

10…. My last 3 stories took place a few years ago while I was a church missionary in Montreal. The first of which happened while playing soccer with a bunch of guys. One of them was from France, where soccer. . . erm, football . . . is very popular and extremely competitive. Let's just say that he really got into the games. I can be pretty competitive when I want to be, and I really wanted to show him that I could, well, show him up. When we came face to face, he kicked at the ball and instead got my shin. I walked it off and got back into the game, though I was still limping. After a few minutes, I had the ball and he came up again kicking at the ball. I couldn't believe it when yet again he kicked me instead of the ball--in exactly the same place as before. By that time I couldn't walk and my leg had a huge goose egg on it. We called the game after that, especially since he's the same person who had earlier kicked another person in the hand, and broke it in 2 places, while playing soccer. Needless to say, we didn't play soccer with him again.

11…. I got sick one week right before Christmas, and after that I was so tired I could hardly even function. It would take me a long time to dry my hair because I'd have to stop every 5 minutes to rest, it wore me out holding my hand over my head. I went to the doctor, and at first he thought it might be mono. I thought I'd have to go home 6 months earlier than I had planned and was very upset. But the tests came back negative for mono, and my doctor decided I probably had chronic fatigue syndrome. I didn't understand it then, but whenever I get really stressed I get sick and then start getting really tired and fatigued all the time. One good indicator that it's coming back are the 2 lymph nodes in my neck: Bert and Ernie. I named them after the Sesame Street characters because is was generally fatter than the other. But when skinny Bert swells up, I know I'm in trouble. (I ended up staying in Montreal the whole time I was supposed to and just worked through the fatigue, though I never felt rested.)

12…. During the time I was battling fatigue, I got ill by another route. Generally we took the Metro or bus while living in Montreal and I tried to make sure I washed my hands after getting off and before eating, but once or twice a person handed me a cookie or something else small before I thought to wash, and boy did I pay for that later. One day I was throwing up every 15 minutes for 5 hours straight. Another time I had terrible stomach pains and couldn't eat for 3 days. I definitely learned my lesson.

13…. The last started the day before I left home to move to Montreal. I had a stye on my lower eyelid, but I was so preoccupied with moving and such that I didn't do much for it. Well, that sucker stayed on my eyelid, sometimes swelling up, sometimes subsiding, for a year and a half. Getting to the doctor in Canada was a pain, so I never thought it important enough to have one look at my eye. By the time I got home a year and a half, it was sore and rock hard. I went to the doctor and the pus was so hard he had to perform surgery on it--twice--to finally get rid of it.

And those are just the bizarre injuries I can remember. With that history, I'm afraid to think of what the future will hold.