Tripped on my Tractor

[wawajake]

Looks like this is the forum where we admit our stupidity, in the hopes of helping others avoid our stupid moves.
Well I park my tractor (with snowblower on rear ) backed into my 24 x 24 garage and also in that garage is my ATV and a few workbenches depending what woodwork project I am doing. So tight fit at times.
My tractor was backed in facing the garage door and the bucket had my toothbar on it. The kind where half inch bolts x 3inch long come out the side of bucket to hold it on . Well I was quickly moving around the garage and my jean pant leg with a frayed cuff seam caught on the toothbar bucket bolt sticking out and I went head first into the Garage door track. .......as I am falling I am thinking...this is going to hurt! I split my skull skin open about 4 or 5 inches, although I did not know it yet. I rushed outside to put clean snow on my head to stop what I though would just be a bump.....but actually was all blood gushing out. Now I live almost an hour from the hospital and no one was home but me and the dog. So I grabbed some shop towels and did the compress to stop bleed thing , to get in the house , where I replaced the paper towels with a bath towel and lied down to figure out my next options .
So Option 1 I could attempt to drive to hospital holding my head for the forty minute drive into city deal with emergency ward and shaving my head maybe to put stiches in, OR Option 2 I could call 911 and wait for ambulance for forty minutes and pay for it, OR Option 3 I could go to neighbor for them to do the same two things already listed.
So I did what any stubborn 58 year old would do, Option 4 I laid on the bed with towel compression for three hours until bleeding stopped enough for me to see outcome. I waited till next morning before my wife came back from out of town to clean up what looked like a murder scene outside my garage, and then confessed to my stubborn ways.
She did have to admit this week that it healed **** good, no infection, but boy it takes a long time to get all that dried blood out of ones hair the first week of recovery. ...lesson learned don't have garage so full, don't have frayed jean cuffs , and teach the dog how to administer First aid!

 

[JRobyn]

Ow! Prayers for a full and quick heal.

 

[ovrszd]

And have you ever saw anything bleed as profusely as a head cut????

I call things like this "Stupid Human Tricks". I do 2 or 3 a year. Glad it wasn't worse.

 

[Deere Dude]

Wow, hope it gets healed quick.

That is why I get a little nervous doing stuff under the tractor or truck or even even chainsawing in the woods with nobody around.

 

[jerrybob]

Wow.....quite a story.....glad you are doing OK.......I am going to go clean up my shop.

 

[EddieWalker]

Good to hear that you survived it, but I would still make an appointment with my doctor and at least get a tetanus shot in case there was any rust or dirt on the metal that cut you open. Also good to have a pro look at things the rest of us know nothing about.

My wife is a nurse, so we go to the doctor way too often. Of course, she has the stories of what happens to those who don't, and they are scary enough that i usually end up following her advice.

 

[s219]

Welcome to the stupid club -- I'd offer you the complimentary hat, but it might interfere with your injury .

I too have a tightly packed barn and more than once pants or pants pockets (cargo pockets on the side) have hung me up and almost caused a spill. Once it was climbing off my tractor, and in the process my boot got hooked under one of the pedals. That would have really hurt if I fell all the way down off the tractor.

I have to give you a little grief for waiting so long though. When I smashed my finger in a log splitter a few weeks back (to cement my status as a member of the executive board in the stupid club), I knew right away this was an issue for the ER. The doc gave me a 50/50 chance of keeping/losing the finger, with infection being the immediate risk for the first 48-96 hours and vascular function being the next risk in the medium term. She said it was good that I came into the ER right away. She said a lot of people like me (I was dressed in work clothes and boots with a John Deere hat) will try to wrap/bandage the injury at home, and then it will get infected or not heal right and lead to sure amputation or worse problems (like losing the whole hand). So if in doubt now, if something is more than a scratch, I will be more inclined to get help.

I have no idea what complications can arise from a head laceration (amputation? :laughing but just keep in mind something like this can turn from bad to worse very easily. Serious wounds need to be cleansed, stitched, and then protected for all the possible sources of infection to be minimized, and even then it's still no guarantee.

 

[wawajake]

Yes I hear you about infection but I had 8 (amoxilan(penicillin) pills left over from impacted tooth a few months ago so I self administered them over the three days after.......smile .....my "lives far away" daughter , being a nurse, was not impressed ........hey I don't throw anything away that's why the garage is so full! ...........it was 19 days ago so I think the risk of head amputation (smile) is over..

 

[jmc]

My neighbor goes to the local fire station for major first aid. They've usually got time on their hands and don't mind practicing on him. And it's free.

 

[Qapla]

I, too, am glad you are OK .... but, most of all, I am glad it wasn't ME!

 

[cat fever]

If that were me, as soon as I seen lots of blood - - - - - down I go. Passed out and bleeding to death. Me and my own blood don't mix.:laughing:
Glad you are doing OK.

 

[Sprinklerman]

Rambo would have stitched it up himself

 

[ovrszd]

Rambo would have stitched it up himself

With a rusty nail.

 

[Looking4new]

There , but for the grace of God go I.
Glad you are okay.

 

[s219]

My neighbor goes to the local fire station for major first aid. They've usually got time on their hands and don't mind practicing on him. And it's free.

You know, the day I had to drive myself to the ER for an injury, I was a bit shaky, but I knew the fire station was on the way, 3 miles down the road. I figured if I started feeling woozy, I could pull in to the fire station and go staggering through the front door for help.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

You forgot that "other" option......the one that I use. I stop the bleeding and go to my family doctor.

Last time it happened, it cost me $350.00 to get stitched up, instead of "hours" waiting in an ER and then getting a "thousands of dollars" bill!

SR

 

[Looking4new]

The last time my carelessness cost me 5 stitches in my foot, I went to the hospital the next day and caught all kinds of **** for not going when it happened. (I was too drunk to drive anywhere and told them so).

 

[jerrybob]

With a rusty nail.

And a shoelace.

 

[PhysAssist]

Yes I hear you about infection but I had 8 (amoxilan(penicillin) pills left over from impacted tooth a few months ago so I self administered them over the three days after.......smile .....my "lives far away" daughter , being a nurse, was not impressed ........hey I don't throw anything away that's why the garage is so full! ...........it was 19 days ago so I think the risk of head amputation (smile) is over..

Howdy Jake,

I was reading down the page getting ready to congratulate you on your new club membership (one of my main roles as a charter member), and also on choosing the proper course of treatment, even though the reasons you gave- impatience, stubbornness and cheapness weren't really the rational approach, I try to get people to employ.

So, anyway, up until the point where you started to think that your Google search equalled my medical degree, you were doing pretty good.

However, the only thing that you that likely accomplished with your self-medicating was to work on creating some more drug resistant bacteria.

Yup, that's where they come from- both not finishing a full prescribed course of medicine, and/or taking inadequate and unneeded partial courses of it.

In truth, scalp and other head lacerations (cuts) most often don't get infected even if they're quite contaminated or dirty mainly for the same reason that they are so gory and bleed out of proportion to their size and depth- the brain needs a lot of blood, so the tissue around it (including both the face and scalp) is very vascular (has lots and lots of blood vessels) so not only does the freely flowing blood wash the wound out pretty well, the continued copious blood supply around it brings lots of antibodies and white blood cells and other immune factors there to fight infection.

If you cut your hand or foot though, that can really be a whole nother story.

Sorry, but after a very long day alternating between having to tell some people that they don't need antibiotics for their viral infection, and trying to convince those on the other extreme that, yes, they need to go to the ER by ambulance to have their chest/abdominal/or other red flag pain worked up, I get a little testy when folks self-prescribe...

My bad.

Now, my soapbox retracted, I am proud to say Welcome to the "club", and I'm glad you're OK!!!

Thomas

 

[Ed of all trades]

Years ago I was cutting a tree and a limb that was lodged in the top fell out and hit me in the head. Wife said I went over backwards and head butted another tree, just for good measure I suppose. I was rolling on the ground when I was aware of anything. I got up and started to go back to work and she said, Don't you think you should do something about the bleeding. I put my hand on my head and took it back down to see if there was blood on it and I saw a stream of blood breaking up into drops in front of my forehead. When I got to the Dr he said one stitch would do but that he would put in two. If I had known that I would have stayed home.
Be careful that you don't have a concussion. They can cause problems for you for a while. A week later I had a hard time putting a battery in my wife's car, I felt like I was going to pass put. Glad you are doing well. You might have done the best thing by not going to the Dr. Back in 2013 the number of people killed by their doctors was reported to be 440,000 and the number has been growing at a high rate. And God only knows haw many weren't reported. So you might have saved your life by staying home. Ed