Accidents while gardening ??

[Jody]

No mishaps so far, but I did cut though my hedge trimer cable ... again ... last week.

Lost a decent pair of headphones that way

 

[presta]

injured in an air raid when on duty according to his family.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-66068886

According to Eric Lax's history of the development of penicillin he was pruning his roses.

 

[Dogtrousers]

According to Eric Lax's history of the development of penicillin he was pruning his roses.

The roses account rang a bell with me. I'd heard it somewhere before. There's further discussion of the alternate stories here:

https://theconversation.com/guns-not-roses-heres-the-true-story-of-penicillins-first-patient-178463

Seems that surviving family say that he was injured in a raid.

 

[vickster]

I do know of someone who amputated a couple of tootsies lawn mowing in sandals

 

[vickster]

The first ever person to be given penicillin had pricked his finger on a rose bush. A policeman in Oxfordshire, he made a miraculous recovery until they ran out of penicillin, then he relapsed and died.

Roses are also a big culprit for tetanus I believe

 

[MichaelW2]

My mother put a fork through her foot. Owch. Straight to the doc for a tetanus booster.

 

[Legs]

I've cut through the pad of my middle finger with reciprocating hedgecutters. Possibly the luckiest I've ever been in my life. Bled like a bastard but I didn't lose it - haven't even got a scar now.

My uncle managed to break a rib with loppers. He was struggling to cut through a branch, so put one arm of the loppers again his chest and pulled with both hands...

 

[Profpointy]

My mother put a fork through her foot. Owch. Straight to the doc for a tetanus booster.

My dad put a garden fork through his welington as a kid. The tyne went between two toes and he got away with it

 

[Dirk]

I use a chainsaw quite a lot.
What could possibly in wrong?

 

[Badger_Boom]

Years ago my brother and I were used as child labour on the allotment my father and grandfather shared.

One day we watched the pair of them spend half an hour trying to start a rotovator without success. After a few changeovers, my father gave the pull cord an extra hard yank, just as my grandfather leaned over to tweak something. This resulted in my father delivering a mighty backhander which sent my grandfather's false teeth flying about ten metres into the runner beans.

I think this was the only occasion when we enjoyed gardening.

 

[Dave 123]

In 40 years of professional horticulture I’ve had a few cuts and grazes but nothing major.

I did once get skewered by an unexpectedly hard prick and I ended up with twins.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

No so much an accident as misunderstanding. My mother asked my brother to trim some trees / bushes in our back garden, before she went out. It was a massacre, and took about 5 estate car trips to dump to dispose of the aftermath. My mother wasn’t happy.

 

[Gillstay]

Story from a former colleague. He was an IT consultant working away from home and noticed a nasty red swelling on his leg. It was more than a mere spot, and he was sufficiently concerned that he had it checked out at the local casualty department. They looked at it and asked if he'd been gardening in the previous 10 days or so. He had indeed been pruning his roses and it was a potentially serious infection from a rose thorn. He needed to stay in hospital for intravenous antibiotics. He told them he was working away so would it be OK to be booked into hospital back home in Manchester; him being in Kent or somewhere at the time. "How long will it take you to get back to Manchester?" . "About six hours". "You'll be dead in six hours". "Ah, OK. Perhaps I'd better stay here then". The drew lines on his leg to show where the redness had got to and checked hourly to see if they were winning or losing vs the originally drawn marks. He lived to tell the tale !

Another work colleague had similar and only just survived at the cost of his arm being amputated. He was likely immuno surpressed after cancer treatment. He had already lost a leg from cancer as a teenager a guy who'd had more than his share of bad luck.

A university friend's boss died of septicaemia from a splinter from building a greenhouse and another friend's mother from a gardening splinter similar to the above incidents. Both these had been in perfectly OK health as far as I know.

Anyhow I'm quite paranoid about splinters and infected minor cuts. Anecdote is not data, but two deaths and two near deaths of people I know or nearly know is pretty convincing

Beware thorns and splinters !

They might have been tropical hardwood splinters as some of them are very nasty.

 

[Kingfisher101]

I was once chopping down some thick brambles in the back garden and got wacked in the eye by a bramble branch with thorns on. It nearly brought me to my knees. I had to go to hospital as I couldn't see out of my eye. I was given cream and sent to the local eye hospital. The Dr there said that I had scratched my retina and it would take 2 years to heal. That was about right.
People who are doing any chopping etc of big bushes need to wear goggles or a helmet with a visor IMO. Its not worth losing your sight over.

 

[Cycleops]

My mother put a fork through her foot. Owch. Straight to the doc for a tetanus booster.

Quite a popular one. A mate did the same.