Ouch, that hurt!

[+Semper Questio]

It's been just over 2 years now since I fell while combing down off a retaining while I had scaled (yes, without anyone around or any safety gear) which resulted in both heel (calcaneous) bones shattered. Spent a month in the hospital, have had 3 operations, ages in physical therapy, 4 months in a wheelchair. Had to learn to stand, walk, etc. all over again. I am just now starting to do fairly decently on stairs again and I'm backup to some most T2 and some T2.5 caches. For all the details (and pictures) check out my injury blog - Frankenfeet.

[+bittsen]

It's been just over 2 years now since I fell while combing down off a retaining while I had scaled (yes, without anyone around or any safety gear) which resulted in both heel (calcaneous) bones shattered. Spent a month in the hospital, have had 3 operations, ages in physical therapy, 4 months in a wheelchair. Had to learn to stand, walk, etc. all over again. I am just now starting to do fairly decently on stairs again and I'm backup to some most T2 and some T2.5 caches. For all the details (and pictures) check out my injury blog - Frankenfeet.

What an interesting read.

I'm sorry to hear of your accident but am glad things are getting back to something resembling normal for you.

 

Reading your blog reminds me of the retaining wall I almost climbed one day but was too afraid to. Next time I won't be afraid, I will be educated as to what could happen.

 

I know second hand of just how bad your injury is and how long it can take for recovery. My nephew had the same injury to one of his heels. It was over two years before he could walk without a limp. He eventually managed to get into the Marines and through basic training. I'm sure you can relate.

 

Good luck on the future healing. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[+simpjkee]

This was incredibly painful. A rock hit it just perfectly to shatter it.

 

[+searchjaunt]

What about his: http://searchjaunt.idizaai.be/the-needle/

[DannyCaffeine]

Sliced the back of my hand open on a black berry thorn. Nothing too interesting.

[+gorillagal]

Last year when replacing a cache in a tight rock crevice, one of the rocks started falling and my caching partner was below me. Not wanting it to hit her on the head, I tried to catch it. I didn't stop it, and it smashed my finger in the process. (But it missed my caching partner)

 

 

This was immediately afterward. It looked much worse in the next couple days. If anyone needs to know a good way to cut through the nail, I can tell you (and it's not a red-hot needle or paperclip).

 

Here's my log entry: Fish Out Of Water

 

Tiny drill bit?

Thats how I did it when something like that happened to me. Don't put the bit in a drill. Just twirl id between your thumb and forefinger.

 

P.S. that only looks a LOT painful.

Bingo! Sounds horrible when I tell people, but it works quickly and relieves the pain.

[+Setan Meyacha]

The areas I like to cache in the most are probably the most likely to have a major accident in; desert, canyons and mountains of Southern Idaho. But, I’ve either been very lucky or have an angel on my shoulder….except on one caching trip with a very good friend of mine. We were nearing the end of the day of caching and still about 50 – 60 miles from home, when we came to a cache that only took us about 3 minutes to walk to from where we parked his Jeep. It was a wooded area not far from Anderson Ranch Reservoir with a trickling stream running near the cache site. We had to bushwhack to get to the cache site and since I was in the lead it was only natural for me to attempt to get either up and over the huge boulder where the cache was hidden, or fight my way through the thick brush surrounding the boulder. I chose the first option.

The boulder was covered with wet moss and numerous twigs and branches from the trees overhead. It slanted on a fairly steep angle and as I neared the top of the boulder I stepped on a wet limb and my foot went out from under me. I came down on the sharp edge of the boulder about four inches above my ankle on my shin bone. Fortunately, there was a tree limb to keep my forward momentum from propelling me over the edge of the boulder.

After rocking back and forth clutching my shin bone with both hands for several minutes, I convinced my friend I was okay enough to continue the pursuit of the cache. It was found, I signed the log for both of us so he wouldn’t have to make the same journey, then found an easier way around the base of the boulder back to the ‘trail’.

It took us (me) nearly a half-hour to make it back to the Jeep and another five minutes trying to figure out how to get my leg in the Jeep without causing any further pain. My friend did the remaining few caches on our way home and I found out, much later, that I had a splinter fracture of my shin bone and chipped a piece of bone off that still gives me fits if I bump my leg the wrong way 3 years later. I was a gimp for a couple of months that probably could have been shortened if I would have just had it checked out sooner.

No bee, wasp or hornet stings…to date. No stinging nettles, no poison oak or ivy. Close, but no snake bites…just tons of fun exploring the world around me.

[+semstix]

About half way into a 3 mile (one way) hike into the wilderness, a tree root reached out and grabbed me, wreasling me to the ground. Broke all three bones in my left arm... one of them twice.

 

 

I headed back to the trailhead and waited for the rest of the party to continue the hike. When they got back we cached our way back to town... so I found 10 more caches on the way to the ER. (Priorities you know!)

 

The picture above was taken a week or two later on another hike on the south slope of Mount St Helens.

 

Thats dedication!

[+semstix]

I've was stung three times while reaching into a hornets nest. Once on the hand, that was my first clue and 2 more while running away from the Rotten Wood Cache GCNFHM I was looking in the wrong dead tree, you think?

[+Wolfie01]

I've had a good week...took a sapling into the nether regions a few days ago while focused on my GPS vs. what's in front of me. Then had a tree branch literally up my nose on Thursday. Great timing since I had a job interview on Friday.

[+OmahaCachers]

A few months ago I had in my possession a travel bug that I suddenly decided needed to go to South Dakota. We're in Omaha Nebraska so it's about an hour and a half drive. My husband and I hopped in the car in the middle of the night to take it. We were getting close to our 200th find so we timed our finds along the way to get 200 in SD. The skies were threatening to rain. We had deer jump almost in front of us (ok, I'm kinda exaggerating there but we did see plenty of deer). On the 195th find, out in the middle of nowhere, I got out of the car to start walking toward some trees. Hubby said he was going to turn the car around to shine the headlights that way. I thought he was going to go forward, instead, he backed up and somehow knocked me down and ran over my ankle! Flashlight goes flying and GPS drops. Hubby made me walk it off; wasn't broken, just sprained. I got back in the car and he got the cache. On the way back, he found the flashlight I thought we lost. Made it to South Dakota, left the travel bug in a lamp post cache and it started raining. On the way home, I remembered the first aid kit in the car so I put ice on my ankle. So now I know what it feels like to get ran over without getting seriously hurt. Hubby hates how I laugh at it. "It's NOT funny!". That's the worst I got hurt while geocaching.

[+TeamFiestyMidgets]

I would tell you.....but sadly it is WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION FOR A FORUM!!!!!! LOL

[+Semper Questio]

It's been just over 2 years now since I fell while combing down off a retaining while I had scaled (yes, without anyone around or any safety gear) which resulted in both heel (calcaneous) bones shattered. Spent a month in the hospital, have had 3 operations, ages in physical therapy, 4 months in a wheelchair. Had to learn to stand, walk, etc. all over again. I am just now starting to do fairly decently on stairs again and I'm backup to some most T2 and some T2.5 caches. For all the details (and pictures) check out my injury blog - Frankenfeet.

What an interesting read.

I'm sorry to hear of your accident but am glad things are getting back to something resembling normal for you.

 

Reading your blog reminds me of the retaining wall I almost climbed one day but was too afraid to. Next time I won't be afraid, I will be educated as to what could happen.

 

I know second hand of just how bad your injury is and how long it can take for recovery. My nephew had the same injury to one of his heels. It was over two years before he could walk without a limp. He eventually managed to get into the Marines and through basic training. I'm sure you can relate.

 

Good luck on the future healing. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

Thanks, bittsen. I appreciate the good wishes.

 

If nothing else this experience has shown me why I am on this Earth....

 

To serve as a warning to others!

[The 2 Dogs]

Soon after I began my caching career, and on my birthday I fell over a cliff while searching for a cache. The fall was about 35 ft, and I came to rest on a narrow ledge situated at least another 60 feet above the bottom. The worst part of that was trying to climb back up off the ledge while cut, bleeding and bruised. It was no fun but it's amazing what you do when you are faced with a such situation. I then had a fair hike to get back to my car for help. I think I was in shock the whole time, but I eventually made it. I'm still here and still caching.

[Amo_Angelus]

Falling into a barbed wire fence while trying to traverse a bogged down bit of the trail due to wearing non waterproof shoes...I still ended up ankle deep in it, but bleeding too! Didn't hurt too bad though, I've done worse and I'm sure I will do worse in the future.

[Freaksäck]

This actually happened a while back - after discovering that the drummer of my band is a geocacher ("no waaay!!! really?!") we decided to join forces and go on a cache-hunt with another friend. It was a LP cache in the cellar of an old factory. Very dark, very wet and very rotten. The place was HUGE (or so it seemed) and it was quite a labyrinth, so we started using a piece of chalk to make some markings on the wall. We had to find three objects in order to get the coordinates for the final cache (ketchup and a vinegar bottle and a box of salt).

 

My all-stars had some huge holes in their soles - since we weren´t going into the woods I figured they´d be OK - until I stepped onto something squishy, hairy and wet and jumped around squeaking (I thought I had stepped on a dead rat). Our drummer (I was horrified clutching to his arm) directed the flashlight to the spot and I was relieved to see it was something else - I don´t know what it was, as long as it wasn´t some dead animal I was fine and he laughed at me for it for about the next half hour. And kept on cracking jokes about my totally girlish behavior (as I am a girl I have the full right to).

 

But payback is a bitch. We were walking through a very narrow tunnel system, we had to walk in a single file and there were pipes and cables hanging all over the place. Our friend was at the front, and as she´s rather short, the pipes didn´t bother her at all - my drummer on the other side, was the tallest of us and didn´t see one of the pipes running across the tunnel, banged his forehead on it, which sent him flying backwards in a very groteske matrix-like backflip and fell hitting the back of his head on the floor.

 

We were a tad worried, don´t get me wrong - but our friend and I (I had seen the entire thing from the back) had a major laughing fit and I had to sit down in the middle of spiderwebs and rubble laughing my head off. (The video we made of the incident looks like a slapstick version of the blair witch project).

[+Lefty Writer]

This last summer (June '09) my wife and I and another caching couple were doing a series near Lake Corpus Christi. I was walking down this mild slope and stepped into a hole with my left foot. As I was attempting to "break" my fall, I managed to tear the quadriceps muscle just above my right knee. This was on a Friday afternoon, out of town, so I didn't see an orthopaedist until that following Monday.

 

I had to have this surgically repaired, so that put me out of action for a while.

 

I managed to tear it a second time during my recovery while descending some stairs. So, two surgeries later, I'm doing much better and am actually finding more than just LPC's and park and grabs. I still have to be careful on unstable terrain, or slopes, but each day I get stronger and stronger.

[+Chi-Rho]

I've had my fair share of bushwhacking scrapes and bruises but two geocaching accidents stand out:

 

1.) Bit by a dog. The dog was on leash at the time but the owner wasn't paying attention. It bit through my jeans to my my calf leaving a deep bruise and a transverse scar that is still visible several months later. The really sad part is that I love dogs and wasn't afraid of them before but now when I'm out caching and I'm approached by even an obviously friendly dog my adrenaline starts to pump.

 

2.) Slipped on a snowy boulder while bushwhacking and landed with my left hand palm down in the middle of a prickly pear. Nothing to do but sit there and pull hundreds spines out as best as I could while trying not to bleed everywhere. A couple of the big spines hit a tendon or ligament at the base of my ring finger and I couldn't use that part of my hand for a while. Now it looks like I have random tattooed dots on my palm where I couldn't remove all the spines. I'm very careful around cacti now.

[+Springsman]

Here's mine....Last weekend the wife and I went out early, we were doing 4 caches along a trail and had decided to take a bit of a shortcut down a slope....she slipped and fell on her bum...not bad didn't think much of it 'till she got up and took a couple paces...she then realized she had fallen in a cactus patch....she had needles allllll in her bum. So we get off the slope and back onto the trail...We thought we were totally alone on the trail...so she drops trou, bends over and I proceed to pick tiny needles out....she's bent over, I'm bent over "back there" and we hear what I can only describe as a high pitch WOOOP! An older lady and her little Schnauzer are standing in shock and horror at the site of me and my wife on the trail undoubtedly thinking we're doing something toooootaly different.... 'bout all we could muster was a "scuse us" as she turned tail and reversed trail. bum needle picking complete we dashed for the caches and high tailed it out of the area smile.gif

[+Msage]

I dislocated my shoulder a few weeks ago about 10 feet from the cache I was looking for. No big hike or anything, just a nice stroll in the woods that turned into a trip to the ER. It was a series of little decisions that led to the event.... was caching with family and after our first easy find we decided to change plans and go for some different caches than the ones i had planned out for the day... which is why i hadn't yet read the logs for the ones we went after instead... and my iphone was dead so i couldn't check the geocaching app for details, so we just went by the saved cache info in my GPS... the second cache we tried was a DNF, so we were a bit frustrated going into cache #3 for the day, then it was bit hard to find cache #3 too (I read later in the log that the coordinates are a bit off).... so, we were searching the bank of a small brook... not really steep but a bit of a hill with some ledge... i started to slip down the embankment, reached out for a tree to stabilize myself, but i kept slipping and my hand stayed on the tree... something had to give... it wasn't until my shoulder popped out of the socket that i let go of the tree........duh, should have just landed on my butt. (though after reading that last post, maybe not!) Luckily we were fairly close to the car. Took 30 minutes for the ER to pop it back in. I had to go back 2 wks later just to find that cache-- it was fairly easy the second time and i was really careful not to slip-- especially since my shoulder was still in pretty rough shape!

[ashnikes]

couldnt find a cache in a bush near a bunch of florida palm trees, the ones with the giant thorns on them, stood up giving up after quite some time looking, and a dead palm tree branch thorn decided it wanted to meet my skull for dinner.

 

it hurt, and i didnt know what happened, and about fainted trying to walk back to the car, my friend who was with me, called me all sorts of fun names, you know the kind when you act like a "woman" about stuff like that,

 

just pulled out the thorn out of my head today nearly a week later, it had been lodged in there since then. I thought it was a stubborn scab,

 

i didnt know your head could bruise, talk about sore....

 

no wonder my forum posts have been lacking lately.

[+Twitch Hugs Trees]

couldnt find a cache in a bush near a bunch of florida palm trees, the ones with the giant thorns on them, stood up giving up after quite some time looking, and a dead palm tree branch thorn decided it wanted to meet my skull for dinner.

 

it hurt, and i didnt know what happened, and about fainted trying to walk back to the car, my friend who was with me, called me all sorts of fun names, you know the kind when you act like a "woman" about stuff like that,

 

just pulled out the thorn out of my head today nearly a week later, it had been lodged in there since then. I thought it was a stubborn scab,

 

i didnt know your head could bruise, talk about sore....

 

no wonder my forum posts have been lacking lately.

 

How long was the thorn? Now I know which palm trees to avoid...

 

Hope your head feels better.

[+helloyo53]

I take my bike everywhere to geocache, so the worse accident I've ever had was when I was riding my bike to one of the caches. I was riding my bike on the sidewalk, and one of the lightposts were actually on the sidewalk. I thought I had enough room to get between it and a car on the other side of the sidewalk, so I tried to squeeze by. I didn't have enough room, and my handlebar smashed right into the post, flinging me into an awkward position. But I got up and ended up getting to the cache site, eventually finding it.

[ashnikes]

couldnt find a cache in a bush near a bunch of florida palm trees, the ones with the giant thorns on them, stood up giving up after quite some time looking, and a dead palm tree branch thorn decided it wanted to meet my skull for dinner.

 

it hurt, and i didnt know what happened, and about fainted trying to walk back to the car, my friend who was with me, called me all sorts of fun names, you know the kind when you act like a "woman" about stuff like that,

 

just pulled out the thorn out of my head today nearly a week later, it had been lodged in there since then. I thought it was a stubborn scab,

 

i didnt know your head could bruise, talk about sore....

 

no wonder my forum posts have been lacking lately.

 

How long was the thorn? Now I know which palm trees to avoid...

 

Hope your head feels better.

 

bout the size of a small dogs toenail,

[+JL_HSTRE]

I got stung in the shin by a wasp while searching for a cache. For the second time that day. With 2 other people. That had been found by several other people that day. A sad DNF indeed.

 

Last week I also got slashed in the thigh by a razor palm. Very shallow cut with barely any bleeding, but the gash was about 6".

Edited June 21, 2010 by joshism

[+mommix3]

so far nothing major other than meeting a HUGE swarm of the biggest mosquitos I've ever seen and getting poked by weeds.. But then again we just started.

[+kleetus]

Yesterday I went to a new cache in the woods. Walking on the trail there were some yellow caution ribbons on some cabbage palms. Not sure what they meant so we continued walking. I found out the hard way what they were for. Yellow jackets attacked my back in force. I got about ten stings at the same time. I took off running at full speed. Ahead of me on the trail was a caching friend who thought I had walked into spider webs. He was about to laugh at me until I ran past him and gave him a few of the biting devils that were following me. We ran 700 feet or so and were still being attacked. Then we went ahead and went for the cache. Probably a mistake because at GZ I wasn't feeling so hot. We were well over a mile from the parking area. I got home and had 34 bites: 19 on my back, 10 on my hands, 4 on my arms, and one on my face. I was hurting all day. I guess if I was allergic I would have died in the woods. Today I just itch and my hands are still swollen.