Friday, June 16, 2006

Free book contest!

Well, my knee injury appears to be in my past.

I ran another 3 miles on Wednesday (building back up!), logged another hour on the StairMaster and in the weight room last night and feel almost no pain.

YAY!

It felt GREAT to run again, so I'm having a contest:

Tell me your injury recovery stories and win a FREE book!

Leave them in the comments section of this blog and make them shortish -- 2-3 paragraphs should do it.

I'll judge at the end of July and the winner receives a NEW hardcover copy of John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.

7 comments:

MNFirefly said...

Well, for my injury, I have a shoulder injury that occurred during my last week of training at a previous (won't give names) employer. We were doing defensive tactics training because I was hired to be a security guard for 3rd shift (which NEVER happened). We training with the ASP batons while going in a circle. Their object of the game was to see if you can do the moves the fastest - NOT based technique. Well, when you do that, someone's going to get hurt - that someone was ME. I got hit in the shoulder and developed an UGLY hematoma and bone spur as a result. It took me 4 months of light duty to get better (and a cortisone shot) but ended leaving anyways because I did not want to get hurt anymore than I need to.

End of story.

Anonymous said...

I was cruising along doing about 55 mph with my girl on the back of my machine.
Suddenly,without warning my girl was positioned beside me.
WE WERE IN A SKID!
I pulled in the clutch and the bike started sliding wildly to the left and right,still skidding.
Into the gravel we went and we were thrown from the motorcycle impact, with a tree stump.
I tried to rise up and found that both legs and ankles were busted up.
My girl got up and shook it off and ran to my side crying.
I couldn`t beleive it!She was unhurt.
She flagged down a car and soon the ambulance came.
I spent two weeks in the hospital until released.
I spent another 6 weeks recovering an 5 weeks in therapy.
It was truly an experience for my girl told me that I was too crazy for her liking and ran off with a librarian.
Happy Trails!
At least my motorcycle can be repaired,my kind of relationship.

Diane Pollock said...

I slid down some cement steps last winter and cracked my tailbone! It hurt to sit for WEEKS! But it healed on it's own...

Hvnly777 said...

Well, last summer I was casually walking in my local park, when out of no where I lost my footing and flew forward. Although, I thought my landing was safe I quickly discovered that I could barely walk.

I hobbled over to the park link fence and stood there for 10 minutes watching my right foot blow up three times its normal size. Needless to say, I had to hop home on one foot, which was luckily only two short blocks away.

Long story short...I had fractured the bone in my foot and had to wear a cast up to my knee for 12 weeks! Being this happened last June my entire summer was RUINED! :(

Garou said...

When I was a wee lad of six years old, I was out one Saturday morning, playing Frisbee in the front yard. An errant gust of wind managed to put it across the street. Like any responsible child, I looked both ways before crossing, retrieved the yellow disc, and toss ed it back over the street before attempting the crossing again.

Now, my home was on a quiet little street. Well, quiet most of the time - it's also right next to a fairly sizable midwestern private university, and, by cutting down our street, you could avoid an annoying traffic light.

So, anyway, having tossed the frisbee, I got ready to cross again - or attempted to. I looked, and saw a car, so I turned around to wait until it has passed.

Unfortunately, the street was wet from the previous nights rain, and had been recently resurfaced. So, I went down like a pole-axed steer, and my right leg slid out in front of me.

The driver had slowed down (to 30, according to her, which is still pretty fast for a residential area, and a lot of parked cars), and she did manage to hit the brakes when she saw me slide out.

She felt the car go *thumP* and rise up a bit. She realized that she had hit me, and thought that I was still in front of the car (or that she is possibly parked on top of me), so she puts it in reverse to back away from me. And feels another *thump*.

At this point she understands that she has just backed over me, and she panics. Searching for the "neutral" gear, she alternates several times between "drive" and "reverse".

The end result was a compound-complex spiral fracture. (The easiest way to imagine it is to picture two giant clamps, one at the ankle and one just below the knee. Then, grab the area in between them with a giant wrench, and twist it around until the bones snap. Pleasant. Neat scars though.) It also gave me some considerable damage to my right knee (which from the front looks fine, but from the back? Yerg. . .rebuild city.) I won't even go into what happened when the skin graft machines failed, other than to mention that it gave me another set of impressive scars.

The docs originally said that I would almost certainly lose the leg. Then probably lose it. Then, I would never walk. Then, walk, but always with a pretty severe limp. Then, probably walk okay, but never run.

I ran CC in high school, and, after a long hiatus, picked up running again a year ago. I may not be the fastest one out there, but I have some of the neatest scars.

Anonymous said...

While visiting in Germany, I fell on the stairs in my aunt's house and completely broke off my left "funny bone". Under full anaesthetic, the orthopedic surgeon put in a screw. When I awoke, I was in agony because the full weight of my arm including a palm to shoulder cast was resting on that small point.

However, things soon started to improve. I'd made friends with a young woman who had cracked the bone. She had an older doctor who put in a nail and insisted the cast be left on for 8 weeks. My surgeon was young and decided to try something new for the times. He had the cast removed after 2 weeks and started me on therapy for about 10 days. After evaluation, I was able to leave the hospital after a stay of over a month.

In the end, I did better than she did though it was a long haul. The injury occurred at the end of August and it wasn't until Christmas that I was finally able to touch my nose again.

When the screw started paining me too much, I had it removed about a year and a half later. Needless to say, I don't have a numbing sensation in it when I knock it. It just hurts.

austhome said...

Well, I had a broken arm. I tried to show off on front of my wife of 23 years by jumping a low fence. However, I landed with a bounce, bounce, bounce and them a splat onto the carpark ground.

I picked myself up and went to the doctors who sent me to the hospital. They put my arm in a sling and sent me home. I had broken my arm up near the shoulder.

I had to wear that sling for 5 weeks. One day I was at the Frature clinic at the hospital, lamenting my broken arm and I saw a teenage girl with two broken arms. It made me realsie that I wasn't the worst case out there.

I made a full recovery and got back the use of my left arm and I will never jump fences again