Welcome to Blood Week. We put out the call on Friday for your tales of of blood, violence, gruesome injuries, near-death experiences, mayhem, and blood. Many of you came through with submissions, which we'll be posting throughout the week. If you have a story and/or photos to share, email [email protected], with Blood Week in the subject line.
The image you see above is of Dan L. The actual photo is here, and Dan was kind enough to pass along additional images of his mangled fingers here, here, and here. Oh, and this is how he described what happened to him:
Outdoor basketball game, dove to keep a ball in bounds, landed badly.
Kevin's got a story of nearly losing his face, trying to get revenge, and having his father egg him on the whole time. Here goes:
I grew up with a Dad who was a trainer for an NFL team so football was the big sport in our family. My brother was well ahead of me in age and was the HS quarterback so I avoided football so as not to walk in his shadow. It turned out I was the best skater in the family at a young age so I drifted to hockey for my sport. It had speed, and violence and I liked both.
I grew up playing youth hockey in the mid west and East Coast so when we moved to LA when I was 16 I figured my days of good hockey were behind me and there would be no good teams to play on. Well that turned out wrong as there were a bunch of other former East Coast kids playing hockey in the land of sunshine and beaches, and we had good hockey those years. We even went to Veags to play in a tournament and played a team down from Canada and beat their asses. They were so smug and it was so good to kick their asses.
That year we played in a smallish league of 7 teams so we played each one three times during the season. IN the third meeting of the year against the team from Santa Monica we faced the team we matched up well against. They had a really talented player who was likely to go on to the next level after youth hockey. Only thing was he was not only really skilled but he was very dirty and nasty on the ice. The whole league feared him for both his ability to score but also his ability to smash people behind the refs back.
In this game we were up by a goal and they started to get mad. He came through the neutral zone on a rip towards our goal but somehow he was screened from me and I was able to come across the defense and clean him out with a legal check at the blue line. Well he was mad. Real mad, and as soon as the play turned up ice the other way and the ref was pointed the other way he took a ten yard run at me and took a full swing jab at me with the butt end of his stick. He planted it on me (blindside I must say, I barely saw him coming) right on the mouth and sent me flying. He was laughing at me as he did it. I do remember that vividly. I went down. This was in the days before face masks in youth hockey. We have mouth guards and helmets only. I put my glove to my face while on the ice and blood was pouring out of my mouth. Something was wrong with my face.
But my teenage brain was raging. I climbed up with blood gushing, blood all over my glove, and started to go after him to get even. But the refs got to me first and stopped me while he taunted and laughed at me. They did not see it so gave no penalty. Sigh.
So i go off the ice and my dad is there to work on me. He finds one tooth dangling out of my mouth barely hanging on something. I had braces on my lower teeth and one of the braces had been shoved through my face below my lip. Dad managed to push the tooth back in place and stuff my upper with cotton to stem the blood. Then he had to do an extraction of my face from the brace on my tooth. Yikes this hurt. I can still feel it to this day.
But he did it. (Actually he had seen much worse in his days in pro football)He packed my mouth with cotton, had me lie on the floor with ice on my face until the blood stopped gushing. But the whole time I am thinking of nothing but getting this fucking kid back for messing up my face.
Dad is pissed too. He was a competitive MF. One of the best cheaters in golf I have ever seen.
So as soon as he thinks i can manage he gets me up and tells the coach I am good to go and can go back into the game. Yahoo. So my first shift back on the ice this kid is out too. I am boiling mad so I go after him behind the net but he is fast. Too fast and skilled for me. I end up catching him in the back and hooking him to the ice. Dang. Ref sees it and off I go for two minutes. I tried hard but only got a penalty....
That was the last time I saw this kid. Next year he was gone. Maybe off to the next level, although I never saw him in NHL that is for sure.
But I have been suffering that tooth for years. Even last year I had to have bridge work done on it and it brought back this game. Blood gushing, teeth knocked out and my dear dad sent me back in the game to get even.
Man those were the days.... Hahahahahah
Alex had a night of drunken basketball that went from good to bad to worse to ... how did that happen? by morning:
A couple of months ago I went over to a friend's place to watch the Fighting Illini take on Missouri in the Braggin' Rights basketball game. There were probably 10 or so of us over there, all current or former students at Illinois. There was plenty of beer there, and we drank at a pretty steady rate throughout the game. The game was a close one, and it was very tense throughout. Missouri ended up winning by a few points at the end, and we were very disappointed. The Illini have been infuriating the past 3 years because they can beat anybody but can lose to anybody as well. We sat there and continued drinking Bud Light for an hour or two, and then somebody said they thought we could play better than our Illini team. Before I know it, we are outside playing basketball in my buddy's driveway, and you can probably guess what happens from here. Not long into the game, I drove from the top of the key towards the hoop. My man was the drunkest of all of us, so I got around him without much problem. As I drove into where the lane would be, another defender stepped in my path. As I attempted to go around him, I tripped over my OWN feet and smashed face-first into the concrete driveway. I had a big gash on my forehead, a nasty scrape on my hand, and my nose was bleeding profusely. I played basketball in high school, so I have some athletic ability. That fact made it more surprising that I simply tripped over myself. Rather than attempt to clean myself up there, I decided to walk home(I live a couple blocks from my buddy's place). I don't remember much of the walk home or rest of the night for whatever reason, but the next morning there was blood all over my apartment. Blood on the carpet, blood on light switches, the bathroom, kitchen, and all over my sheets, my clothes, etc.. My roommate(who was also drunk that night) informed me that I came in covered in blood and was muttering angrily about basketball. With my face feeling like it was Robin Ventura's after he charged Nolan Ryan, I decided to walk over to my buddy's place and see how the night ended for everybody else. As soon as I step out of my apartment, I see a spot of blood on the ground. A few feet away, there is another splotch of blood. A few feet away there is another one. I keep following the blood trail, and it leads me all the way back to my buddy's place. So not only did I get my blood all over the apartment, but I also left a huge blood trail a couple blocks long. What could have been a glorious night of celebration in the name of beating Missouri turned into a nightmare of a night filled with blood and anger. Sports may take our minds off of our problems, but they also can make you bleed your own blood and leave it everywhere in a trail of shame and disappointment.
Finally for today, Nattie has a story that's a real pain in the ass:
I'm a pharmacist and often get all kinds if weird stories from people or them showing me random body parts. I was working in the projects when this young lady comes in. Probably about 20 but obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
She asks what I can give her for bleeding from her bum. So I ask is the blood bright red or dark in color (NB red is usually just hemorrhoids or a fissure while dark can indicate internal bleeding). She says bright red so I select a hemorrhoid product and explain to her how to use it.
She keeps staring at me and then says what causes it. I explain it could be from constipation or straining. She asks, totally deadpan in a normal voice, if I think it could be because her boyfriend tried anal sex on her last night for the first time.
I try to keep the non-shocked look on my face and calmly say yes it definitely could. Then I give her a lesson on lube and condoms to Make it safer and more comfortable for her.
True story.