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[Darvi]

Yeah, a bullet by itself can be harmless, and removing it can actually damage vital organs.

[Neonivek]

That is because my degree is in medicine. It is my last name that is Sarcasm.

[Bdthemag]

I'M A SARCASTIC MAN, NOT A DOCTOR DAMNIT!

[Darvi]

Snarkasm, it can solve anything!

[Karnewarrior]

They take the bullets out if they can but usually they're safer left inside the body. When my dad was shot they took out one fragment and left the rest in until a little while ago where I think they took out the shard near his jugular.

Yeah my dad got shot in face and survived. If that's not WTF worthy I don't know what is. Combine that with the like 11 car wrecks he's been in and having three children he's either really lucky or really unlucky.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I recall that a certain veteran was shot in the abdomen during Vietnam, and a few years ago he suddenly coughed up said bullet. No idea if it's true or not.

[olemars]

My grandfather had german grenade shrapnel lodged in the back of his neck for 50 years.

[RedKing]

Ditto. My paternal grandfather had a chunk of German mortar round in his skull. It may well have saved his life, since it occurred just days before the Battle of the Bulge. He was busy recuperating at a rear-area hospital while the rest of his armored division were in the thick of it.


Oh, and for a WTF injury -- my father-in-law is a big man. Probably 300lbs+. Several years ago, he was on a ladder working on the roof of their lakehouse when the ladder slipped. He wound up falling more or less straight down and landing on his ass. At first, he was completely unable to move his legs. He managed to pull himself inside, wake his wife, and they drove him to the hospital. By the time he got there, he had gotten the feeling and movement back in his legs, and he just had really bad back pains. They did some X-rays and didn't see anything. No broken bones, no internal tissue damage, etc. So they gave him some painkillers for his back and sent him home.

By the time they got home, there was a message on the answering machine from the hospital telling him to come back immediately. Turns out somebody had the idea to *count* his vertebrae. There was one missing. 

Best guess is that the way he landed (basically in a sitting position) put all the force of impact in a straight line through his spinal column, and one of the vertebrae basically disintegrated. That pain he was having was because two of the discs were just smushed together and all the nerves there were going "AAAAAHHHH WTF theres supposed to be a bone here". They never found the vertebrae. Not even chunks of it. It was so finely pulverized that it just dissolved into the surrounding tissue. If he had been leaning forward or backwards just a few degrees either way when he hit, his spinal cord could have been pinched or even severed. As it was, it was so straight when he hit that the vertebrae just restacked around it.

They had to do massive surgery and put a substantial amount of metal in his back. As I understand it, his case is in several advanced medical textbooks now.

[Neonivek]

What does it even mean to lose one of your spinal pieces/peices?

Also congradulations RedKing your Grandfather had an type of injury that I've only heard of horses having.

[RedKing]

Well, he's an inch shorter for one thing. And he's going to have serious chronic back pain for the remainder of his life.

The spinal column is kind of the 'sheath' that protects your spinal cord...think of a string of beads. The vertebrae are the beads, the string is your spinal cord. Normally, they're the same length so that the spinal cord is fully encased and protected. Take one bead out, and you suddenly have a big problem. As I understand it, they basically had to do an operation to fold his spinal cord into a loop of sorts and then stuff the loop up inside the vertebrae so that it wouldn't get pinched. Considering that your spinal cord is kind of important for things like, y'know....ever moving or feeling your limbs again...that was kind of a big deal. And now he has a system of metal rods and pins jacking up his upper spine to help distribute some of the weight off the lower spine, and a sort of plastic ball bearing thing in between the two discs. It was a whole series of major operations.


Also...wha? Lots of people have chunks of shrapnel/mortars in their skull (well maybe not lots, but certainly not that uncommon among war vets)

[Neonivek]

No I mean Dusting bones by having two bones pushed against eachother.

It is why Horses are often put down if they get injured during a race. It isn't that "Broken" bones will never heal. It is that Horses tend to get injured in a very specific and debilitating way.

[RedKing]

No I mean Dusting bones by having two bones pushed against eachother.

It is why Horses are often put down if they get injured during a race. It isn't that "Broken" bones will never heal. It is that Horses tend to get injured in a very specific and debilitating way.

Oh, gotcha. That's my father-in-law who has that.

I just can't fathom how much impact force it takes to pulverize a bone inside your body. And to do so without actually damaging the spinal cord inside of it. It was one of those "one in a million" things. If he hadn't weighed so much, it would have been just a nasty fall. If he had landed at a slightly different angle, he'd have been a paraplegic.

[Karnewarrior]

One in a million chances occur constantly.

[Aklyon]

WTF.
How is this even supposed to work?

[Neonivek]

WTF.
How is this even supposed to work?

Though I am probably wrong

From the few words I read it is because the company is saying that being "Sued" should be considered a "Damage" and thus the insurance company should compensate them.

In a similar way to how Doctor's insurance for Malpractice suits functions.