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Geo Accident


dikndi

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I am considering writing a paper on the type of injuries sustained during Geocaching. Have you had one? Would you be willing to answer questions about it?

I want to see if there is any common factors involved that will help us identify and prevent common injuries.

 

If you are willing to participate, please email me with just your email address. If I get enough responses, I will then forward a questionaire. You can post a quick reply to the board so as to keep the post current( that would help me catch more readers)

 

You can email me at geomed2004@hotmail.com I have set this account up just for the paper, If you have any questions please feel free to email me at my geocache account.

 

It goes without saying that I will respect your privacy.

 

Thank you in advance

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Are you only interested in injuries to people, or do cars count? I injured my car at this cache.

 

I have injured myself caching several times, but nothing serious. Scraped a leg, twisted an ankle etc. Are you looking for stories of more serious injuries? There probably are some, but not from me. Hopefully it will stay that way! :D

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Thats what happens when you post quickly, You leave out the important stuff.

 

I am looking for all types of injuries, twisted ankle, cuts from brambles, strained back, Chest Pain, Asthma attacks, insect stings. etc etc. Once I have the initial questions asked, I will conduct 6 and 12 month follow up. It could be that the minor twisted ankle ended up being more.

 

I am trying to see if there are any common threads or profiles. i.e

 

a Lone, 37 year old male, with 38 cache experience, and a medical history of..... is more likely to have.......On days when its raining, looking for a 3/5 multi cache. Get the drift?

 

This type of research is common in sports. However, unlike say skiing, its hard to get data from one or two hospitals. The nature of Geocaching lends itself to lone or pair participants ALL OVER america.

 

Also, I am in no way saying that Geocaching is bad for your health. Like ALL sports, the most dangerous thing you do is driving to take part in your sport.

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Last week, I was doing a multi cache that was located all in trees- way up in trees. i'm a big guy (6'4", 275lbs) and i definaty would not concider myself acrobatic...i fell from one of the trees- just bruises from impact- but you'd think i'd fallen through a meat grinder on the way down. After that- i didnt feel bad trading the TB for a nce pen...

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I was out caching on a chilly winter morning once and developed a chest cold and a hacking cough that persisted for almost 5 weeks. After about 3 trips to the doctor, it was explained to me that the chest cold that I caught had triggered a case of asthma which I still suffer from now almost 4 months after the fact.

 

I have it under control with a variety of prescription medicine such as inhalers, nasal sprays and pills. Noone can tell how long it will last. It could end as quickly as it began, or I could have it for years. Theres just no way to know.

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OK, I'll email. You will want to check this thread too since you will find that people will post instead of emailing.

 

So, what exactly is this info for though? Basically, I'm wondering what you plan to learn from it and how it will be used. I imagine that geocaching injuies are about the same as hiking injuries, although cachers do at times do other things to reach caches, such as boating, scuba, driving, etc.

Edited by carleenp
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poison ivy. twisted ankle. small pucture wound. various bruises. cuts. wounded pride.

 

if you don't come home bleeding, how do you know you had fun?

 

and be sure to ask mountain wanderr about injuries.

 

do you count the kind of injuries you get when you call home at 1030 on a saturday night to say "guess where we are? (giggling in the background) we're in sherbrooke! (this is not near home.it is not even remotely near home. it is not in the same country as home.) we have one or two more stages to find. (more loud giggling)."

 

does your survey count the rectal insertion of a GPS unit? WHILE being thrown out a second story window? with all your topo maps?

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Last weekend when Ironman114 and I were caching. I walked over to picked Ironman114's hat. The wind was blowing pretty hard and all of a sudden, a spruce tree limb came between me and my eye glasses, scraping my eyeball really bad.

 

Yeah it hurt, but we continued caching. About 7 hours later I was severe pain. When I got home I just took some pain killers and went to bed. Next morning I was at Urgent Care and was told I had a small scrape on the eyeball. It's healing nicey.

 

It was my first geo-caching injury

 

I do have asthma and I always take my meds and my backups with me. It's sad I live WA. State where cedar trees are kings and I'm allergic to the darn tree. Plus any in the cedar family.

Edited by IronMaiden
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Yeah it hurt, but we continued caching. About 7 hours later I was severe pain. When I got home I just took some pain killers and went to bed. Next morning I was at Urgent Care and was told I had a small scrape on the eyeball. It's healing nicey.

 

So what do you do for that, just stick a band-aid on it? :rolleyes:

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I've mostly had minor little cuts and scratches, although today I banged my middle finger between a rock and a bigger rock. But hardly any of the injuries required a bandaid, much less treatment, so either I've been very careful or going to really tame caches. With summer coming and the snow in the mountains melting, I'm sure I'll find my share of trouble.

 

John

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Yeah it hurt, but we continued caching.  About 7 hours later I was severe pain.  When I got home I just took some pain killers and went to bed.  Next morning I was at Urgent Care and was told I had a small scrape on the eyeball.  It's healing nicey.

 

So what do you do for that, just stick a band-aid on it? :ph34r:

No I just sucked it up and went on to the next cache. Isn't that what a true geocacher would do? :rolleyes:

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I guess a ruptured Patellar Tendon counts. Stepped off the road, about a 50 degree slope. 3 foot elevation loss. Slipped, fell down. I knew I'd tweaked my knee. Tried to stand up, fell down, twice. Crawled back up to road. On a Forest Service road, 50 yards from the main road. Heard a car coming. Yelled enough to get them to stop. They helped me to my truck. Sent them on their way. Duct taped 2 steel rods to my leg and drove home. This happened on Sunday the 23rd. Surgery on Wednesday the 26th. No caching for a while. 48 years old. Often cache alone. Experienced outdoorsman. Some might say I made some bad decisions that day.

 

1. No cell phone. If I'd taken it what could I have done? Scare the hell out of my wife by calling her and telling her I was 30 miles away and had wrecked my leg? Call 911 and have an expensive and unnecessary ambulance ride? No blood spurting here, no urgency. No, a phone wouldn't have helped.

2. Being alone. My usual cache partner is my 8 year old daughter. Well I suppose it would have expanded her vocabulary. I did call out to various deities, so she may have learned a bit about different religions. Really the only thing it would have done is scare the hell out of her, cause it scared the hell out of me.

 

I'll file this under lessons learned and be back caching by the end of June.

Croaker

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In a local park there's a certain kind of tree that looks normal, but it's branches are covered in invisible thorns.

 

The cache was on a hill, with these trees....

 

Most cachers would grab onto these trees for support and get quite a surprise.

 

After getting this cache, I had the same experience, I think one of the thorns was imbedded in my hand for a week or two, until one day it just fell out...

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I got some gnarly poison oak last week.  As I sit here typing this, I am covered in a red itchy rash.  Does that count? :rolleyes:

Me, too. Poison Ivy, though. All over both shins. Pretty bad, although for some reason it's not all that itchy and looks a lot worse than it feels (and it looks *bad*). Got it last Saturday on a 1-star/1-star cache, no less which I failed to find and so logged a DNF. Cache required off trail bushwacking through brambles; was wearing shorts. 1-star? Ha!

 

I've come close quite a few times to twisting my ankle. Usually in areas where the cache is hidden amongs rocks, such as a glacier moraine area. Seems like these sorts of caches are great for family caching... big area, tough to find, so the more people to cover the area, the faster it's found... "we started searching, when 5 minutes later little Ashley cried out "found it!". Whereas with us solo cachers, we have to to do all the work alone and get punished by the surround obstacles for it quite a bit.

Edited by Jeeters
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How about this...

 

37 year old male goes geocaching at 2:00 pm in mid-August in Central Texas. He is alone and has packed a backpack with water and enough emergency supplies to sustain him for the 2 mile roundtrip. After a 30 minute hike in 100 degree+ temperatures through varied terrain, he reaches the general area of the geocache.

 

Sweating, but not stressed from the walk, he sits his pack on a boulder and begins searching for the cache. He spots the cache under a nearby rock. He reaches under the rock, and at the same moment, he hears a loud hiss from behind him. Jumping up and away, he turns around. He sees a black and white blur, right before he sees a spray of liquid heading his direction.

 

Fortunately, the cacher was far enough away to sustain only a minor spraying. He doesn't smell nice, but he's not drenched in skunk spray. His backpack, unfortunately, isn't so lucky.

 

He carries the smelly backpack and it's contents back to his jeep. He straps the pack and his smelly shirt onto the roof of the jeep for the 60 mile drive home.

 

----

 

Aside from this incident, massive PI overdoses and minor scrapes, said cacher has been fairly lucky.

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I went out a couple of weeks ago to find a few caches. One of them was in the woods where I spent alot of time looking but did not find it. However I did get poison ivy all over my arms. :blink: After a couple of days of over the counter stuff I went to the doctor who gave me a pack of pills to take over 6 days. The stuff worked great. A week later I was back in a different wooded area looking for another cache that I did not find, but I was watching out for the poison ivy. Well I must be blind or I don't know what I'm looking for because I am not on the pills again with bumbs all over my legs. I think I better stick to the trails next time.

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Three weeks ago, I got a splinter under my fingernail--it was almost an inch long, and it went all the way in. It's got to be the worst form of torture... I nearly passed out from the pain! And it took me about 45 minutes to slooooowly pull it out with my Leatherman. I felt like I was having a baby! :blink:

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Does not making it to the restroom on time count as a geocaching accident? :o

Yuck!

 

If you have this type of accident, it's time to look into buying a case of "Depends" undergarmets.

 

Seriously now geocaching injuries"

 

Scraped knee's, palms. Scratches and punctures from plants.

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Does not making it to the restroom on time count as a geocaching accident?  :o

Yuck!

 

If you have this type of accident, it's time to look into buying a case of "Depends" undergarmets.

 

Seriously now geocaching injuries"

 

Scraped knee's, palms. Scratches and punctures from plants.

Ha! that would be an interesting trade item/CITO! :P:D:P

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I got numerous thorns buried in my hands trying frantically to grab anything to keep me from falling down a hill. Turns out I had the wrong coordinates in my unit.

:o

 

Also, in some parts of the country BLASTOMYCOSIS may be a concern to cachers. Two years ago, 2 people in the county adjacent the one I live in got the disease. Dogs are frequently infected. The symptoms resemble pneumonia. You can get Blastomycosis from inhaling spores from fungus that grows in soil and rotting wood, particularly in the areas that are drained by the Mississippi and Missouri River watersheds. Because the disease is fairly uncommon doctors rarely think to check for the disease even though it's easily cured with antibiotics. If you have been caching and have pneumonia-like symptoms it's important that you inform your doctor that you may have been digging in rotton logs, soil, etc.

 

Hope this post helps prevent someone from coming down with a "mystery illness."

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Scraped leg while searching for hiding spot for a cache. After falling and riding pebbles down an incline for about 10 feet, I decided that that particular spot probably wasn't a good spot to hide a cache. :o

 

Oh yeah, I hurt myself, scraping my leg on a fallen tree, while clamboring up to find a cache that my son found ahead of me because he thinks he's a mountain goat.

Edited by Webfoot
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Literally walking in the park on a perfect sunny day. B) Temperature was about 15f or so, and I slipped on the ice.

Result: One spiral fracture of both bones in the lower part of my right leg. :o Six days in the local hospital, and three months on crutches. I still have the surgical nail and a couple of screws in the leg.

It hasn't stopped the geocaching though. I was out and scouting for a new cache placement before I was off the crutches.

;)

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I've been a smoker for about 30 years now. I'm eagerly waiting for the big aortic blow-out on some trail somewhere. When it happens I'll let you know.

 

By the way, dikndi... Whatever happened to the Bug Bear - Kongie #1002 TB? You picked it up las and never did anyhing wih it according to the page

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.as...06-41379e5663d6

 

That bug cost me four hours and $400 dollars in towing so I'm rather interested in its progress.

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:lol::o:o:(:P:blink::P ]AHHHHHH IM DEAD...oh, wait, if i was dead i would not be typing this right now. anyway i've got a pretty odd story here. Ok well i had just gotten home and i was headed out with my dad (programmer64) to replace some of his caches that were messed up... well little did i know that I was going to walk away with a split head!!!! oh yes the dangers of caching, first my dad slips and busts his leg, then i came over to see if he was o.k. but on my way to check on him ,very un-expectantly I fell ,hit my head on a rock , and bled all over the place, so now all you have to do to find the cache is look for the blood... lol. OH YEAH AND 1 MORE THING PLEASE BE CAREFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(by the way this all happened while replacing the MR. BELVEDERE cache in delawere) Edited by gamerboy1991
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