I never felt my hand break.

The tip of my opponent’s long sword snapped into the back of my right hand, just behind the pinkie. There was no flash of incandescent pain, no stars in my sight - my mind was too focused on the swordfight. My opponent had scored a hit - and it had hurt, even through my glove - but adrenaline, as they say, is a hell of a drug.

After the tournament, it became clear that something was wrong. My hand began to swell and deform, my right pinkie levering itself inward across my palm until it was sitting at nearly 30° off true. Its nail sat jauntily behind the second knuckle of my middle finger. Making a fist was impossible.

Unfortunately, I was nineteen and had neither cash nor insurance for a doctor. So I did the next best thing - ignored it and told people it was probably just a bad sprain. When people suggested I see a doctor i responded, “What’s a doctor gonna do? Tell me it’s broken and take it easy? I’ll save the money.”

After a few weeks the swelling had gone down enough that I could finally feel the bones in my hand. Where there had once been a single line from wrist to knuckle, I could now feel an ‘x’. An ‘x’ which had clearly spent the last few weeks knitting together at a now permanent bad angle.

It occurred to me then what a doctor would do - set it properly. But now they’d need to re-break the bone.

Unfortunately I still had neither insurance nor cash.

What I did have was a freezer full of popsicles and a small toolbox. I ate a popsicle. And then put the stick between my teeth as I braced my right hand on the table and raised a hammer in my left.

WHAM … WHAM!

I hauled on my pinkie to pull the now-separated bones out straight then massaged them into position until things felt roughly aligned properly.

… Many years later I had health insurance and told my doctor this story and asked if he could x-ray it for me. A week later I received a letter in the mail. Inside was a printout of my hand x-ray with the healed break circled in pen. Besides the circle was a note: “Good job with the hammer”.

All things considered I did a pretty good job, but it’s not quite perfect. My pinkie still leans inward - just a hair. Just enough to remind me.

It’s a little petty, but I feel stupidest about my hearing. Cranked my music too loud and didn’t wear ear protection ever when I was younger. The tinnitus gets so bad sometimes it makes me suicidal.

Broke my nose as a toddler, nobody noticed it, started breating through the mouth as nose was sealed, mouth got deformed by being always open, needed 6 face reconstruction surgeries to repair the damage of a broken nose…

Skydiving, once, in my 20s. Not sure if the chute was on wrong, being slightly over the weight limit was a factor, or if it was just genetics, but when the chute opened, the jerk caused a loud enough pop that my instructor asked if I was okay.

I lied of course, the adrenaline kept me from knowing the deal, anyway.

The first time I threw my back out, after, it was from picking up a piece of paper. These days, when I have the least pain I can still tell my back muscles are as tight as a garage spring.

I had never known a moment of back pain before that day, and I don’t know what it’s like to walk a mile without back pain now.

I went jogging on slightly damp asphalt with my then-7yo.

I tripped on nothing and dislocated the living fuck out of my ankle, to the point that the paramedic insisted on sitting up by my head in the ambulance so she didn’t have to look at it - it was indeed extremely cursed.

They said that I escaped major reconstructive surgery by grams and millimetres, but the ligament went to hell and my ankle is now only held together with chewing gum and hope.

Running more than for the bus is off the cards for the rest of my life - however I’m otherwise fine, and I go hiking at every opportunity.

Didn’t cover my ears when I was at an air show when a f-16 flew by. My ears have been ringing ever since. Was ~11 years old at the time.

Was eating soup after a long day of work. Tired. Figured I’d drink the last bit out of the bowl.

Crashed it into my front tooth and a piece of it flew off. Enough to be visible, not enough for the dentist to do anything about it. It’ll just stay like that forever.

Not so bad compared to many other stories, just really really pathetic.

I sneezed about 5 years ago and I haven’t been able to look up and to the right without pain since then. It’s a minor pain, but definitely still there in my neck.

A decade ago, I was riding a motorcycle and slid it sideways on some gravel in a turn. The weight of the bike crushed my ankle, shattering it to pieces, while my knee got split open.

I had a metal plate put in my ankle, my knee was stitched closed, and I was bedridden for a month while recovering. Then I was hobbling around on crutches for several more months after that.

Unfortunately, I was serving in the US military at the time and they wanted me to get back to work ASAP, so they pushed me to do physical therapy and start exercising as soon as I could. We have to maintain physical fitness standards to continue serving, so I was on a limited medical waiver and was expected to get back in shape quickly.

Part of our fitness standards included running 1.5 miles in a certain timeframe based on our age. I kept getting extensions to my medical waiver because I couldn’t run, but they pushed me to hurry up and get back into running shape. Suffice to say, I was eventually able to pass my fitness test, but my ankle and knee would be throbbing in pain for the next day or two after.

A couple years later, I had the metal plate removed from my ankle, as it was restricting movement. I felt almost a jolt of pain every time I ran on that ankle. Removing the plate did make it less painful to run, but I was still barely passing my fitness tests. I just couldn’t make myself run any faster, no matter how hard I tried.

On top of that, both ankles and knees started hurting. Turns out, I had been favoring the good leg so much, I was over-exerting it and causing stress. I got an MRI and they said I had worn away about 1/3rd of the cartilage in my good knee.

Eventually, my doctor gave me a cane to help with walking and before long, I found myself using it all the time. I was continually going back to my doctor to receive more advice and care, and I was in and out of physical therapy for years.

Finally, my doctor considered me for a medical board. This is a process to review one’s medical ailments and decide whether they were fit to stay in the military, or if they needed to be medically discharged. My doctor asked me how close I was to retirement and I said I had 4 more years left. She then asked what job I did and I told her I worked in an IT role. She said I didn’t need my legs to do that, since I sat at a desk all day long, so she recommended to the board that I continue serving on a permanent “no walk/run” medical waiver. This would mean that I’m exempt from any run or walk fitness tests and I could basically just coast to retirement as long as I could pass my other fitness requirements (pushups and situps).

I managed to make it to retirement, although the lack of cardio in my diet meant that I gained about 40 lbs in those 4 years. I used my cane pretty much every day. Fortunately, my ankle pain pretty much vanished, now that I’m no longer running all the time. It’s easy to get a twinge of pain in my ankles if I’m not careful, but they don’t ache regularly anymore.

Once I retired, I registered with the VA and they immediately claimed they could fix my knees with a simple operation - something the military claimed would be a fruitless endeavor. I had minor knee surgery on both of my knees last year and surprisingly, I have almost no pain now!

I no longer walk with a cane, but it’s still easy to over-exert my knees and get sore/tired. I’m still within 6 months of my last surgery and they said it might take up to a year for me to fully recover, so I just need to be patient. But I’m excited at the prospect of being able to run again without pain. I’m hoping, by this summer, I’ll be able to get outside and exercise more and hopefully remove these extra 40+ lbs that have been weighing me down. It’s definitely not good for my knees to have extra weight on them.

Unfortunately, I’m about to turn 40 in a few months and every single one of my friends who hit 40 has claimed that that’s the year their body starts aching for no reason and it starts getting harder to do simple physical tasks. So I may be on an uphill battle from here on out.

As a kid, I was extremely active. I was constantly running everywhere, climbing trees, bicycling, swimming, rock climbing, canoeing/kayaking, and just constantly bursting at the seams with energy. I had never spent a day in the gym, but I had a natural 8-pack abs just from being so physically active. The military actually made me less muscular because they told me to slow down and stop running everywhere/climbing on everything. It didn’t help that I had a desk job, so I was told to sit still at my desk and work. If I wanted to exercise, they told me to go to the gym. But I hated the gym. It was so boring to just sit there and pick up/put down weights. Or run in circles on a track. I wanted an obstacle course, or something with a goal to reach, not just a boring, repetitive movement.

I was in great shape but still lost a lot of my strength/abilities while serving, because the military’s idea of fitness didn’t align with my own. Then my motorcycle accident severely crippled me for the rest of my service. And now, at nearly 40 years old, I’m hoping I can regain at least a little bit of that physical fitness back one day. I had built my whole life around the idea of being in excellent shape, and being crippled/broken has severely damaged my own personal image of myself. I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore; my fitness and physical activity pretty much defined my personality and without that, I’ve had to seriously redefine who I am, which unfortunately comes bundled with insecurities, depression, and anxiety. But I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to be more active in the future.

My father walked anywhere from 2-10 miles a day just to stave off the symptoms of his Parkinson’s disease and he was a huge inspiration for me. Heck, he was a local celebrity in my town; he was known as the guy who would be out walking every day, rain or shine. Unfortunately, he passed away this past Friday, finally succumbing to his Parkinson’s. So it’s my goal, starting this spring, to pick up his daily walks in his stead and get myself back in shape. I’ve been living with him for the past 2 years (in my childhood home), so it’ll be easy to pick up his old route. Here’s hoping I can continue to improve, even into my middle-age years.

Fresh out of Uni, I thought I’d be a good boy and work harder for my employer at a desk job. After about six months of high stress and little sleep or rest, I’d poisoned my brain with cortisol and needed about 2 years of rehab to be able to read a page of text again.

My cortisol system is still out of whack, probably permanently, sometimes not activating when it should - meaning I can’t start tasks or focus or crunch, and activating randomly at other times giving me generalised anxiety for a couple of days at varying intensity.

I’m lucky though, another friend with the same condition lost their ability to walk for a couple of years.

I was playing with some kids I was babysitting in McDonald’s play tubes when I was 18. I bent my ankle weird. I’m turning 30 in a couple months and there’s literally not a single day without ankle pain. Sometimes it’s disabling. Several times they haven’t actually found anything wrong with it but last time they said it had something (can’t remember) and it made a lot of bad clicking sounds when the podiatrist handled it. I’ve tried lots of things to help.

I was about a story and a half high in a magnolia tree when I was about 10, and I had walked out on one branch, holding a smaller branch for balance.

I didn’t realize the one I was standing on was dead, and it snapped at the trunk… The small branch I was holding wasn’t enough to hold my weight, and it snapped too.

The branch I was standing on bounced off the springy ground that was many years worth of shedded leaves, and it hit me in the lower back just before I was about to land on the ground.

It caused a minor fracture in a vertebrate, and caused me a lot of pain at the time, but I didn’t complain because I didn’t want to be “a little girl” (I had two unforgiving older brothers). When I was in 8th grade, I had my first back ache and had x-rays which found the childhood fracture which mishealed due to not being treated.

It still causes me a lot of trouble whenever I’m bent over for long or if I have a back ache.

Both of my hands have some scar tissue which gives me some trouble about 1/11 of the times I do a pinching/clamp kind of grip. Those injuries were from sticking my hands in a dog’s mouth to pry his mouth off of my dog’s throat last year. At first, all my might wasn’t enough, and he chomped the fuck out of my hands.

Then my adrenaline kicked in and I pried his mouth open like it was nothing. I then kind of suplexed and wrestled the dog so mine could be taken to safety. I don’t regret it one bit, but it was definitely a stupid thing to do… but I can still play the piano just fine!

I also came dangerously close to losing an eye from a tooth or nail. It happened so fast I’m not sure what did it. Here are some pictures.

I broke my wrist rollerblading when I was 14. I didn’t even fall super crazy or anything; I just got tripped up on a rock getting stuck in my wheel and fell forward while not moving very fast. Even after it healed, I didn’t really skate anymore and every now and then to this day, I feel it hurting like it was freshly broken for a moment or two on random occasions.

I had also taken a few tumbles directly onto my knees without sustaining lasting injuries, but I do recall a doctor telling me if I took a fall or two like I had for one time when I thought I broke something that I may need surgery because there was an issue with the cartilage in both my knees.

It wasn’t until a few years later while playing racket ball that I pivoted to hit the ball and just felt something pop and hurt like hell in my knee that another doctor said I had, if I am remembering the name correctly, Ozgood Slater’s and a deficiency of cartilage in my knees so things that normally aren’t supposed to rub together were rubbing together, causing inflammation and pain in the area. I still struggle with this and some days my knees just hurt like fucking hell.

I was rear ended in my 20’s while at stop light and got whiplash. Neck is constantly sore from that. Doctor told me it never really heals and just to do stretches. And I have carpal tunnel from shitty posture and playing games.

Got WAY TOO drunk at a club, kicked out (which I genuinely accepted with good grace). Walking home, realised I’d forgotten my jacket. Figured I’d just nip in past the bouncer, grab the jacket and leave without bothering anyone. I didn’t nip past. I got bounced. Rebuffed from the club, and pushed backwards I fell over and broke my foot (a Jones fracture). Was in a moon boot for 3 months or so, but now it hurts whenever I walk wrong.

Have a scar on my left thigh from slipping and falling onto a glass table while ranting about why ketchup on hotdogs is good actually