Your worst theatre injury

[superdoo]

I really haven't had an major injuries, but my worst was an odd one.

I was gutting an upright piano for a show so naturally decided that all of the strings needed to be cut. After doing so I set to work removing the tunning pegs. I reached in to remove one and a sharp pain went all the way up my arm. It felt like I had taken 220V or something. I looked between my middle and ring fingers and found a small puncture which had a little bit of blood coming out (about the size of a medium gauge piece of piano string).
Long story short my arm was in agony for around 12 hour and I couldn't close my hand for 2 days.

Just recalling the incident makes my hand and arm hurt!

 

[Eboy87]

If she's not a plastic surgeon I wouldn't suggest it.
I have scars to prove that many GP's can't stitch for anything.

I'm gonna have to call bull$hit on this one. I know plenty of GP's who can do a fine job stitching someone up, and I'm speaking as the son of an MD and as the one that's been on the table a few times (various falls when I was little).

 

[LD4Life]

Well, I'll share my worst and the worst that happened to someone on a crew of mine. For me, I was acting at the time and caught my foot on a piece of false decking and landed shin-first on the edge of an aluminum riser. Cut my shin to the bone, could see the bone and all. Fun times.
The worst to someone on my crew took place during a production of Secret Garden. One of the greener crew members let go of a fly rope that had not been reweighted yet, which promptly began to plummet. My assistant grabbed the rope and eventually stopped it with his hands, or what skin was left on the palms of them. Talk about taking it for the team. It must be noted at this point that the batton in question was an electric loaded with lights (that theatre didn't have an electric fly lift). The guy still has scars all over his hands.

 

[avkid]

I'm gonna have to call bull$hit on this one. I know plenty of GP's who can do a fine job stitching someone up

Yes, I admit to poor use of my words.
-
Urgent care is where I have had problems.
In a normal situation with a proper work area and time most doctors can in fact suture well.
Just don't bet the farm on that walk in care center physician with a waiting room of 20 patients and an average per patient time of 6 minutes.
-
If we had the correct supplies I would have had my dad do it.
(26 year EMS vet and US Army trained Medic)

 

[Marius]

My tale is cautionary on many levels. First and formost it proves that stupidity, in certain circumstances, does indeed hurt. I was 30 years old, working at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, and had been a techie since I was 16 so I can't claim newbie on this. We never kept the hand guard on the table saw since it was more of a nuisance than anything else. I had been ripping 1x3 for about an hour when a fresh stack of 1 x 12 was brought over. At this point I should have turned off the machine and taken a break to get my bearings back. Instead I just dove in to the next pile. I had the equivalent of white line fever and was off in my own little world and not really paying attention to the blade. I had just finished a cut, and yes I was using push sticks, and was absent-mindedly reaching for the next board when a short, sharp shock jolted my left hand/arm. Long story short I took 1/2" off my left thumb, and the surgeon took another 1/4". I was in the hospital for 1 week, and out of work for 3 months(thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Workers Comp). When I finally got back to the shop, and had to use the table saw, I was amazed at how scared I was, but I got over it after a fashion. That was my first, and last major injury and it happened 13 years ago. Just remember, kiddies, safety equipment may seem to be a pain in the *****, but sometimes it really does work.

 

[Eboy87]

Just to reiterate Marius for you young'uns keeping score at home, the moment you lose respect for the equipment, the equipment bites you.

I'm thankful I've never had a major incident with a power tool. I sanded the knuckle of my thumb a little bit with a dremel; I was sanding something (don't remember what), had the sanding drum on, it snagged and took off to my knuckle. Personally, I'm scared to death of power tools, and I guess it makes me overly cautious around them. That and this strange aversion to pain that I have. My dad on the other hand... let's just say he's had a few incidents these past few months (bathroom remodeling project), and one of them almost cost me my life. Which brings up a few points in and of itself, but I'll leave it to this as well; beer and power tools don't mix.

 

[Zman]

Well these arent nearly as bad as some that have been reported. I was working on a strike a few months ago for She Loves Me. I was pulling the luan off a wall and there was a freshmen girl working above me. she was very careless and simply took a crowbar to the wood a ripped it off. She moved the entire sheet of luan (off of her wall) and dropped it. It came crashing down a smacked me right in the back. I fell down gave her a piece of my mind and kept working.
The next one is mostly stupidity rather than anyone else's fault. I was drilling a tiny piece of wood in order to keep a cord hidden. My hand slipped and i squeezed the trigger and the pilot bit went straight trough my nail, i ripped it out and taped it up. It took my nail around a year to grow back.

 

[superdoo]

I sanded the knuckle of my thumb a little bit with a dremel; I was sanding something (don't remember what), had the sanding drum on, it snagged and took off to my knuckle.

That reminds me of my other pseudo bad injury... I was making knife rests out of scrap 1x4 with a rotozip. Mind you I was in High School at the time and jsut started working in the theatre, so I didn't bother using a vice to hold the 1" by 4" piece of wood. I mean that would be a waist of time right?
Those of you who have used rotary tools for fine carving can probably guess what happened. Yup. I essentially cheese graded my entire thumb.

This is where the fact that I was in HS at the time really comes into play....
My hand was shaking really bad from the pain and I couldn't finish the project so I went and showed my friend my "cool" battle wound and asked him to finish. I'm a nice guy so I warned him of the danger (but for some reason still didn't think about using the vice). So he grabbed the tool and the tiny piece of wood and started at it. The tool jumped almost immediately but missed him. Being that we were in HS, this caused intense laughter. Then he went back at it and after five minutes I heard the tool jump again followed by a sharp "YOW!"
His thumb and forefinger now looked similar to mine but worse! And yes, there again was much laughter.

Oh how I miss being able to laugh at that kind of pain, however I do NOT miss being that dumb!

I still hate working with rotaries.

 

[bobgaggle]

I've slit my wrist open twice while working on shows. One happened during Jekyll and Hyde when someone tried to repair a broken ladder upright with screws about an inch too long. I went on stage with a dripping wrist. Luckily I was wearing a trench coat to hide the red stuff. The second time was my fault, again with a screw that i left sticking out of a piece of lumber. Luckily I didn't hit any arteries, but my mom freaked out when she saw the gash. (something about depressed, reclusive teens etc) haha

 

[bobgaggle]

I FINALLY GOT A CROSS SHAPED SCAR. I was putting some extra screws into a set of stairs, the drill slipped, and i got a nice phillip's head shape right in the middle of my knuckle. I', kinda proud of it. It happened once before but all i got was a hole in my hand...now i've got the cross

 

[SteveB]

Right now, my worst theater injury, that I can recall in a 34 year career, is a wood splinter under the nail of my middle finger on my right hand, all the way down to the cuticle. This past Sunday on a load-in of a tour of Evita.

Old wood, from an old stage floor due to be replaced this summer.

Required a hospital visit, but only after finishing the bulk of the load in. THEN a visit to the emergencey room. 5 shots of Novacaine, or it's equivelant to numb the hand - those shots really, really hurt, BTW, then a nurse or whatever, digging away at the splinter for 30 minutes using whatever tools, they could find to pry the nail up and dig into the sensitive skin - it is a torture technique for good reason.

A week later, it hurts like a son-of-a-*****, all black and blue and making use of my right hand extraordinarily painful.

Spent today shopping for all sorts of industrial strength finger covers - foam, aluminum, etc... to protect the finger from getting banged. I need the hand early tomorrow for a focus.

Steve B.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

My finger hurt reading that.

 

[Spikesgirl]

Gosh, I've been reading this thread and I think i've got you all beat - due to all the heavy lifting over the tears, the lumbar region of my spine had disingrated. When they give you all those lectures about safe lifting, you should really listen to them. It cost me my stage construction career and the running joke is that I have enough hardware in my back to build a Loadstar.

Aside from that, I had my right thumb crushed during the moving of a light board and nearly had the tip of my left thumb removed during a moment of inattention. Also put a screw through my left thumb - while on top of a 14 foot ladder - and we won't talk about other injuries, it makes me depressed.

Yea, life's been a bowl of cherries in the theater.

Char5lie

 

[ReiRei]

I dislocated my right shoulder once playing softball and relocated it myself because my coach was dumb and ended up grinding my bones against each other. During BatB we had to pull our 4th electric back (attached ropes to baton and pulled on it while flying it in) and I happened to be one of those people pulling on the ropes. Pull pull pull and suddenly, POP! My right shoulder just popped out of place and luckily someone was standing right next to me saying something about lights or else the set would have been pretty banged up...

Bringing in a hollow metal, cylindrical, pipe thing; and a few trash cans for Little Shop of Horrors set and I didn't really notice at first so I'm not sure which metal object did the trick, but I sliced the palm of my hand open and looked down at my hand at one point and all I said was, "Hey... I should probably get a band-aid."

Running a mic from sound booth to stage, came sprinting down the stairs and my ankle rolled... hard. Looked like someone shoved a couple of baseballs in there and painted them black blue and eventually yellow. Took about a month or so for the swelling to go down. Once my ankles sprain, they stay that way for a really long time...

Adjusting a 36degree s4 in our House right pocket. Leaned over to hear what my LD was saying and I leaned right into it. Now I have a wonderful burn mark on my right arm... smelt the burning flesh and everything...

Also dropped a pig on my foot while my little pinky toe was broken... that was pleasant...

 

[leistico]

Ironically in 22 years of tech I've never had a tech-related injury, though I have banged myself up good when I was acting -- once, in a chase scene, when my foot slipped on the edge of a platform and I buried the corner of that platform into my shin, and once in a fight scene where a punch and a block of that punch were off by a split second. The pinky finger on my right hand...well, it used to be straight Now it's a reminder to me to rehearse the living s*** out of any physical scene.

Yeah, now it happened. I was building scenery a couple months ago, and I shot a one-inch narrow-crown staple through my finger with a pneumatic. Just one leg of it, in and out the side. I said, "$#!t," walked to the tool room, grabbed pliers, counted to three and yanked. Luckily no pain, not much blood, either. Now I always double-check where my other hand is when I'm banging together two pieces of wood.

 

[highschooltech]

I have been pretty lucky in my short career, even with all my anti OSHA moments. The worst thing that i have done is slice my finger really good with a gobo i had just cut. I was putting it in the frame and my finger slipped. Almost had to go and get stitchs but our TD is EMT trained and he said it would be a waste of time so we just wrapped it in gauze and i kept working.

 

[Spikesgirl]

I was feeling a little sorry for myself after reading about such relatively minor injuries. Was I so unsafe that my injuries were due to inattention, but rather I think they were all due to a long tech history instead as it's taken me nearly 35 years to collect them all. See what you have to look forward to?

 

[punktech]

okay, so second time in a week that i've heard about run away situations handled improperly (LD4Life's post on here). please, please, please people, tell me these are uncommon, i REALLY don't want to go through another. i feel as though there's some sort of lax teaching going on if people don't know what to do about these.

and i'll say it again, just to get it out there. stab it if you're messing with weight, and if you are holding an out of weight line let it go, scream "runaway" as loudly as you humanly can, and then move like a bat out of hades AWAY FROM THE RAIL!!! if there's an out-of control line NEVER stay near the rail, and NEVER try to stop it, you CAN (and very possibly will) end up dead.

 

[Van]

Yeah, now it happened. I was building scenery a couple months ago, and I shot a one-inch narrow-crown staple through my finger with a pneumatic. Just one leg of it, in and out the side. I said, "$#!t," walked to the tool room, grabbed pliers, counted to three and yanked. Luckily no pain, not much blood, either. Now I always double-check where my other hand is when I'm banging together two pieces of wood.

This reminds me of my favorite all time carpentry related injuries. I don't think I've posted it on here before, and if I have I apologized.
The following is a true story as related to me by a mentor, of sorts, of mine. So My mentors friend is working on building a house as part of the framing project he is constructing "sistered" 2x4 for the top rail of a wall. Imagine, if you will, you hold two 2x4's together, face to face, you shoot a 16d nail through one side scoot down 8 inches and shot another nail, lather rinse repeat. A very Tedious job. So here's "Heiny" < that's his nickname> with a couple of 12 ' 2x4's layed across his knee, and a framing nailer in his right hand, he's kinda squatting and using his knee as a saw horse of sorts that way he just slide the 2x down a few inches shoots another nail, get it ? quick and easy bu not necessarily the best idea in the world. Well as luck would have it the 2x slipped and Heiny shot a 16d nail right down through the top of his knee. Screaming and cussing, he drives himself to the hospital, since there is no one else at the construction site. Heiny hobbles up to the emergency room check in and the Nurse asks, " What's the matter honey?" He points to his knee where you can just see the head of the nail sticking up about 3/4" above his jeans covered knee. "I've got a nail, in my knee." he grimaces. he nurse with a concerned look on her face gets up and walks around the desk. She gets a close look at his knee, looks him in the face, looks back down at the knee, straightens up and says,"Well honey, Why didn't you stop hammering ? "

 

[noiseboyalltheway]

Was working on a show in a glasgow college few months back, I had t push the retrackt back to get at the back bank of fresnels, caught my finger in the rolling release mech, nearly broke it in half.
this is a hint to anyone using retractable seating... dont do it yourself