Your worst theatre injury

[Techiegirly]

What is the worst thing you've hurt yourself doing? What was the outcome?

I'd have to say my worst injury would be when I was first starting out in theatre and I ran my foot over with a Genie lift. I had to go to the hospital and get x-rays to make sure nothing was broken and then I had a bruise under my toe nails that lasted months.

This comes in close for second place, I've gotten shards of metal in my eyes on two seperate occasions, once landing me in UCLA medical center. Good times!

Your turn...

 

[Van]

Not including the long time permanent brain damaging life style inherent in being a technician in the first place and excluding the harm I've caused my bank account over the years, I'd have to say it was the time I "Makita'd " my Left hand. Long story short, I buried a Phillips bit into the palm of my left hand doing something really stupid, which seemed perfectly logical, at the time. Woke up the next morning with a claw instead of a hand and it took two days for the tendons to relax enough that I could open my hand. Luckily I missed the major nerves.

 

[jmabray]

Only a theatre injury because thats where I was at the time. Walking down the stairs towards the back deck at SFO at 3 am. Hit the last step funny on my left foot and popped all three tendons in my ankle. Good Times!

 

[What Rigger?]

Rope burns on my hands. Allllll the time (flying effects, you know?) But not so much recently, I've toughened up.

A 10 foot stack of nine aluminum i-beams dropped on my foot by some stupid f*cking stoner shop guy. D*uche. And my then employer wanted to NOT have me go to the doctor so their insurance premium wouldn't go up. Uh, that'd be a 'no', Robert.

Two 20 lbs crates lowered quickly onto my head from 15 feet on an old school 3:1 block and fall. Ambulance trip was cool, and the nurse was cute!

Almost had a foot crushed/amputated on "EFX" at the MGM Grand...but I knew how long I had to step out so that don't really count.

 

[soundlight]

Let's see...two worst - got an aluminum riser dropped on my toe - still have black blood from that under my toenail, even though it happened 3 months ago...also, I ran a screw halfway through my finger (almost to the bone) before realizing that I couldn't move my finger out from behind the board that I was attaching...that might be the worst one, it hurt sharply for a while, and I had a dull pain afterwards for a month.

 

[Logos]

At the end of a long (very long) day I stepped out of a genie that I was convinced was at floor level. It wasn't. Fell 10 - 12 feet. Amazingly I got up and walked away and did my back in half an hour later lifting one stage weight.
Connected?
Probably.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Nothing too bad yet. Just many, many scars on my knuckles from screws, rough wood, knobs, handles, shutters and all those other things that attack your hands. Also had a nice gouge in my forearm once from an angle iron proscenium ladder.

 

[avkid]

Hmm...
Staples through my finger(still a bit nerve damaged)

Broken toe courtesy of steel stage weights
(switched to steel caps a week later)

Various muscle strains and dis-located limbs

 

[Techiegirly]

Oh yeah! A few of you guys reminded me of the time I Makita'ed my own finger. I was bending over, screwing hundreds of deck screws into a stage. After awhile it became mindless work which probably caused me to slip and put a screw into my pointer finger. I got to go to the hospital and get a tetnis shot. Wee!

I think that puts me @ 3 times for going to the hosiptal for work injuries.

 

[icewolf08]

I once stood up under an HVAC duct in a catwalk, and apparently I cut my head open. I didn't notice at the time, just thought I bumped my head. Well we finished striking lights and lowering them to the floor and were about to climb out of the catwalk when I ran my hand through my hair, and lo-and-behold there was blood (this was an hour later). So, I came down from the catwalk told the TD who promptly sent me to the hospital. Turned out it wasn't that big a cut (I think the doctor said about an inch long), but you know head injuries bleed a lot so they look worse than they are sometimes.

 

[Van]

Uh, quite recently actually... I got a splinter. It wasn't a big one, or a deep one, but I didn't notice it till I was driving home. See, the splinter was on my hand, and I was turning the wheel, and I was like "Hmm, what was that slightly discomforting pain in hand?". So then at the next red-light I looked at my hand, and I had a small splinter, so I took it out with my other hand.

<Hoping not to add "Fell out of ceiling of 100 year old theatre and died." to the list.>

Ummm I didn't count all the splinters in the list of injuries. So far, this year, the winner is a splinter I got last week while slipping behind some platforms. It went through my jeans, right into the middle of my thigh, worst thing was I had to finish what I was doing before I could get up and try to dig it out. Well I finally got to the restroom, of course it had broken off under my jeans so that the 1/8 of an inch or so that was left above the skin could catch on the fabric everytime I took a step, I had to use my Gerber pliers to yank the thing out it was a good 3/16" in diameter and about 1 1/2" long it went straight in. I don't usually say this about splinters, but, Ouch!

 

[jwl868]

The worst I ever did (but then i'm only involved in a couple shows a year) was strain my lower back muscles while lifting my own toolbox into my car. Put me out of commission for a day and in a bit of pain for a week.

(Soapbox: While near-misses often make for good stories, they are often just sheer luck that they weren’t worse. Just about all of the above could have been prevented by the individual, [but a few had “help” from others]. Practice safe work habits.)

Joe

 

[gafftaper]

To use Ship's term, I "Makita'd" my thumb nail. I was on a ladder, reaching out to the edge of my range to put a 3" screw into something. Due to the weird angle I was exerting pressure on it, the screw bent, started to spin wonky, and through the drill out and straight into the thumbnail that had been holding the screw in place seconds before. I had a disgusting looking dried blood Phillips tip crack through the center of my thumb nail for a couple of months.

Like JWL just said... All I needed to do was move the ladder over two feet and this would have never happened.

Moral of this thread, wear you safety goggles, gloves, and steel toes! Move the ladder, don't lean! The vast majority of injuries can be prevented with good safety habits.

 

[punktech]

i crushed my thumb once. we were taking apart the crappy risers in the blackbox we have and one portion of them was put together in an annoying yet not shoddy way (the screws were supposed to be sunk from the outside but these ones were sunk from inside the risers). so we resorted to the quick and effective method of taking something apart...sledgehammers! well, being an upperclassman and all, i have to look cool while doing everything (this was the logic then, i learned my lesson) so i was swinging in a particularly fashionable and effective manner, when the head slipped off the shaft of the hammer, and my thumb got to be quite intimate with the board i was annihilating seconds before hand and the shaft of the hammer it was gripped around. there was blood, there was a cracked finger nail, there was excruciating pain, and there was a hospital visit. amazingly through all of this i said not single swear word. the pain was so intense that i was shaking uncontrollably, but i never said an expletive. i never knew one attain a level of injury surpassing the ability to utter curses...

 

[erosing]

I've pretty much had all the accidents happen to me, by my fault or anothers, a few things just can't be explained still...but if you can name it there is a very good chance that it's happened to me, and what hasn't happened has come extremely close to happening...

Trips to the hospital = 6
Trips to the doctor(not including hospital) = 7

Yeah...not something I'm proud of, but things seem to happen...

However, my best one was not knowing I had cut my leg and finding out ~8 hours later give or take, because my shoes started leaking blood, ruined a good sock in the process...didn't care too much about the shoes though, they were already on their way to the trash.

 

[gafftaper]

At the end of a long (very long) day I stepped out of a genie that I was convinced was at floor level. It wasn't. Fell 10 - 12 feet. Amazingly I got up and walked away and did my back in half an hour later lifting one stage weight.

You're lucky you live down under where gravity works in the other direction. You could have gotten seriously hurt up here on the top side of the world.

(p.s. nice use of the imperial measurement system... was it "easier". I'm whispering so AVKid doesn't throw another hissy fit)

 

[PadawanGeek]

Hmm, I haven't been injured much... the worst thing that happened to me was putting my whole hand on the back of a PAR 46 that had been burning for approx. 2hrs..... had an annoying and hurting burn for a few weeks.

 

[meghan]

Okay I've been really lucky so far that I've never really hurt myself while working in a theatre. You see i'm a pretty clumsy person the kind of person that trips walking upstairs... never broken anything I've been carrying when I do trip. I managed to pull something in my knee while walking to class and now I get to wear a lovely brace for the next couple of days. Off to go study for finals.

 

[Scrumptusbrisket]

Lets seem, i stapled my finger when trying to fix a broken staple gun. (Bad idea, shouldve unloaded it). I dewalt-ed my finger (im liking this term) when i was trying to screw into some masonite w/out predrilling, not something id recommend. The long and short of it was i was pushing w/ full body weight and slipped. So i now have a cool + shaped scar on my finger from the bit. lets see.... Grabbed an uninsulated edison to stage pin converter when the power was on, dumb idea. Thats all i can remember for now, but theres probably more.

 

[bcfcst4]

My worst theater injury had little to do with theater but occured in one on my way in for the day. (and it was really dumb). My friend used to walk along the arm rests in the house, and I'd hold her hand to make sure she didn't fall. Of course one day she did, and didn't let go of my hand. My wrist did some odd twisting dance on her way down, and now, thanks to some "soft tissue damage" at the time, I'll have tendonitis in my wrist for the rest of my life.

Other than that it's mostly the occasionaly screw going into the hand or smashing fingers between platforms.