What is the worst injury that you have ever seen in your life?

Mine is a tossup between 2. I once saw a guy at the ER while i was doing my observation time for EMT that ran a push gas lawnmower over both his feet somehow. This guy had NO TOES left. Steel toe boots for me after this one. And the next one was a bad car wreck. We went mutual aid in our rescue truck to a rollover. The guy that had gotten flipped was crunched in half, and if alive, could have kissed his own kidney. That was gross.

I watched a guy "eagle" into the tundra about 30 years ago.  When they picked him up it looked like they were picking up a bag full of jello.

A fellow mech/crewchief had his thumb ripped of in the flight controls of a CH46E.

In DC as an EMT I saw a guy that had a siezure and fell in between a fence and a brick loading dock wall. It was a real tight fit. The guy continued having his siezure for a day or so. When he was found and we arrived, we saw that the friction from him siezing in such a tight area for so long had pretty much rubbed the skin off of a lot of his body, and it was infected and he smelled really bad. He was still having a siezure but it was only in his brain at this point. He was alive when we found him. His clothes were mostly shredded, and maybe half of his skin was gone. Bad day.

I played soccer in high school. A BIG full back (that's what we called 'em way back when) from the other team really unloaded a big kick that caught our forward dead in the crotch. Broke his cup clean in half. He went down in a fetal position. We carried him off the field just like that. He stayed like that for at least a half hour. All he did is moan and puke.

In high school I was in a mini-van rollover...girlfriend at the time was driving.  I don't remember what happened, but I do remember waking up in the emergency room, laid out on the table.  Out of the bottom of my eye I could see my left foot...at least I could see the heel, toes down heel in the air.  Along with cracking my skull I had broken my left femur.  About three inches worth had been crushed.  

Total avulsion of the lower mandible.
Courtesy of 12ga at close range.
The guy is still around town with a new jaw made partially from ribs.

Motor vehicle driven by an 18 yr old girl vs. Deer on Route 27 in East Hampton at about 0130 hrs one Tuesday morning about 10-12 yrs ago.
The deer tried to jump over the car just as it got hit. The car had an open T-Roof and the deer's two forelegs came down through the opening and pierced the poor girls chest down through the shoulders. Inertia carried the rest of the deer over the car and at the end of the animals forelegs range of motion the legs sockets snapped and separated from the rest of the deers body. The car, now out of control slammed at about 40 into a telephone pole.

With such massive chest trauma there wasn't a whole hell of a lot anyone could do and she bled out still buckled into the car.

Pretty girl too, had just gotten into a good school somewhere in up Island and had her whole life to look forward too.

This all took place during population explosion of deer on the south fork of LI a while back. Normally we would have a lottery hunt to keep the numbers down but that fat piece of maggot infested Rat dung Alec Baldwin got a bunch of PETA a$$holes together to protest the hunts and made so much noise that they succeeded in convincing the local towns to cancel them. One of many reasons why I hate that bastard.

Stopped to get gas and heard some fight in the street. As I went in to pay a guy stumbled past me with blood pouring everywhere and went to lean on the slurpee machine. He had been stabbed (slashed) and alot of his stomach and intestines or someting where falling out and he was trying to hold them in. Never found out if he lived.

Light plane crash.. There were a bunch of people looking for the pilot..I walked to the still smoking wreck and found him.. I would'nt call it an "injury" as he was very very dead.  PA-25B's burn like bonfires when they auger in.

Meplat-

Two old guys in a full size caddy on the interstate hit a patch of black ice and crossed the median at 65+.
They hit a Ford 9000 conv. semi fully loaded
going the other direction at 65+.
The front bumper of the semi stopped at the back window of the caddy.
The caddy knocked the front axle of the semi back to the fuel tanks.
They cut the vehicles apart with the help of two big semi wreckers. It took about 3 hours to retrieve all the chunks. (flesh not metal)

Contact wound to a head with a 16 ga. shotgun, that emptied the skull.

2 people burned to death in a house fire.

Crushed head run over by a car load of tourists when the guy decided to lay down on the interstate. We spent some time looking for pieces that were missing.

Guy split into pieces after stepping in front of a semi-truck. Two blankets 50 ft apart were used to cover the "body".

Body torn apart in a car crash, little truck, t-boned a US mail tractor trailer. Firefighters standing around, after checking the scene, checking each other's boot for brains.

Gunshot wound to the groin, during an attempted murder.

Rollover crash, guy's head, partially ejected and rolled onto by the car.

Rollover crash guy totally ejected, car rolled on top of him, splitting him in half at the waist, except for the "love handles".

.30-30 to the chin, taking off the top part of the head.

2 old ladies on the way to take a bus to the casino, who crossed the center line and hit a commercial truck, crushing the car. One was dead immediately, 1 lived for appx 24 hours.

Pedestrian hit by a drunk driver on a 55 mph road. Multiple fractures, and brain injury, lived for appx 12 hours.

Male ejected from a car after a police pursuit, the driver had got away, AND KNEW IT, but continued drunkenly driving at high speeds and crashed. 3 out of 4 people in the car ejected, killed. 2 on scene, and one with a non-survivable brain injury after being transported to the hospital. Minor injuries other that the brain injury. I got to tell 1 of the deceased's parents that thier son was dead, then got to meet with the brain damaged kids parents and tell them.

Guy leaves the road, rolling his truck, not seatbelted in, his head goes out the window and the truck rolls onto it. Didn't look like it crushed his head, but the postion either cut off his airway, or broke his neck. I recognized him.

19 yo driving drunk, and fast, lost it, rolled his car, which became airborne. It struck a telephone pole appx 6 ft up, accross the roof of the car, all the way across, right behind the fron seats. He was paralyzed from as far up as you can be.

When I was in China last year the law is pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way. With all the crazy traffic and way overpopulated city people were getting hit by cars left and right.

Well, one time I was walking accross a really huge street and I heard a really large thump and some more woman got hit my a damn bus and rane over. Well, the bus just kept on going and nobody seemed to give half a shit but me.

It was a really horriffic sight. Her skull was crushed right in two by the rear dual bus wheel the it was the worst fucking thing I have ever seen in my life. It still haunts me to this day.

I had to be re-circumsized at age 4.

The removal of the gauze was the worst. I guess the didn't beleive in giving kids opiate pain killers. It hurt so bad the first four days i hardly moved in my hospital bed.

it is a very vivid memory.

What the fuck!?

Why did they have to do it again!? Did they miss the first time?

too many to count.

i have several that top off in my  head..

1- a 12 y/o boy..cut in half at the pelvis..
from falling under a oil well counter balance.

his lower pelvis and legs in garbage bags came in about 3 minutes after he did.

he lived..thanks to a OHP trooper going home from a shift.

2- a drunk ass on a suicide rocket running from OKC PD..driving in excess of 120 mph on the baptist on ramp...ran smooth into the back of a garbage truck..

he literally broke every  bone in his body..
he had no skeletal makeup...it was creepy. liek plastic man.

he lived.

3- a guy ground almost in 2 by a giant conveyor belt..

he didnt make it...

4- a guy from a ejection..while doing around 100 on another suicide rocket that pretty much had no meat left on his lower body..

just sinew and bone..

he lived..not what i would consider a good life though..

5- 3 victims from a airplane crash..

enough said..too gross to discuss..

i still dont know why they brought them into the hospital.

6- any...ANY burn victims..

it take every ounce of intestinal fortitude to work on a kid or a burn victim.



i usually ok..on most traumas.until they talk..
that moaning and groaning still upsets me even after 10 years.

Kinda, they didnt take enough off the top so to speak. it had to be redone. IT SUCKED SOO BAD.

Kid injuries are the absolute worst to work on. I can't explain it, but they are just wrong for some reason.

Was probably about 6 years old.  We came upon a multiple vehicle accident in the adjoining city.  My LEO Day pulled over hung a big old red light off an ambulance on the rear of the car and went on in to help, only one major injury, so directed traffic, laid flares, etc.  He didn't realize that we could see the victim.  He had been ejected and an oncoming truck tried to swerve and miss him.  Well the wheels did, but it over balanced and fell over on him.  Well his legs from about the hips were sticking out and the truck body was flat against the pavement from the hips up.

The day after my Dad got seat belts put in all around and I have been religious about them ever since.  

My ship dropped a motor whaleboat on a sailor on the pier.  I took the photos for the investigation  starting while he was still at the scene being worked on and after he was transported.  He didn't look real good and didn't make it.  Saw the autopsy report, and he was as close to having every bone in his body broken as you probably get and stay in one piece.

While returning home from work one morning I came upon the scene of a single vehicle accident just as the ambulance was arriving.  Since I am an EMT, I stopped to see if I could help.  The vehicle was a pick-up truck, three passengers, one in the bed. The truck had flipped, ejecting the passenger in the bed.  It then rolled over the top of him.

As I approached the scene, he was the first one I came to.  The rear corner of the bed had landed on his head, basically forcing his skull into a triangular shape starting at the level of the ears (kind of like a conehead, only more angular).  Lots of blood and brain matter coming out his nose and ears.

Dave

Here's one to lighten up the spirits.  One of our sailors was helping with the shore power cables one evening.  (The extension cords used to plug a ship into a pier.  About 5" in diameter and 3 big copper conductors.)  Well he knew better and was straddling one when they took the slack out of it and it came up and lifted him about 6" into the air.  Out like a light.  Immediate reaction by all witnesses was he got zapped. I took over the Quarterdeck because we called away the Emergency Reaction teams.  The Chief Corpsman came running back up and then back out carrying a big syringe of morphine yelling he should be OK later.  Grabbed a towel and sent a sailor down to get a towel full of ice and they iced him down waiting for the ambulance.  Once we realized he wasn't dead but just felt like it things calmed down and then everybody got the nasty hilaruty when something like that happens to another guy.

I had the duty and got to call his wife and tell her not to come to the ship for dinner but go on up to Balboa Naval Hospital.  It aint easy to explain to a sailors wife that his nads were knocked back up to his navel. Specially when his buddies were suggesting they could help around the house for him. It was about a week before the swelling went down and he could walk again.

Happened to me years ago.  Was out fishing on this pier and sat down to work on my line.  Well this other fella went to cast and his his baited hook flew back and landed under my seat.  When he went to cast this huge treble hook came up off the deck hit my groin and punctured my scrotum and testicle.  There was blood everywhere.  He did not know that the line was caught and pulled really hard to free it. Thats all I remember...

A Marine, after checking out his 9mm pistol, instead of going to the pistol range for qualification, decided to go on a running trail in the northern part of Camp Pendleton and put it to the roof of his mouth and put a round out the rear top portion of his head.  Brains and blood all over in the dirt.  Sad day.

My dad had picked me up from school and we were on our way home.  The truck in front of us tried to beat a train but lost.  His son was in the bed of the truck and got thrown from the bed into the front corner of the train, nearly seperating his upper body from his lower body.  Both were instantly killed.

Saw pictures from a train wreck (AMTRAK Sunset Limited, worst Amtrak wreck in history) that crashed into a local bayou here in Mobile after the bridge was hit by a tug boat pushing barges.  47 people were killed, many of them suffering from alligator bites.

Saw a guy get his ring finger and pinky literally ripped from his hand while using a hammer drill.  He was wearing black dot gloves and was holding the drill bit against the wall, getting ready to drill the hole.  The tips of the glove fingers got caught between the wall and drill bit when he began drilling.  His fingers were pulled from his hand with ligaments and tendons still attached.

How the Hell do all of you get to sleep at night with such awful memories floating around up there?

Shit I've read in this post would haunt me every day

If you become a firefighter,EMT, or police officer or anything like the above, you either learn to live with some stuff or it drives you nuts.

Suprisingly, humor is a way to deal with things like this. It may sound sick to the outsider to hear the responders cracking jokes, but it is how people deal with traumatic situations.

Or there is Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD). That crap is for really weak people, if you ask me. I'm sure for all of us that see this kind of crap every day, only the worst things could ever keep you awake at night. I'm talkin about stuff that would have to be more heinous than a horror movie. But other than that, I don't lose any sleep.

Saw a VC soldier that met a claymore face to face. Just a pair of legs and pelvis with a few vertebrae of the spine sticking up.
Pretty gruesome.

Living patients:
A 19 y/o prostitute with Necrotizing Fasciitis that had originated in the vaginal area.  She had wet to dry dressings from the bottom rib to the perianal area.

A guy that was involved in a MVA hit a pole at high impact and went partially through the floorboard of his car.  A piece of metal had impaled him up through his groin.  When he came in he had no penis and eventually the testicles were found hanging by a thread under his leg.  Worse thing about him was that he was totally alert.

i worked 3-11/  11-7 at a small rural hospital for yrs in the emergency room in south TEXAS.. just prior the the 1st gulf war  an army helicopter crashed a few miles outside of town in the middle of the night.. the local ems and pd searched for them in the early am (a 2nd helicopter reported the crash)  the bodies were brought to the the hospital early sunday morning.. i had the greusome task of making a complete skeletal survey per the armys request of the 2 pilots and the 1 passenger.. the reason.... if the crew was aware of the impending crash the would have "braced" for the impact and there would have been specific fracture patterns of the long bones .. called "spiral factures" if they were NOT aware there would still be fractures but not the type mentioned.. i also had to examine and radiograph the boots of the pilots.. reason... if they were aware of the crash and "braced" or stiffened for the impact the two lower leg bones (the tibia and fibula) would have been driven through the bottoms of the boot heels due to the fact that the feet would have been pressed against the controls... the pilots body was still reasonably intact..but.. his entire body was  crumpled or accordianed  if you will into a size that fit almost completely on to an x-ray film 14x17 inches. no bone was unbroken.. the copilot  was thrown thru the windscreen.. and was literally in pieces... the thought being that he was hit by the rotor or pieces of the rotor before it stopped.. the top of the skull is opened and the brain is gone.. just an empty cranial vault.. most of his torso was intact  but literally exploded open like a dropped water melon... the arms and legs were for the most part just pieces ..lots and lots of little pieces.. the rear passenger (a woman) appeard almost uninjured.... till x-rayed.. open fx's of the pelvis and both upper leg bones..  an "eggshell" fx of the skull and what is called a decapitation injury  .. even though the head was still attached there was about a 2.5 centimeter  gap between the skull and the 1st cervical vertabrae..... multiple fx's of arms amd ribs but still reasonably intact..  it wa one of the worst things i have ever  seen and worked on and i have some truly unique x-ray films (for teaching purposes.. that have no personal identifying  information on them)
the 2nd worst thing i have seen that really sticks with me was a young girl who was a  front seat passenger  in a convertable  mustang that hit a ditch andthen a tree at what was later estimated to be around 100 miles an hour
the young lady was thrown out of the car .. she was launched over the front windshield when it hit the ditch.. as she was going head 1st out of the car her lower jaw struck the top edge of the frame ofthe windshield and literally peeled her lower jaw off... the young lady landed in mud and water and had multiple other injuries but she arrived at the hospital alive and actually  semi aware of her surroundings.. what i remember most was what was left of her braces .. the wires all twisted and sticking out ofthis gaping hole where her mouth used to be.. the young lady lived but ... she left our hospital later by life flighthelicopter .. but i have no idea as to her final outcome
sorry for the "novel"
john in houston

I don't think it was the worst but stands out the most is when I was in 5th grade a kid fell off something in the playground and had a compound fracture in the leg, bone ripped through skin and pants. Blood was all over kids all gathered around and made typical "ewwwwww" sounds etc.

My brother had a claw hammer sticking out of the back of his head after the neighbor kid through it at him.

The scariest injury I did not see, nor talk about often. Is when I was lying in my bed and woke up to a lot of arguing from my brother and mother. Then I heard my mother in a quiet voice say "Oh no, Eric, what have you done? Now we have to go to the hospital." I got out of my bed when they left and went in his room and there was BLOOD all over the bed, floor everything, I went into the bathroom and more blood soaked up in towels, on the floor, sink etc, didn't think people could hold that much blood.
I didn't know what happened till the next morning. ( he was going through bad times, he totally changed his life after that night and today he is very good man and doing well )

I have seen worst but living injury was me. I was 15 and riding my bike like a dipe shit and got the handle bar into my groin and burst the muscle. I really ripped open my penis and had to go to the doctors for about 5 months, they where talking surgery.

Worst part was crawling home (only about 300 feet) I got home and woke up on the sofa. I guess my mom had layed me down after passing out, do you blame me.

At the end of a camping trip late at night while we waited for a can of fix a flat a pickup truck collided with a corvette out in big cypress swamp on US 41. The truck flew at us end over end spitting out the five occupants. They all lived but one. Once the cops and wildlife agents showed up, we started searching for the only missing victim. I picked up a pile of laundry to find a 2 year old boy with his face spread open like the first slice of pizza was taken out of the box. I was 14 and now i'm 33 and it still haunts me to this day from time to time. The father of the kid was piss drunk. 24 beers drunk. He was charged with manslaughter and dui. He posted bail and skipped out of town before our crew could testify against him. I don't know what ever became of him, but i hope he lived the rest of his life in the most severe pain and agony.

This is by far the grossest one...[puke]

How many times did you shoot him??

1) Train vs. Person.

Fatty yellowish meat strewn everywhere, and not unlike when a deer gets hit on a road, there was hair blowing all around on the ground.

Two come to mind.
First was a call I went on in high school.
I was a vol fireman. The call was for a car/tandem axle truck wreck. It turns out the woman in the car was the mother of one of of my classmates. The windshield came out of the car and sliced the top of her head off just above the eyes. An autopsy reveled she had a massive heart attack prior to hitting the coal truck head on.
Second was a guy in Pittsburgh, PA that wanted to kill himself by jumping off a 17 story building. I didn't see him in flight, but was there to help EMTs work on him. He hit the rear of a car flat across the trunk. The trunk lid was pushed into the frame along with the floor of it. The shocks were blown out and the rear rims were flat. I never found out how bad his injuries were, but he was conscious while we worked on him.

For your amusement: the "First Blood!" thread on rec.woodworking.

[url]http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&edition=&th=251369b24319be7b&rnum=1[/url]

Wave,

If he was that close to the left guard rail, that means he was probably one of those assholes who refuse to get in line for the bridge exit back beyond the NY Post building.  No doubt he tried to "cut in" at the last second.

I say he had it coming....  [:)]

A 12 gauge slug to head of an 18 month old boy. It "flower petaled" from his lower jaw on up.

I've seen some nasty stuff, particularly when I was doing my 3rd year surgery rotation in the trauma center. I really think the LEOs and EMTs see worse stuff in the field, though.

A few "silly" injuries I remember though.

A 350+ lb. plowboy who was flying an ultralite airplane. The plane lost power on landing and he tried to Fred Flintstone his approach. He had bilateral open tib/fib fractures. I remember distinctly seeing this huge landwhale on the table with the bottom half of his legs broken at 90 degree angles, bones sticking out. I was thinking, "What is this idiot doing in an ultralite.

A drunk guy decided to climb on the roof to fix his TV antenna in a rainstorm. The resulting shock the skin off his hand and his foot. The weird thing was the skin was still shaped like his hand and his foot, hanging off his appendages, deep fried to a crackly crunch. It was like he had two hands on the same arm, two feet on the same leg. Oh, and still fighting and cussing the hospital personnel.

I was a first responder (still am) while working at a printing company.

1) Saw a junior pressman get his t-shit bottom caught in a running press. The hem of the shirt ripped off, but the force cut a gash around his waist...He was lucky the press didn't pull him in.
2)Same place...construction workers working on the expansion, new parking lot...not paved yet.
One worker was running his endloader across the lot, the front scoop was lowered. The manholes and drain grates were sticking out of the ground about 2-3". He was going about 20 mph and the front scoop hit a man-hole. The driver was thrown thru the wind shield...face first. His face was literally shredded.

3) A two car accident we happened upon one night. We were the first on scene and called 911. I checked the occupant of the first car. His feet were over the back of the drivers seat, and his upper body was ion the passengers foot well. He was still alive, (and in one piece) no seat belt. His face was imprinted in the dash above the guages, the steering wheel was bent in half.
I then checkd the second car that was on it's side in the ditch. the driver, a teenaged girl, was laying on her right side on the passenger's door inside. As I assesed her situation, I noticed her arm was protruding out from under the door. Her arm was severed just above the elbow. I quickly climbed in and applied a tourniquet(sp) on her upper arm to help stop the bleeding. Within a few minutes, the EMT's showed up.

Turns out the driver of the first car had a seziure (he died of a brain tumor three days later) brought on by his tumor.

I have seen plenty more, but don't want to go into detail. It doesn't bother me, unless it's a child. then I have nighmares. Onecar accident in particular still gives me nightmares. 6 year old boy, convertible, no seat belt, support cable for telephone line....boy cut in half. That's all I'm gonna say. I still wake up in the night from that one.

While working in an ER I saw lots of stuff. The worst was a partial decapitation from an MVA. Everything from the nose up was gone. One of the most discusting clinical things I had to do was to lance a huge sebacious cyst on a guys back, the cyst was larger than a golf ball. I had to lance it, drain it (lots of puss squirting), stick my finger in it and "scrape" out any remaining pustules. It smelled really bad.

WOW!!!! Damn you guys have seen some crazy shit! the worst i ever saw was a gangbanger take 3 rounds in the head from a .45, there was nothing left on the back of his skull, and a guy that was pushed out of a third story window, he landed head down on the street, caught it as we were driving past it, just before the police and abulance showed up, not a nice thing to see, and for a bit of irony, we were going to see the movie Drop Dead Gorgeous.

When I was working in the medical field the "gross" things never bothered me. Since I have been away from it I have turned into a total puss. Now I cringe at the site of a broken limb.

For one, I stay up all night, and sleep all day.

Here's what I saw about 9 hours ago.....

Ambulance pulls up with an MVA on board.  23 yo male ejected from the vehicle.  

[b]Let me say that alcohol, marijuana, and Xanax DO NOT MIX!!!![/b]

Returning at high speed from a beer run, the decedent tells his gf that "We're sliding".

The next thing she sees is him flying thru the windshield.  She was "treated and released".  He was released to the morgue.  She was wearing her seat belt, he was not.....

Aparrently, he had struck something mid flight(fencepost?).  Just above his right eye was where his skull ended.  Nothing but a cavity where the gray matter should have been.  There was still a little floating around in the bottom of his brain bucket, but not much...

I'm guessing that [i]every[/i] bone in his body was broken, from what I saw from about 3 feet away.

The reaction from his mother, when she viewed him, was enough to make me "go on break" for awhile, since I had a brother that had passed away in a MVA many years ago.

A mother's reaction is burned indelibly into my feeble mind.

Do you want to hear about Tuesday night?  No?  Good!!!!  It haunts me goddamn near every waking moment.




[b] PLEASE WEAR YOUR FUCKING SEATBELTS!!!  THEY WERE PUT THERE FOR A REASON!!!!!!! [/b]

If not for yourself, strap yourself in for your mother.

I don't want to view, or read about you.

Excuse me, I have to go [s]cry my fucking eyes out[/s] blow my nose.