Worst injury you've ever had? I broke my hand once. But the worst has to

be the time I went to a beach with a friend. It was kinda windy and cool and overcast. We sat in the sun without sunscreen for the whole day. By the time we got home we were as red as lobsters. The next day there were huge blisters all over my body but especially on my face. A few days later I remember eating at a fancy pansy restaurant with my grandmother and the skin on my face was literally falling off. The waitresses were all in shock. It hurt like hell and what is worse I have a negative inprint of my bathing suit in freckles on my body. From what I've read I'm a really good candidate for skin cancer.

It was only a "green-branch" fracture, but it hurt like hell.

Once upon a time, the treatment would have been to immobilize my ribs with tape. This would have reduced the pain, but it would also have interfered with breathing and increased the likelihood of pneumonia. So they don't do that anymore.

The treatment nowadays is pain pills, such as Vicodin. Even with the pain pills, it hurt when I lay down. I had to sleep in a chair every night for about a month.

and now have PTSD.

but about 12 years ago I sprained my ankle by stepping off a curb and twisting it. It hurt a lot at the time, but I thought, well, a twisted ankle, no big deal; it will be OK in a day or two. Except it turned purple and swelled up enormously and throbbed and throbbed and by the next day I couldn't walk on it. It took the better part of a year before I stopped limping, and it still acts up once in awhile. It wasn't a horrible injury by any means, but considering how minor it was, and how long it lasted, it was pretty unpleasant.

I sprained it playing basketball. I kept playing and it swelled only a little. Once I quit it blew up like a balloon.
When I finally saw a doctor, he said it would have been much less painful had I broken it. Had to take pain killers for a week.

But the oddest was spraining both ankles at the same time a curb. The odd thing is, I lost feeling on the inside of both feet. Still have strange feeling there.

I run on trails and did the same thing you did off a tree trunk that had fallen. I coulda sworn I heard something crack when it happened and I just lay there crying for the longest time because I had no insurance...

But when I got up I found I could walk- So everything was fine but then the next day? Yeah. It was weird cuz I could walk fine but the movement of my ankle was the problem. I never did go to the Dr. but it took a long time to be able to have full use of my ankle and hurt like hell whenever I turned it the wrong way.

I broke my right pinkie toe in Mexico some years ago (a little embarrassing - I got into a three way fight with me, tequila and a plastic lawn chair. The lawn chair won). It wasn't bad at first, but became pretty painful. When it was time to put my boots on and go back to work, I almost couldn't go. To this day, that toe is significantly larger than its peer.

Broke both wrists,4 ribs on the left side and my right elbow,Dislocated both my right hip and shoulder.

Hit a tree root that had grown under the pavement pushing the pavement up about 6 inches,my left hand slipped off the bars,the front wheel turned 90 deg. and i went over the bars.

That was 20 years ago.
Three weeks ago I broke Three of the same four ribs in an car crash. They F****N HURT!!

Sleepin on my back sux big time,I'm a pillow hugger.

How the hell do you deal with that? I fractured *A* rib once and felt like I couldn't breathe for three weeks! :wow:

Fell off of a rocking horse right onto my head. Fracture still shows up in xrays.
on a side note, Mom told me the rocking horse was advertised for its safety features, ironically.

I was about 8-years-old and was just running around the yard when I lost my footing. We had an azalea bed with a low brick wall. My knee made impact with the corner brick, and oy gevalt did that hurt! Just thinking about it now brings back memories of the pain. Oh, and the blood!

I couldn't get up at all, but Dad appeared seemingly out of nowhere and scooped me up. I don't remember why Mom & Dad opted not to take me to get stitches. I guess the wound cleaned up okay, but I had a pretty nasty scar for a long time.

Even though there was one time when I had a severe cut on a finger that required stitches, that knee injury was painful as hell!

Which was revenge for me getting one of them the month before (fun times growing up...). I ended up with fractured orbital socket, two cracked ribs and two broken ribs (most painful injury I've ever had, hands down. I got a chest cold while I was healing and couldn't stop coughing.)

My friends and I fought people all the time (to the point where the police called us The Crunch Bunch), so it was only a matter of time before it bit me in the backside. I probably had it coming. :)

I realize those don't even sound comparable but they very much were. I've told the lawndeer story before repeatedly so I'll just recap it briefly. I was 7 and playing in my godparents' yard with my brother and my dog (we'd had to part with the dog when we moved into an apartment. They were nice enough to take it in.) when I lost my footing and landed on 1' tall ceramic lawn reindeer horns-end first when went into my armpit and literally tore everything before coming out my back, dislocating my scapula. I mean muscles, tendons, the joint itself and the artery...all severed and hanging. So... I pass out and regain consciousness in the car in a puddle of my blood and lose consciousness again and wake up in surgery-prep just in time to hear the surgeon telling my parents I'm lucky to be alive but there probably is no way to save the arm. This time I'm not passing out again no matter how much Propofol they put in me so I had to undergo surgery under local subsequently tied to a back board because I would not stop screaming, squirming or trying to fight for freedom and my half-amputated limb.

That really is comparable to the cramp. The cramp occurred standing-up off my couch several hours after falling in a hole in my aunt's backyard at a barbeque absolutely hammered. I stand up. I fall down in agony from a cramp. I try to stand up again only to discover my knee will not extend beyond a 45-degree angle. So I go to the doctor (henceforth known as Dr. Quack. I'm not the only one, my mother went to him in her late 40s about menopause symptoms despite having a hysterectomy (w/ ovarian removal. There was cancer involved.) in her late 30s, his initial query? "Might you be pregnant?" After she explains in excruciating detail why not. He comes back excitedly with "Maybe its' ectopic." Great, a moron who thinks he's House and dismisses the obvious diagnosis because it makes sense.) and I say I have a cramp and a locked-leg. He looks at the leg. He looks at me. He looks at the leg and asks about the scrapes. So I tell him about the hole. He's now convinced that my crampy leg I walked around on for 12 hours after falling in the hole is really a case of an Achilles tendon tear. (apparently my calf was deformed. It felt as hard, dense and dead as a brisket I do know that, cold too.) He asks me if I heard a pop. (a pop would confirm his incorrect diagnosis.) I say no. He says I must have missed it. He decides in his wisdom that he is going to manually straighten the leg. After I screamed "stop" six or more times and he didn't, I kicked him in the chest with my good leg and I'm not sorry. I'm pretty sure it's a cramp, maybe a bad pull and ask for anti-inflammatories. He accuses me of drug seeking (What? Really? Who the fuck goes drug-seeking for cortisone injections?) He instead sends me to the hospital for an MRI and a referral to an orthopedic surgeon. Three days later, my leg is still locked and the ortho looks at the MRI for maybe 5 seconds, shrugs and says he wants X-rays. I consent and reiterate that I think it's a muscle injury. He actually concurs and admits that his main concern now is that Dr. Quack broke my leg by trying to straighten it without administering an anti-inflamatory. Nope. Then I find out that if Quack had administered the cortisone in a timely fashion, I probably would have walked out of his office but now that it's been locked for several days and circulation has been restricted, there's going to be muscle injury that needs to heal. So I got to gimp around like this for another 3 weeks with one leg 4" shorter and bent at the knee. The best part, it impeded my balance when I looked at the floor so I had to pee sitting down because both times I tried to pee standing, I fell over while still peeing. Subsequently, I contacted my insurer and explained why we needed a second option for a PCP to be included in our plan.

tore my meniscus and broke my femur in such a way that it bled marrow into my knee joint. The marrow coagulated and made it near impossible to move my knee. Weeks of physical therapy and I regained most of the movement back. All that just to get the mail... lol

on the front deck of an M110A2 Howitzer and fell off. I tore the tendons in my R knee and didn't walk for 6 months.

To this day I still have problems w/ that knee

Severe concussion, scalp cut and peeled back (had to be sewn back on), another gash covering the length of my eyebrow. Both lower bones in my left were broken (clean thank goodness). But, worst of all my calcaneo cuboid was crushed between the clutch and the side of truck (die press break... think crushed). The foot took surgery and months of rehab to get somewhat back to normal. I still have nerve damage and arthritis in my foot.

Essentially, I was lucky to be alive.

back on by my dad (a doctor) at home before they rushed me to a hospital. Amazingly, it looks pretty normal - just shorter than my other middle finger with a little bit wider nail.

I have been quite fortunate. Many bruises and other injuries from horseback riding all through jr. high and high school, a few sprains, etc. But no breaks or other painful injuries. Knock on wood.

Or when a different horse tried to rip my arm off. For shock value, because it made me realize that I was really mortal, the horse falling on the leg was bad. She got spooked by a truck, spun out onto the road, slipped and fell on my leg. Miraculously, I had no breaks but it ruptured the sheath around the ankle which turned black from knee to the toes. My leg was larger than my thigh from knee to the foot and I was on crutches for six months.

For sheer agonizing pain and damage, the arm being nearly ripped off was bad. I don't know if I was in shock or what, but it did not hurt right away. I could not pick my elbow up but I was in denial - didn't go to the doctor for over a month. I could not lie in bed - had to sleep in a recliner for months. Because I had plenty of strength, the orthopedic surgeon did not think it was too bad and the MRI showed little damage. He planned a 90 minute arthroscopic surgery, just a little minor clean up and repair.

Over five hours later he finished rebuilding the rotator cuff. Three ligaments were completely detached, including the one to the large muscle at the top of the arm and the one to the shoulder blade. If I ever injure that shoulder again I am SOL because it is all scar tissue now. The surgeon told me he will not be able to rebuild it again.

I had a sun burn like yours once, long before sunscreen. Quite literally second degree burns all over. Sick as a dog for a week, high temperatures and dehydration from all the blisters. My skin came off sort of like a snake shedding - in large sheets. Yeah, that hurt, but that was fifty years ago and I've had worse pain since.

Stupidly I wandered into a field near my house where there were two horses. My yr old 40lb puppy was with me and when I entered they came up and surrounded me and I said out loud "k feeling a little scared, a little frightened" I kept repeating that out loud and walked out from between them but I stayed and looked around this magical place.

I went back several times afterward with apples until out of nowhere the bigger one attacked my dog and pinned her to the ground. It stopped when I screamed NO! But God damn almighty christ in HELL! I was STUNNED by how fast it moved! To think what coulda happened - ugh. damnit.

Years ago I was at the nearby veterinary college, looking around while my cousin had her horse's foot examined by a veterinarian. I was walking around quietly looking over stall doors to see what animals were there. Approaching the door of a large stall, I got close enough to look over the shoulder-height door and saw a foal with a cast on one of its rear legs, and the foal's mother, which caught sight of me and wheeled around and bolted toward me, screaming. I didn't know that horses could make a sound like that! I almost fell over backwards getting away from that door!

We had one mare who was no problem to handle. But before we bought her she had a sickly foal. While the vet was taking care of the foal, she attacked him and literally took a hunk out of his back.

We were warned to watch out for her when she foaled and put her in a field by herself to have her baby. Sure enough, if we got too close to the fence in the first weeks, she would run at us, teeth bared. The first day, one of the cats was curious about what was in the field and went through the fence to check the foal out. The mare grabbed the cat in her jaws, shook him and threw him about thirty feet. We were hysterical.

The cat seemed to be OK. I took him to the vet who X-rayed him and found no broken bones. A few days later the damage showed up - the cat had a hernia from one side to the other where his abdominal muscles had separated. He survived, but he never got close to a horse again!

We have mares who are protective, but none as aggressive as that one. Most of the time, they just don't want us checking on the foals or handling them, but the mares I have now are all reasonable about it. They just try to stay between us and their babies but will settle down once we have a halter on them.

I can imagine how loud her sudden scream must have been in that quiet place ... They are truly Awesome, in every sense of the word.

Even dogs that they know. My mares get very aggressive towards dogs when they have a foal at side, even our own dogs. All my horses tend to be aggressive towards strange dogs. I can't blame the horses - wolves and coyotes are major predators in the wild. Domestic dogs can turn predator if left to form packs, even if they are still pets when their owners are around.

Most domestic horses will not be aggressive towards humans. I've only had a couple of injuries from horses being aggressive towards me. Most of the injuries I have had in nearly fifty years of handling them were horses being stupid, me being stupid, or a combination of the two. When you are dealing with a half ton of animal that has instincts to run, kick, or bite, accidents happen.

All this time I thought maybe the horse had seen me playfully chase her while trying to get a shot with my camera, that it was mimicking me or something, I didn't know.

Anyway, I've ridden horses but never spent any time around them just hanging out, much less with strange ones. I only blame myself for putting my dog in that kind of danger. I shoulda heeded my initial reaction of fear and left.

But between the horses and the ancient trees and rolling hills and the barn off in the distance- I let the beauty over ride that fear. Now I know.

Thanks for your reply, very good info. And I am very glad you are Ok. Stay safe around those horses!! :)

Bounced down an exterior flight of stairs on my butt. Idiot partner (long time ex) of a friend had the bright idea of high-gloss polyurethane-ing the wooden stairs. Just a note: high-gloss, rain, pantyhose, and hurrying are a bad mix. BTW, I, too, had sunburns like yours almost every year from at least ten to sixteen or seventeen. The smell of Noxema (my mom's ineffective and painful remedy) to this day, brings back memories.

I've been busted up and patched back together more than a few times. I think it's a toss up between a broken collar bone, fractured pelvis or getting shot in the leg. Since I busted the collar bone and the pelvis at the same time in a motorcycle accident I think that was the most miserable to recover from. As far as lingering effects, I'd have to go with the gunshot wound to the leg :(

And fell head over heels down nine wooden steps to a cement floor. Goose egg on the head, cracked a rib, stretched all the ligaments in one ankle, skinned both knees, bruised my right arm, and had bruises from knee to ankle on both legs. That was by far the most painful injury. I've also broken my left wrist six times, broken two toes, chipped my right ankle, torn cartilage in one knee, and broken my right elbow (painful and extremely inconvenient).

I'm kind of clumsy.

I was 12 when I broke the former playing baseball (an awkward slide) and broke the latter 4 years ago when a 75-lb. mailbox fell on my right foot. x( :nuke:

My worst injuries didn't involve fractures; they involved sprains. I have sprained my left knee so many times it's a wonder that I still can walk on it. The worst one occured 5 years ago, during a driving rainstorm. I ran to close my friend's car door and, in the process, slipped, fell, and heard a loud popping noise in my left knee. It took a while for me to get up, but when I did, the pain was intense. My friend's ex-buddy didn't have the decency to drive me to the hospital or even an urgent care clinic. When it came time to see my doctor, Doc diagnosed a sprain, but to this day, it still hurts me when I walk. My knee locks when I use the clutch to shift gears (I drive a stick), especially during the winter.

I guess I was lucky only to have my worst injury happen to my knee. I could have had life-threatening ones, so I'll have to count my blessings. O8)

broke my scapula, fractured three ribs and punctured a lung :-(. Spent two nights in the hospital and begged my Dr. to allow me to go home. Couldn't sleep comfortably in any position for weeks.

Loading a ~100lb network server (old school!) into the back of a pickup unassisted on a hot day. I started sweating and it began to slip, I held on as best I could and heaved it up onto the truck bed...didn't realize the bottom edge of the server was sharp like a knife and cut through my forearm quite cleanly, nearly missing arteries...didn't even bleed for about five minutes...I could see all the organic structure inside of my arm, pretty gross! Ended up with a cool frankenscar, though!

or maybe it was a muscle. Could barely move, then couldn't. Unbelievable pain and spasms. After not being able to rise from the couch - at all - for 20 hours I gave up and called 911. It took a shot of morphine to get me off the couch, and some Valium and Dilaudid at the hospital helped even more. :) They ran a bunch of tests on me, said everything was operating w/in normal specs, gave me pain pills & anti-inflammatories and sent me home with instructions to take my narcotics regularly and take it easy for a few days. They said I must have torn a rib muscle or cartilage. Duh.

Still twinges once in a while.

how did we ever make it past childhood!?

My own worst was when I rode my bike in the rain home from school. I slid into the railing of a bridge and fell through it. I landed chin first on a jagged rock in the shallow creek below...split my chin wide open! OMG it hurt. Stitches were involved as well as lots of trips to the dentist as some teeth were shattered in the fall too.

I have a pretty amazing scar on my chin from it. It didn't heal very well as it moved whenever I talked or laughed.

First day using a pair of new skis / bindings. Hit a patch of ice, and the toe of my right ski planted itself in some packed snow while the rest of my body did a twisting fall. Binding should have released, but it didn't, so I wound up on the ground with my right foot -- literally -- behind my head. Tore several ligiments and completely shredded the meniscus in my right knee. To add insult to injury, there was no way I could ski the rest of the way down the mountain, so I had to hitch a ride down in the Ski Patrol sled. Felt like a complete idiot.

Probably the most serious was a hernia.

After a reimplant and a skin graft, I wound up with a fully functional but shorter thumb.

It hurt just about as much as you would expect something like that to hurt; that is to say, moderately.

However, being a dumb 20 year old at the time, who thought they were immortal and had no clue that stuff in the world might be, you know, DANGEROUS or something, I thought just washing it a bit and putting a band-aid on it would be fine.

I woke up the next morning with my foot completely swollen up, red, hot to the touch, and so painful any touch felt like agony. I couldn't bear to even put an ounce of weight on it. Even just wearing a sock really bloody hurt. I had to hop one-footed out to my car to drive myself to the doctor. It was a damn good thing I didn't own a manual transmission at the time, or I wouldn't have been able to drive.

The doctor took one look at it and said, "don't you know you ALWAYS have to go see someone right away about puncture wounds?!?!?" One x-ray later, they found out that the wound was so deep that half of the piece of mirror had broken off inside the wound where it couldn't even be seen. It was probably a 3-4" puncture wound up through the bottom of the arch.

I had to have a tetanus shot and 2 weeks of major heavy-duty antibiotics.

I also had to see a foot surgeon, who, after looking at the x-rays decided that it wasn't even possible to get it out of there without damaging the delicate tissues of the foot. So they left it in. 15 years later, it's still in there somewhere. Sometimes I think I can feel it a little bit, moving around or touching a bone or something.

rusty nail, don't remember to much about it other than it was right at the beginning of summer and I wasn't allowed to go swimming. When I was a 20-something I was working in a toy factory, got dizzy and fainted, when I fell, I banged my head on a grinder, required 10 stitches (hard way to find out you're pregnant). Just a few years ago I was working at one of our big box stores, had already had a painfully sore shoulder when a box fell from the top of a skid I was trying to download. Fell on my shoulder, ended up having to have xray, the pain (to the point it was hard to raise my arm above shoulder height) from before was because of a torn rotator cuff. I've also had the bad sunburns, we weren't to savvy about skin cancer back then, and the falls, but these are the ones that seem to stick out in my memory.

I was helping to take apart the stage from the HS play and stepped on a nail. Hurt like hell and I still remember the sound of the nail going through my heel. Luckily it didn't go in too deep, so I was able to lift my foot off of it. Didn't tell my parents that it happened. But my mom noticed I was limping a day or two later and she appropriately freaked out. Went to the doctors but I was up to date with tetnus shots and didn't need stiches. Still, it hurt for days and I limped around for awhile.

This is directed to the original poster:
Marrying a woman who grew up in a coastal fishing village probably saved my life. She grew up knowing more people who died of skin cancer than heart attacks. She kept bugging me about a couple of weird looking moles on my back, so I finally went. Doctor looked at them and said no problem. Then he saw one I had never paid attention to on my side and said "that's coming off right now." Biopsy showed it to be melanoma. As I recall the numbers, it was about 35 millimeters thick, and generally they have to be over 70 to spread. I went back, they cut it out deep, leaving about a 6 inch scar. Otherwise, I might not be typing this right now. I had to go for checkups every 6 months for a year, and now go yearly.
Doctor said that total sun exposure is not what is dangerous; it is the bad burns like I used to get every summer at the beach in the 60s, when there was no sun block. People would put on tanning oil to soak up even more rays. A neighbor's son had just finished his freshman year at Duke a few years back when they found a melanoma on his back. He was dead in less than a year.
So, get your ass, and the rest of you, to a dermatologist!

My dad had a melanoma, which they happened to find extremely early (they just cut it out and now he goes for checkups).

When I happened to mention off-hand at an annual physical that I now had a family history of melanoma, the doctor said, "you have other risk factors too (I'm blond/blue-eyed/very fair) and you need to see a dermatologist every year of your life. Make an appointment tomorrow."

So I did. The very next month, the dermatologist cut what was to me a very innocuous looking mole off the back of my leg, which turned out to be pre-melanoma. I now have a 1/2 scar. Had I not gone in, I probably wouldn't have noticed that mole until it was a serious problem, and I would have had a much bigger scar or been dead.

I see the dermatologist every year now without fail. I also look carefully at my moles and spots all the time.

I had a lot of sunburns/sun exposure as a kid and young adult. Everybody with risk factors like that should consider seeing a dermatologist yearly.

My upper lip was ripped up to my nose. And a collar bone was broken.

*My fault. I was running across the street then saw the bike coming. Little kid logic said run back and let it pass. So I turned on a dime, darting back just as the bike was swerving behind me...SHPLOCK!

cats dislodged a throw rug that I tripped over on my way to the bathroom (it was 11pm). My right ankle was so sprained it felt broken and I thought it was on backwards! Needed an ambulance to get to ER as both ankles were sprained and I am wearing an air boot on both feet to stabilize them.

This was during a "fist" fight. I suppose my opponent was beaten and pulled a knife stabbing me in the leg.

Getting the tip of the blade pulled out of my bone was the killer. The doctor said he could get me out of there in 30 minutes or a couple hours. I opted for the quick fix.

That hurt so bad that I quickly realized the bad decision to rush the procedure.

Terrible pain :(

The entry wound was near the base of my thumb, on the palm side of my hand. It didn't quite exit, but lodged near the base of the first joint of my index finger. It felt like my hand had been placed on an anvil, and hit with a sledge hammer. It was pretty painful, and I was on serious pain killers for a couple of weeks.

Due to the barb, the ER docs couldn't just pull the spear back out, but sort of shifted the tip, and pushed it the rest of the way through coming out just at the top and to one side of the web of my hand between thumb and forefinger. That scar is nearly invisible now, and looks like part of one of the "lines" on my palm. The entry wound looks like a faint 3/8" horizontal line just above my wrist.

I was exceedingly fortunate. Not only did I take the hit in my non-dominant hand, as it turns out the spear didn't hit anything vital, and I have absolutely no loss of usage.

Suffice it to say I never again went diving with the ditzy woman who did this to me. She was otherwise very nice and very physically attractive, so I introduced her to one of my friends - a guy I went to law school with - and warned him to never, ever, under any circumstances go spearfishing with her. He ended up married to her. At the wedding she accused me of "pawning me off just because I shot you with a spear gun." Although this was in fact true, I denied all.

They've got a couple of now-grown sons. And I still have my hand.

All's well that ends well.

my hand with my elbow propped on the bed while reading. When I woke up, my neck was out of whack and my left arm was as limp as a noodle. I had feeling in my arm, but I couldn't use it. It stayed that way for 20 years, despite various medical treatments. I had years of neck pain along with the limp arm. I could use the limp arm fingers, but I had to move the arm in place with my good arm to use the fingers on my limp arm. To play my musical instruments, I devised special arm props for each one.

I'm okay now, except I can't turn my head very far in either direction.

was a chip fracture of my Left radial head.

was not an injury.
It was shingles, 2 years ago, covering one entire side of my torso, from center of front to center of back.

I have had an almost 9 pound baby, no meds, all natural.
That hurt, but not like this.
Nothing like this, ever.

24/7 nerve pain, for 3 weeks, and not enough pills in the world to really do any good.
Doc said it was the worst case she had ever seen.

Anyone of you who has a family history of shingles, check out the new vaccine.
It is expensive and supposedly lasts for only 3 years, but... you do not want this pain, trust me.
I normally would never ever recommend a vaccine, btw.

I still have some nerve damage with occasional painful flareups, but not as bad as the initial outbreak.

Shudder.

I was hit by a car. Fractured my skull (I've fractured twice since)broke my legs, my bottom and top teeth went through my lip(s). I was in a body cast for 6 months and a hospital bed at home. I was allowed to go home sooner than I should have because my mom is a nurse and we lived right around the corner (literally) from the hospital.

Other than that it wasn't too bad.

I was expected to remain in the hospital for 5 weeks. I was out in three.

Bicycle accident. I did better than the car that hit me. It was, um, dead.

I am glad the driver of the car wasn't injured though.

The accident was my fault, by the way. I was going too fast and couldn't stop.

I fell off of my bike and fractured my collarbone. Right in the middle of Driver's Education, too. I had to schedule later dates for my own driving portions, but still rode with the rest of my team to hear the instructions.

but the worst injury for me was slipping on a loose rug and jamming my foot into a limestone step. Everything went black for a moment, and I pulled off my slipper expecting to see bloody stumps where my toes were. I broke 3 toes, and as we all know there is nothing they can do for broken toes except give you some painkillers. Walking was impossible for about a week and painful for months.