Suffer for the Art, Baby (1 Viewer)

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I dropped a full letterpress chase on my finger last night. 15lbs of cast iron with cast iron beneath it and my finger in between. It hurts more than you can imagine, although nothing is broken. I went to the doctor today and got an x-ray and 15 Percocet. It is a throbbing nearly unbearable pain without drugs, and I am not easily hurt....

hand.JPG


It feels much worse than it looks.

And the black and red on my hand is ink (the nail is a bruise, though).

Bill
 
Take care of you hands, Bill. I was working in a newspaper factory while going to university and a guy asked me to put a 2 by 4 under a forklift tire because he had gotten caught in a concavity in the floor. I obliged, but he revved the tire before I had a chance to remove my hand and two fingers were crushed between the wood and the floor. Luckily no finger loss--they sewed me up and the guy came to the hospital very apolgetic. He wasn't supposed to be driving the forklift in the first place. But I became very religious suddently: "Dear GOD! I play the piano! Save my two fingers!" Hang in there!
 
Ouch! Thank God, you did'nt break any bones, Bill. A couple of years ago I slammed my living room door shut, only my middle finger got caught in between. It hurt like hell, and to this day the nail keep growing out in a crooked way like an eagle's beak.
Good thing you got some pain killers! Hopefully, the worst pain will be gone in a few days.
Have a speedy recovery!
 
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ouch!
Be lucky you didn't lose your fingernail. This happens. Having the flesh under your nail uncovered is a buttfuck. I can imagine your hurt though.
 
I'll lose the nail for sure. It has a large pool of blood under it. The pressure is part of the reason for the pain. They may have to drain it with a needle, which sounds like it hurts a lot....

I'm just glad that this was all that I did. Usually accidents on this press take off the fingers very effectively. These old presses are not OSHA approved and there is no way to make them safe. The number one injury is lost fingers. It is easy enough to do as you have to put your hand in the mouth of the press to feed each sheet and then pull it out before it takes your hand...

Bill
 
True...

The thing is that I am not into pain killers. They don't normally do much for me. I have never understood the Oxycodone thing as I have taken them a few times for pain and never understood how they are supposed to get you high. Maybe I only took the prescribed amounts.

Still without them this time, I'm not able to sleep or do much else.

On the positive side, the injury is a cool story and shows that I'm willing to put my body into it!

Bill
 
you gotta chase them with something harder than water to really have fun. or so i hear...i had a band saw go halfway up the middle of my fingernail years ago, holy shit that hurt.
 
bill, my theory on painkillers (which i LOVE) is when you take them for actual pain, you don't really get the high, buzzing goodness feeling. the pill is busy taking care of pain. it's only when you take them while pain-free you get the full effects. and like d gray said, chasing them with a whiskey or a few beers really enhances the effects.
take care of that hand and send my way all extra pills!
 
oh man, finger injuries hurt so much! i smashed my thumb with a hammer when i worked in a bike shop, and it didn't even look that bad, but it was throbbing in pain for a few days before it calmed down and just felt like a normal bruise. i've had a lot of painful stuff, but injuries to fingers have a way of hurting in a way that makes you unable to focus on anything else.

get better soon, bill.
 
Luckily my left hand is my delivery hand, not my feeding hand. When running a hand-fed press, the right hand feeds the paper (and needs to have good control to get it in the re), while the left hand just slides the printed page out. Frankly, I could print with only one hand as long as I did not lose my right hand.

Bill
 
Usually accidents on this press take off the fingers very effectively. These old presses are not OSHA approved and there is no way to make them safe.
Trust me, any OSHA approved "guards" in place on more modern small offset presses are very quickly removed and they stay off. You can't adjust the press with those things in place, and you can't remove and replace them for every job.

There are no clamshell-type crush points on the modern presses like the old letterpresses, but there are dozens of other crush points, and I've had my fingers in most of them. But for sheer everyday danger, the bindery machinery beats the presses hands-down. No pun intended.

Ibuprofen (Advil) is better than percocet for those kind of inflammatory injuries. Take a large dose - like 800 - 1200 mg, as opposed to the recommended dose on the bottle of 200 - 400. That will knock the pain down. You can take those large doses for a week or two without any bad effects. Save the percocet for when you run out of whiskey. ;)
 
print shops sound dangerous, but an aerodynamic bike wheel with bladed spokes is the most dangerous thing in a workshop... trust me!
 
Bill, a painful reminder to be extra careful.
We do almost everything on the automatic pilot.
In spite of your injury you can count yourself lucky.
Get well soon!
This is also not bad as a pain killer

images.jpeg
 
Oh yeah ouch! on monday I cut the index finger of my right hand across the side and half way thru my nail on a piece of bone no less. nasty. well shit you know... I just had to tell my story. now I feel kinda dumb. and hey! My girl freind was f ollowing a group of bikers a while back and saw one of them reach down to pull a stick from his spokes and lop off a finger (no shit!) this ensued into a pile up with the other bikers and then a search for the finger. and yes, she was the one who actually found it on the side of the road. gawd! luckly she's trained in medical proceedures so she wasn't too freaked out. me?, I think that they would have found the finger in a pile of vomit... ok, I'm going to have another glass of wine now and quit all of this nonsense jabbering....
 
i feel like i need to add my own finger-injury tale, but i don't really have any to beat these ones... one time, while i was working in a restaurant, i was busy talking to some customers while simultaneously replacing a candle: the candles were stuffed into wine bottles, and i poked the old candle down the neck with my finger - really hard - without realising the neck was all cracked and broken. sliced open my index finger, right down the length, nice bit of flapping flesh. i was too embarrassed to really do anything at first, so i just kept talking to the customer, surreptitiously picked up a napkin from the table and wrapped it round my finger, and then walked away as soon as i could.
 
Ibuprofen (Advil) is better than percocet for those kind of inflammatory injuries. Take a large dose - like 800 - 1200 mg, as opposed to the recommended dose on the bottle of 200 - 400. That will knock the pain down. You can take those large doses for a week or two without any bad effects. Save the percocet for when you run out of whiskey. ;)

One has to be careful with over-the-counter medicines as well. While I don't know of anything particularly bad about ib*profen in this context, by all means, do not transfer this advice to ac*taminophen (Tyl*nol); especially if you drink alcohol.

The primary human metabolite of ac*taminophen is a liver toxin; and while normal doses are not expected to produce unsafe concentrations of the metabolite in the body, over-dosing or excessive alcohol use could be a problem. Not saying it would; just saying.

Every now and again, the topics in this forum slide into my area of expertise. But you didn't hear it from me, right?
 
I'll lose the nail for sure.


Maybe not.

I caught my finger in the hydraulic lift mechanism on the back of a truck and it broke that last little bone and ripped most of the nail off.

The doc said I would lose the nail (or that it wouldn't re-grow).

I'm looking at my fingers as I type this and I'm struggling to remember which finger it was. It came back just fine.
 
...i just kept talking to the customer, surreptitiously picked up a napkin from the table and wrapped it round my finger, and then walked away as soon as i could.
Punk rock! "Nothing to see here. I'll be right back with your salad. Blood? What blood?" ;)

One has to be careful with over-the-counter medicines as well. While I don't know of anything particularly bad about ib*profen in this context, by all means, do not transfer this advice to ac*taminophen (Tyl*nol); especially if you drink alcohol.
Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone if a doctor hadn't prescribed 1200mg doses of ibuprofen to me once for pain. He told me it was safe at that dose temporarily (I took them for a couple weeks). But you can't make a habit out of it.

I separated all the ribs on one side of my body (don't try that at home, kids), and the 1200mg ibuprofen was the only thing I could take that would allow me to move at all. The heavy narcotics they gave me did nothing for the pain.
 
As far as certain over the counter medicine like Ibuprofrin I've been told (by Mrs. Slimedog) that they are not to be taken by heavy (more than 3 drinks a day) drinkers and therefore I am forbidden to take them.

And as far as the Percocet goes, save them & drink whiskey for the pain now-like it was pointed out you must be pain free to enjoy them and be careful with the mixing, of course.

But hope you're feeling better soon. Hang on to some Perc & you will be.
 
Percoset never did anything for me, I don't know, high tolerance. But as far as not breathing goes, any narcotic can slow down your breathing. That's why my mother can't take hydro's, she has asthma and basically just can't breathe on them. But I don't know, I'm reckless, I chain smoke and take hydros at the same time.

Shit, sorry about your hand bill! How the fuck did that happen?

Like David below your orginal post said, take care of your hands, and,

244cq44.jpg
 
Oh man Bill, that sucks! I slammed that same finger in the car door back in January and the nail is only about halfway grown back... I miss my nail.
 
Hi,
I dropped a chase on it while at my press. It was like dropping an 8 lb hammer on your fingernail, but your hand was sitting on an anvil, so there was no cushion at all.

My finger is MUCH better. Just a little sore now, but nothing big. The nail is black, but might not fall off.

Bill
 
Sorry to hear that Bill. I will remember this picture when I'm working with the chase. Or pretty much any component on the press. Ouch!
I hope it is healing well.
 
Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I shouldn't have clicked on that thread ! Its title misled me !

I've read nothing, I don't want to know what happenened, the photo is eloquent enough ! I can't stand pain !

I only hope that you don't suffer too much and will soon recover, Bill !
 
bill, my theory on painkillers (which i LOVE) is when you take them for actual pain, you don't really get the high, buzzing goodness feeling. the pill is busy taking care of pain. it's only when you take them while pain-free you get the full effects.

That's certainly true for morphine. I got a shitload of morphine for 5 days at the hospital once and I couldn't understand why I did'nt get high. Then a nurse told me that you don't get much high on morphine when you're in pain. It only relieves the pain.
I don't know about oxycondin. I've never tried them. Are they organic or synthetic morphine?

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone if a doctor hadn't prescribed 1200mg doses of ibuprofen to me once for pain. He told me it was safe at that dose temporarily (I took them for a couple weeks).

That's right!
Over here you can buy them at 200 mg over the counter and much stronger on prescription, 400-600 mg. per tablet.
 
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A guy I knew in High School just died from combining pain medicine (Oxycontin) and alcohol. He was 53 but when in High School we thought the kid who died from that same mixture was an idiot. The guy I quote is lucky to be alive. It's bad enough to be mixing Crown Royal with sweet soda but vicoden? Please.
 
Sorry to hear.

After I had a major surgery about 25 years ago, the surgeon prescribed Tylox, which I had never heard of before. Turned out they were high dose oxycontin tablets. When I asked for a refill the doctor laughed at me and gave me Vicodin instead.

Oxycontin is a whole lot stronger than Vicodin and, unlike the average dose of morphine, you do get quite high when you're using it for pain.
 
I am intrigued. Where does one obtain this Oxycontin you speak of?

I know that it will make you deaf if you abuse it (up your rotting ass in hell Limbaugh!), so I won't need much.

You can just send me your leftovers.
 
oxycontin is great but the withdrawal symptoms are quite unpleasant. sort of a "i feel like i am literally dying" feeling...
 
I've had worse bruises than this from having sex. My girlfriend's a biter. You went to the doctor for this? You must have health insurance...pobrecito...Percocet is on the low end of the totem like vicodin, it's virtually tylenol or ibuprofen or niquil...one step away from the counter, you can drink alcohol with it, no big thing, as long as you're relatively healthy to begin with. If you're not relatively healthy almost anything can be too much for your system. The oxies are stronger, and morphine is the big daddy. I've seen people addicted to morphine and it's a really sad thing to see, the spittle around the mouth and the shakes and the delusions...ugly and scary...worse than alcohol by far...if you've taken morphine and you didn't get "high" then there's something REALLY wrong with you or you're just a liar. Even people with severe, chronic pain get high on morphine, though many would never admit it because they are, surprise, hooked and delusional. It's obvious to any onlooker that they are high as a fucking kite. I work with them every day. And now Bill you're telling us your nail isn't going to fall off after all...well, that's too bad...I was hoping to see the after photo...
 
I was talking about my finger, not my penis.

I guess the extreme danger of "sleepiness" is the reason morphine is illegal.
 
And now Bill you're telling us your nail isn't going to fall off after all...well, that's too bad...I was hoping to see the after photo...

I pulled the nail off with my own teeth while driving one day. Here is finger without a top nail. Just the fleshy nail below...


nonail.JPG


Bill
 

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