Nothing’s more entertaining than a wince-inducing tale of personal anguish—providing you’re not the subject, of course. In honor of this great storytelling tradition, we’ve collected some incredible tales of woe and run them by a panel of pain experts to separate the mere Ouch’s from the Sweet Jesus, let me die!’s.
The Panelists:
“Dead” Mike Vederman
A computer programmer who survived a gruesome parachute accident (don’t worry, you’ll read about it) and photo-documented his injuries on his Web site, deadmike.com.
Rick Thorne
A top-ranked BMX rider who’s bruised, broken, and shredded most of his body over the course of his career. He’s undergone four knee surgeries in the last year alone.
Dr. Christopher Gharibo
Dr. Gharibo is an assistant professor at NYU Medical Center and medical director of the Bellevue Pain Treatment Center. He totally wrecked his toe on a bed stand one time.
| 
|
Key to the House of Pain
1. Blood Loss
2. Broken Bones
3. Death
4. Dismemberment
5. Electricity
6. Explosion
7. Impalement
8. Machinery
9. Shame
10. Animals
DIY Amputation
While on a solo fishing trip near St. Mary’s Glacier, Colorado in 1993, Bill Jeracki stopped to take a load off—but wound up putting one on. He leaned against a boulder that rolled onto his leg, trapping him. With no help in sight, Jeracki (an anesthetist at a local medical center) used his shirt to make a tourniquet, then took a fishing knife and sawed through his own leg. With endorphins coursing through him, Jeracki crab-walked to his truck and drove himself to town for help. He now makes his living—we shit you not—molding prosthetic limbs.
Evaluation: We’d have spent long hours trying to shatter the boulder with our foreheads before resorting to amateur surgery. “He’ll probably have considerable phantom-limb pain—a burning, aching, or cramping similar to the pain present in the limb before operating,” says Gharibo.
OVERALL: 8
1, 4
No Guts, No Glory
William I of England (a.k.a. William the Conqueror) was, by all reports, a grotesquely fat bastard who became king of England, got medieval on the French, and died horribly. One day while his troops were innocently sacking a town, William’s poor overburdened steed got spooked so badly it managed to rear up despite its crushing load. In fine Three Stooges fashion, William flew up into the air and landed on the knob of his saddle, rupturing his intestines and filling his cavernous belly with bile and excrement. William died after about five weeks of intense agony; as pallbearers crammed his disgustingly bloated corpse into a coffin, his body burst and his mourners were treated to a refreshing shower of putrescent human stew.
Evaluation: As his last great deed, William helped us conquer our fear of death—there’s no way ours could be that bad. “He was like a human septic tank,” says Thorne. “That’s so gnarly I don’t know what to say.”
OVERALL: 8.5
3, 6, 9, 10
This Old House of Pain
A not-very-handy man from Pennsylvania was doing some renovation in a client_sq_s basement when he accidentally sliced off a paw with a miter saw. In shock at seeing his hand waving up at him from the floor, and quite insane with agony, he grabbed a nail gun and shot himself more than a dozen times in the head in a valiant attempt to end the pain. It was an excellent plan that was doomed to failure—he was discovered and saved by his client, and doctors were later able to reattach the hand.
Evaluation: “This is a very misinformed patient. A nail gun to the head has never been shown to ‘end the pain,’” says Gharibo. We’re betting this is one miter saw that got the living crap kicked out of it when Daddy got home from the hospital.
OVERALL: 8.5
4, 8, 9, 10
DY-NO-MITE!
Clearing track for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in 1848, foreman Phineas P. Gage inadvertently detonated a charge that shot a three-foot-long steel rod though his brain and out the top of his skull, landing almost 30 feet away. While history’s most extreme body piercing didn’t prove fatal for Gage, it did have some peculiar effects on his personality. Along with displaying a marked aversion to airborne steel rods, this intelligent and socially well-adapted guy became an obnoxious jerk given to childish fits. Gage’s story led scientists to rethink the then common notion that intellect and emotion originate in the heart and spleen and inspired them to consider the brain as more than just hat-rack stuffing.
Evaluation: “Sometimes you’re better off dying instead of becoming a cantankerous old bastard,” says Thorne. Gage’s experience was certainly unpleasant, don’t get us wrong, but the fact that there are no pain receptors in the brain keeps this tale from earning high marks. Now, if he’d cut off his head with a miter saw…
OVERALL: 4
6, 7, 9
Opens on Impact
During the 1997 World Freefall Convention (can’t you just see the prosthetic-limb people hanging around like buzzards?), “Dead” Mike Vederman collided with fellow parachutist Andy Anderson 30 seconds before landing. He free-fell roughly 80 feet before slamming into a runway and experiencing breakage that reads like an anatomy book, shattering both femurs, both knees, his left kneecap, right big toe, left elbow, right arm radius, mandible (lower jaw), maxilla (upper jaw), nose, both eye orbits, and his palate. In addition, he lost 19 teeth, 10 pints of blood, and 25 pounds of fat and muscle.
Evaluation: Nice bounce. We promise never to tell our Pee-Wee football injury story again. (Even though it did keep us from making the pros.) “Hey! That guy still owes me five bucks!” says the inexplicably cheerful “Dead” Mike.
OVERALL: 9
1, 2, 6
Scar Chasm
Way back in 1913, Douglas Mawson, leader of an Antarctic expedition, was trudging around ass-deep in snow 100 miles from civilization. He’d already lost both members of his party, had just killed and eaten his last sled dog, and was beginning each day by reattaching the soles of his feet, which had peeled back from the bone like a pair of flesh-flops. Mawson was just embarking on another bright day of aimless slogging when he fell into a crevasse, tumbling several yards before the rope securing him to his sled snapped taut, cutting into his waist and leaving him hanging for hours. With the sled threatening to follow him in, a starved Mawson found the will to scale 14 feet of rope, despite several failed attempts and the fact that his hands were worn to the bone, and escape. He awoke from the pain- and exhaustion-induced faint that followed, then careened around for another week before he was found by rescuers.
Evaluation: “This is incredible and awe-inspiring. The man is a true hero,” says “Dead” Mike. Starving, freezing, and surviving an extended stay in the House of Pain earn Mawson high marks.
OVERALL: 10
10
Venus de Moron
While grinding feed in one of the Dakotas (does it matter which one?), 18-year-old John Thompson had both of his arms ripped off by a grain auger. Whirring at 1,200 rpm, the auger spun its partner round and round and then tossed his middle third to the ground. Revived minutes later by his trusty dog Tuffy, Thompson stumbled 400 blood-spurting yards to his house, where he used an exposed bit of bone to pry open the door and dialed the phone for help using a pencil he held clenched in his teeth. As he waited, Thompson went and sat in the bathtub to keep the blood he was gushing off his mom’s carpet. Although he’d lost about half his blood when doctors arrived, Thompson’s arms were later reattached, depriving the hungry auger of a pair of neat souvenirs.
Evaluation: Adding to the horror, celebrities Bette Midler and Sally Jessy Raphael took an interest in Thompson’s case, sending him cards and calling him as he recovered. Somehow Thompson still found the will to live. “The dude had to be thinking, Every Halloween I’m going to have to dress up as a tube sock!” quips the sensitive and understanding Thorne.
OVERALL: 8.5
1, 4, 8, 10
I Singe the Body Electric
Employing an unusual defense at his murder trial, John Louis Evans III swore to the jury that if they didn’t sentence him to the electric chair, he would escape and murder each of them. In what was no doubt a brief deliberation, they obliged. When the time came, a warden flipped the switch and sent 1,900 volts coursing through Evans’ body. As the current was cut, a cascade of flames and sparks issued from Evans’ head and leg, prompting doctors to examine him. Finding that his heart was still beating, they ordered the warden to juice Evans a bit more. Even after a second session, doctors weren’t convinced Evans was dead, so they had him plugged in a third time until finally, after long minutes of slapping the snooze bar on his existence, Evans was crisp and ready to be enjoyed with a zesty lime dipping sauce.
Evaluation: “That’s not pain, that’s a ride at Six Flags Afghanistan!”“Dead” Mike says. We’d just like to tell that warden, “Well done!”
OVERALL: 7
3, 5
Elephant Walk
Steven Street hoped to take in all the glorious trappings of nature when he went on safari in Botswana in 1999. Instead, he took in all the bitch-slappings of nature at the hands of a pugnacious pachyderm. When an elephant charged toward Street’s wife, he began jumping and waving to distract the beast. The plan worked to perfection: The elephant butted, gored, and kicked the British oil worker, breaking his shoulder and six ribs and doing damage to his liver, spleen, and gallbladder. Thinking quickly, a nearby guide shot and felled the beast…right on top of the already mangled Street, who was trapped for five hours until help arrived.
Evaluation: “You don’t want to go out like a sucker. You want to live through that shit so you can sell the script to Oliver Stone,” says Thorne. We’d have given Steven’s story a hearty nine, except we’re jealous of all the gratitude blow jobs he’ll be collecting from Mrs. Street for the rest of his life.
OVERALL: 7
2, 10
Finnegan’s Break
This one we can’t verify, but it’s too amazing to ignore. According to a number of strange-but-true Web sites, a man named Bob Finnegan, 22, was takin’ a wee stroll through Belfast in 1976 when he was struck by a car. Knocked silly, he barely had time to shake the orange stars, green clovers, yellow moons, and purple horseshoes from his eyes when a second car hit him. By now a crowd had gathered to point and laugh at Bob, but the joke was on them as a third driver swerved into the pack, mowing down four people—most notably Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd had smartened up and hauled ass, leaving nobody in the car’s path except the ever less ambulatory Bob. He suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, shattered leg, and other assorted injuries. He was, however, undoubtedly cheered by the fact that the whole thing was very, very unlikely to happen again.
Evaluation: Erin go bang. We’re not sure what’s worse—that he got hit so many times or that so many people watched him get hit so many times. “I don’t believe it. Nobody is that unlucky,” says guy-who-broke-his-whole-entire-body-in-a-parachute- accident “Dead” Mike.
OVERALL: 7.5
2, 8, 9
|
Blog 
