Has racing skewed your view of "injury"?

God, your knee was gnarly looking.

 

I used to love climbing trees, but, evidently, I didn't fall out of as many as you.
Or I bounced better.

 

Occupational hazard, although I hate getting hurt.

 

It really is funny. Busted on clavicle into 3 pieces on a Sunday evening highsiding my GSXR in 93 (pre surgery days, just the shoulder brace) and was at work Monday morning, filleted the back of my hand open (22 stiches) and made the wife barf showing her how all the tendons move and how white they are , etc, etc. Id be willing to bet I've had at least half a dozen mild concussions, mostly because I'm clumsy..LOL! Thing is, I absolutely hate not being in control of my faculties so abhor pain meds. I can deal with the pain, for the most part.

 

Get out!

I'm not old, I'm just experienced.

 

I broke my collarbone on a weekend at Gateway. Got my leathers off and loaded up before it started to hurt. Got one of those slings that holds your shoulders back and went to work at my desk job Monday. My boss insisted that I go to the hospital before coming back Tuesday. Got X-rays, doc said its broken and to keep wearing the sling. Cost me a $200 copay for nothing.

 

I had my wisdoms yanked in boot camp. They gave me two hours bedrest and then the DI came in said,"what the hell are you lollygagging for, get up!"

 

damn

 

I don't think racing does it, the people who stick with it after injury are the people who were always tough to begin with. Broke my left collar bone on Saturday during a race, refused the ambulance ride. I was more concerned that my thumb looked weird, got an xray on it Saturday night, nothing broken. Got scheduled to have a specialist look at the collar bone on Monday, scheduled surgery for Tuesday, went back to work wednesday(mechanic) No pain pills. People kept telling me to leave, I felt fine.

 

Broken, dislocated, or torn 20+ things in my life. Couple concussions to boot. Only 1 chopper ride and 1 flashy bus ride. Typical wild kid that rode and played everything I could so I was always hurt in one way or another. Just learned to tolerate it well from a young age. A couple of my funnier stories are actually from relatively minor incidents though plus one from my rost incident.

Playing basketball in my early teens. Went up for a rebound next to another guy. His hand comes down and yanks my thumb out of the socket. I paused for a minute, doubled over from the initial pain but it had slid itself right back in. Figured it had dislocated initially though since I felt it touch my forearm. Caught my breath and kept playing. Couple minutes later, coach calls a timeout after noticing me favoring it. I come over to the bench and my mom, who was also the assistant coach (and admittedly one of the best coaches I ever had) sees me holding my thumb...
Mom: let me see it.
I hold it out and she proceeds to immediately yank the piss out of it and of course it now pops completely out and hangs limp
Me: shit!
Mom: (with a bewildered look on her face) it wasn't jammed was it?
Me: nope, but pa (my grandfather was there watching me play) always keeps duct tape in the truck right?
Mom: he sure does
She then tells the head coach we'll be right back and we go to the truck and duct tape it back in place and I proceed to play the rest of the game. Went to the doc later that week just to be told that I had torn every ligament in that part of my hand and had to wear a splint for a little while. I still tell my mom she should've won mother of the year award for that one when we're talking and reminiscing. She now finds it as funny as I do.

Second one, my wife's dad is in town and my mom and I decide to have him over at her house and we cook my wife and her dad dinner one night. Mom, not being the most kitchen savvy slices her finger open to the bone. I tell her to go clean it up and then educate her with my superior culinary training how you are supposed to properly cut veggies. She walks off, I take over. Not 30 seconds later, I do the exact same thing. So I join her at the sink to start cleaning mine up and we both start examining our cuts, saying how cool it is being able to see bone and shit then proceed to have a conversation with our fingers using the cuts as mouths (we have a fucked up sense of humor). My father in law had a talk with my wife later that he was concerned about me and family's state of mind and whether we would be so careless with his future grandchildren, blah blah blah.

Lastly, my big one that got me a choppa ride. I dont remember much, but I do remember one small tidbit that cracks me up in retrospect. Wake up strapped to a backboard flying through the air after going ass over tea kettle outside the bowl at tally. Back hurts like hell from what I'd later find out was 6 broken vertebrae. Start thinking i hope I'm not paralyzed. I don't feel paralyzed but then again, I've never been paralyzed before so I don't know if I'd even know if I was. I then pull my head against the strap as tight as possible which gave me all of probably a half inch, point eyes straight down to where I can barely see my two biggest toes. Wiggle the toes. Ok cool, toes can be wiggled. This gets the attention of the medic next to me who was turned the other way.
Medic: woah woah calm down buddy, youre alright. How you feelin?
Me: well I'm in a helluva lot of pain but how are you?
Medic: in a lot better shape than you so I guess alright (with a half chuckle). Couldn't give you anything while you were unconscious but now that you're awake I can (slips something I my iv). Just try to relax, I know it hurts but wiggling around just makes it worse.
Me: oh I was just making sure I could move my toes, couldn't tell if I was paralyzed.
Medic: (laughs) oh that was it?!?! Well what did you find?
Me: appears I'm ok. Did you by chance see how bad my bi... *lights out

To be fair, while I have always had a high pain tolerance, these days I'm much more timid. Frankly, I've grown tired of being hurt all the time and working in a factory every day while half my old injuries constantly haunt me is tiresome. I still ride mountain bikes and hope to one day make it back to a track when life lets me. But I don't have near the aggression I once did. I can't run on paved roads or play basketball anymore because of what it does to my joints. Cycling is sometimes cut short because of excessive arm pump and joint pain in various places and my memory and learning capacity has gone to shit compared to what it once was. I'm not going to live the rest of my life scared to do anything and not enjoy myself. But I also definitely proceed with much more caution than I used to. I've just learned to have fun with a mor conservative approach.

 

Nope.

 

Pot ---> kettle

I've always had a pretty high pain tolerance, and consider myself fairly "tough" when it comes to injuries, but some of you guys are just crazy. I've only broken a couple bones in my life and I don't even remember the worst (breaking my wrist in a couple places) because of the concussion. I guess I told the EMTs I was fine until they realized I had no idea what I was talking about and just kept repeating myself. I "came to" in the hospital a couple hours later not knowing what happened. I remember quite vividly that sinking feeling of realizing that I must have crashed.

 

When cornerworking, if I got to someone and they could sit up and talk, I'd radio that they were okay, and then request an ambulance for the broken collarbone or whatever. I would do that to let their friends know that it wasn't bad, since there are so many ears listening to the radio. It does skew your perspective a bit.

 

???

 

Look at his name.

 

Figured it was his way of saying tl/dr but wasn't sure if he was replying to something specific in my post.

 

Doubt it. He'd have to read it first...

 

Yeah, I need to change it back at some point. What was it originally again?

 

That's definitely a thing. I've had a doctor bring nurses by to show them the foolishness of riding motorcycles, nothing like lying in that bed listening to people laugh at you.

LOL, my left knee gets the treatment. I should put ink on it and label the three scars Road Atlanta, Talladega and JGP.