Strange Injuries
If you think life is an accident waiting to happen, you're not alone

I ONCE HURT my back with a sneeze. I blew out my knee when my foot stuck on dried up soda pop on a rubberized court. I fractured my hand when I jabbed at a basketball but hit a friend's stomach instead.

Inevitable as injuries can be, some resound with more weirdness than others, as readers confirmed when asked to share stories of their odd medical adventures.

Jayne Kulzer of Seattle was on a half-marathon training run in Discovery Park, where she nimbly navigated over roots and rocks only to continue onto Magnolia Boulevard and trip on an uneven sidewalk. Her hands were not paying attention, and she landed flat on her face, ergo a mouth full of loose teeth, black eyes, face full of abrasions and swollen bloody nose. "The home I solicited help from was quite put out," she wrote. "He did call 911 but encouraged me to wait elsewhere. I gather he was embarrassed by what his neighbors might think.

"I did run the 'half,' just with a few more scars."

Fran Joy of Seattle told of a friend of a friend who was playing tennis and, while serving, dropped her racquet. It bounced up, hit her glasses and cut her cheek so badly she needed six stitches. Joy's daughter once was running a relay when she collided with another kid, pushing her retainer through her cheek. More stitches.

Joy herself was in a hurry one morning after oversleeping, pulled off her right sock and - pop! The tip of her middle finger was at a right angle. "I straightened it, let it go and it slowly resumed the right-angle position." After it didn't respond to self-splinting, she saw a doctor and got a diagnosis: ruptured distal interphalangeal tendon, otherwise known as "mallet finger." Despite more splinting, it still hasn't healed. One fittingly odd side effect along the way, when driving: The splint, which stuck out a little, turned on the wipers each time she turned left.

Fitness news you can use The rest of Law's story To read David Law's story in Pack & Paddle magazine, go to www.packandpaddlemagazine.com or, for a photocopy, send $1 to Pack & Paddle, P.O. Box 1063, Port Orchard, WA 98366. Interfitness www.route152.com has details on destinations for outdoor recreation in the West: skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, kayaking, rock climbing, hiking and scuba diving. Members also share online journals chronicling their adventures. www.activeusa.com offers online registration for participatory sports and recreational activities. In addition to listing more than more than 50 sports and 20,000 events and clubs nationwide, it includes training programs and fitness calculators. More strange injuries? Send your tales of strange fitness injuries to me at Pacific Northwest magazine, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98101 or mmartin@seattletimes.com. (Tales e-mailed after Nov. 19 were lost because of the strike. Please re-send!)

Laurie Perkins of Kent snapped a tendon by catching her middle finger in the elastic of her jog bra. "I went to the doctor, trying to explain what I had done. He laughed, and told me I had 'baseball finger.' That sounded much better than 'bra finger.' " She was in a brace for six weeks. "I teach elementary school, and having your middle finger in a brace was the topic of endless conversations."

David Laws of Bellingham wins the prize for the oddest injury. To do his story justice, you can read of his entire adventure in the March 1999 issue of www.packandpaddlemagazine.com Pack & Paddle Magazine. An extremely abbreviated version: Laws and his dog Lucky were on one of their weekly Saturday hikes, in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. Circumstances and a series of (in hindsight) questionable decisions ensued, among them deviating from his planned and announced route; pursuing an unknown, disappearing trail; his color blindness, which made it difficult to see trail-marking ribbons; clambering over a boulder field when prepared for hiking, not climbing; misjudging the distance to the ridge's crest; and ignoring a cold turn in the weather. They finally made it to the west summit of Mount Defiance (5,300 feet), but to safely descend, in a snowstorm, with hypothermia, he sat and slid much of the way down, wearing through layers of clothing, then skin, then muscle.

He had to spend the night on the mountain but the next day, with Lucky's help, found the trail and search-and-rescue teams before they found him. Laws spent several days in the hospital and needed an air bed, pain killers, steroids and antibiotics for his damaged gluteus maximus. He joked with a plastic surgeon that if work was needed, he wanted the "Paul Newman Special" instead of his original model, but "I managed to grow my own." Other injuries less obvious at first have persisted, including torn ligaments in his right hand, bone spurs in his hips and elbows, and a neuroma in his left foot. Lucky, of course, came through unscathed.

Among the many lessons he learned from the experience, Laws said:

"You can make a lot of bad jokes about losing your behind. If you've lost your behind, you can hear a lot of bad jokes about losing your behind. You will tire of these long before you stop hearing them."

Molly Martin is assistant editor of Pacific Northwest magazine.