That's insane Dara.  I had my wrists opened up and put back together, one with bone that was sawed off my hip and screwed into a wrist.  I had sort of destroyed my wrists and it hurt so badly that before surgery, I had to figure out, not from pain because my wrists hurt too much to feel it but by not being able to straighten my arm and feeling some swelling, that we needed to go back to radiology because my elbow was broken too, and it was sort of broken like this:
| | | | | | on the xray.  I had 3 operations on my wrists and was lucky to get a guy who was considered one of the best in my state at this.... anyway, after the second operation... either way it was a painful one afterward becuse they'd either sawed out some hip bone and filleted my wrist open and screwed it in there, or they filleted my other wrist open at my carpal tunnel and rebuilt it.  I don't remember which but it doesn't really matter.  I went home afterward and layed down and fell asleep from the morphine. I woke up 8 hours later, morphine worn off, and hadn't yet filled the pain pills.  It was like 2 am or something so no pharmacy open.  I didn't mean to fall asleep. I lived one block from the hospital and they gave me a shot, but good lord did it hurt like bloody murder... and finally, finally I'll get to the point.
The most traumatic part of my little thing wasn't getting injured, I feel through a ceiling but the survival stuff kicked in before I landed so although I destroyed my wrists to keep from landing head first, I didn't feel the pain right away and didn't feel traumatized right away.  The pain was the most I've felt, I was afraid if I had narcotics it would set off a compulsive cycle since I'd been an addict but I gave in after a few hours at the hospital because I thought I was going to pass out...
....but that there biopsy you had done.  That honestly looks like it sort of dwarfs my experience with pain.  God Bless short term use of addictive drugs, is what I think when I look at that.  I can't see anywhere they could have gone in afterwards that wouldn't be excruciating.

Finally, finally I make my point.


Also, we can tell it's your ear because it's clearly the ear part that goes on a complete hottie.

Oh man I just had a bad thought... that would really be the nastiest infection in the world.  Don't worry about that though.  It's not usually a real concern with these things.  It seems Suzi's daughter's ear piercing was more a risk.  They use those scalpals that burn their way as they go pretty much these days.  Shouldn't the thing be covered though, in case you get smacked in the head with a basket ball or take a weird twitch in your sleep while laying on it and don't even realize it?

Edit:  I forgot, I see after reading, and it doesn't really matter, but the most traumatic part, I forgot to mention, was just seeing the stitches for the first time when my casts were taken off a while in for just that reason.  I was recasted, but looking at the stiches for some reason really got to me.  Also,  I thought that was it, but I have some sort of PTSD apparently... I can no longer watch someone getting hurt in a funniest home video show and find it funny... I get an actual physical reaction, like a very momentary panic, and it can happen when I think about physical pain.  It actually hasn't been the case for a year at least now that I think of it, except I still don't like the shows anymore, but it was something that manifested later on when I thought I'd escaped without real trauma.
This from a mere fall.  The delayed symptoms of a war vetarin really do sound pretty bad now that I think of it like that.
It's no reason to expect this would happen to you though.

Jeez... everyone has had a major stint in hospital, I feel so left out. Worst I've done in hospital was for appendicitis.

Doesn't that leave a very worthy scar  though?  I remember my friend getting one when he was a kid and the stiches were awesome.

The major stints I have ever had in hospital is when I had my two gigantic babies. 5 weeks for the 4.4545kg one and 1 week for the smaller 4.18kg I have a big scar from my first baby because her head was 37cm in diameter Not the kind of scar you can show off Had my appendix out at age 5 but after 2 big fat babies who can see it? I was in hospital for a week with the appendix as it was emergency surgery, a week or less with my tonsils at age 5 (I had a big year!)

My daughter was screaming with her ear problem all those years ago! It was vomit worthy to look at   She was beside herself, as a Mum you have to learn to be very calm and cool under pressure

How long was her ear messed up for?

Only a few days at most. Once the antibiotics began to work... it cleared up pretty quickly. I wish I'd taken a couple of pics You could not see her earings at either the front of her lobe or the back, it was enormous

Holy crap MD! How did you fall through the roof? I think yours would have been worse, my mum has a metal rod in her back and she had to get bone marrow from her hip as well and she said that hurt like the worst ever. Crap that sounds really bad!! :S

Suzi, if you found it vomit worthy :O

You have gotta toughen up when you are a parent, especially a Mum, Dara.
People die from falling off and through rooves/roofs!   MD.
Two really bad accidents I know first hand is one where an old school mate, grownup living in Sydney had to go to a house he didn't know had a large dog (German Shepherd I think). He was attacked on the bricked verandah so jumped OVER the side of the verandah to escape the dog ( a drop much higher than he imagined) and landed on his feet, smashing both heels! Ooooohhh! the pain
My eldest sister fell off a stool when she was around my age and her fore-arms took the brunt of her fall, breaking both wrists. She was in plaster for around 9 weeks. Her husband had to do 'everything' for her. He took time off work to look after her 24/7. Think about what you do with your hands/arms every moment of every day. You may then realise what a hard time it was for MD and my sister relying on other's for the most private times of your day!

Haha, I was in casts for 5 months on one arm and 7 months on the other.   I might go into more detail another time but I really need sleep.  I couldn't sleep last night and have been awake for 32 hours now except for a one hour nap so I'm not too with it, but as for how it happened, it was a warehouse office, so a really tall ceiling to the warehouse but a suspended ceiling in the office where the panels are just sitting in a frame.  It was really flimsy.  As things chanced no one came to work who had a key and  we had to get inside.  I climbed a bookcase on one side of the office wall, was planning just to pull up a tile and lower myself down but put my weight out across a board that looked like it was nailed in, but it was just sort of laying on top of the ceiling.  I came at kind of a head first angle so it was a good amount of force I was trying to deflect.  I still hit my head pretty hard but I didn't even get dizzy which was really supprising at the time.

Honestly, when they start poking around that part of your body where they did on you it looks really painful Dara.  Also, metal rods in the back are a lot worse and extremely annoying from what I hear.  The initial thought was that I was going to have all kinds of plates and screws in my hands and wrists but I drew a really phenomenal surgeon.  I thought it was just people saying it at the hospital until I started hearing it from complete strangers I ran into as well.  One of the best in one of the most populated states in the US I guess... It was the differance between likely having to be on pain management meds and not needing anything.  I might need further work on my carpal tunnels at some point though as they started flaring up and there's a little visible swelling.

...Anyway, they practically cut your ear off so they could get underneath it  

Holy crap :O 7 months! Poor you :O:O How did you do.. anything :S That would be horrible. Does it make you feel sick to think of it? It makes me feel sick to think of any of my operations. And how you felt when you were at your worst. The pain I felt was my worst ever, and I'm only 17.. who knows what's next :s
Yeah it's good to get a good doctor, I had one of the best for that type of thing in Australia, so that was good. When I had my teeth done I went to a private hospital, but with my neck I was at Logan hospital (public). The private had a MUCH worse wait, but possibly better service after, kind of...... better robes anyway.. the hospital beds were too short for me at logan.. I had to sleep with my legs bent up.. not that I slept.  

The robes you have to wear two of them, one forward and one backwards.  That way you're arse doesn't say hello to everyone when you're walking away.  If you're really tall though, then you have to sit with your legs together and without slouching like a girl in miniskirt.

How many operations have you had Dara?

Here's a long winded answer to "how did I do anything":
I managed to learn to sort of do just about everything but until the pain went away I could, for example, just barely hold a fork between two fingers.  The cast went up to my knuckles and held my thumb out so it was hard at first... I'm trying to remember, I think I might have even drove with them on.  Not sure.
I was living in a halfway house for drug and alcohol when this happened so there wasn't a shortage of people to ask to cut up my meat for me. I'd try to ask things on rotating basis.  After a couple weeks I was able to manipulate things without being in agony.  Right away I know people are wondering how I wiped my bum.  I made gigantic bunches of toilet paper and lots of them, but the first week.. oh man I don't want to talk about it.
I wore scrubs because the pants were really easy, otherwise it took like forever to get dressed and somtimes I had to ask for help with the fly which was annoying for other people.  That, and after a couple weeks I could put deoderant under one arm, but I couldn't reach the other.  There was only one guy in house of 16 that would do it for me.

I found out my insurance covered a nurse to come and take care of me, so I used that.  I hadn't showered in two weeks because I still wasn't able to get anything over my casts securely, and everyone got really squeemish when it came to that.  So this nurse comes, I get naked, she puts plastic things over my casts, and I go into the shower.  It's just the way it is... I'm standing there naked with another person who has lathery soap and rubbing all over my body... things expand.  They just do.  It's the way it works.  There's no way around it.  It was embarrasing, but I was more interested in having a shower.... oh she wasn't ugly by any means btw either, but I'm not sure it would have mattered and wasn't the thing on my mind BUT if she had started vigorously washing me with a slippery lather down there until I found myself moaning I wouldn't have argued.  Anyway, it was embarrassing but I'm thinking it's not a big deal because she's a professional, this is what her job entails, I need a shower very badly and I'm damn well going to have one.  She didn't wash my bum properly though and I had to tell her "Wash my bum" except we say butt in the US.  So she does but just the cheeks and I have to be more specific "Wash..." oh man it's too embarrassing to type here but we all know what I'm saying, and I had to be very specific and repeat myself after the "pardon?".  But wait there's more, because it's been 2 WEEKS and she didn't get any... I had to tell her "my balls too" and "but underneath too" and then she finally just did a proper job.  I'm thinking to myself "The woman goes to people's houses and showers them every day... what's the problem here?" and just sort of tried to write it off in my own head as I don't remember what, but afterwards when she dried me off and I was dressed, I ask her, and just to make myself feel better and fully expecting to hear "Oh yeah no big deal"... I say "I hope that wasn't too uncomfortable for you" and she says "Well actually, I usually do women and when it's men it's older men who've lost their.... (she pauses here looking for the word)... nobility."
I still didn't really care.  I got a shower and it felt really good to be clean and I was getting one the next day too.  I didn't care if my nurse was a woman that didn't feel comfortable with it... I wasn't making any attempts at her and I wasn't being disrespectful or rude.  The next day, she knocks on the door and someone says "Dean!" so I come out and it's a guy who is as gay as Carson from Queer eye and says in an enthusiatic voice.  An enthusiastic voice in general, toward his job and meeting me I reckon but not toward my hot man body, "Hi my name's James and I'm going to be your personal nurse from the blah blah nursing service"  I told the guy I was tired, he took my blood pressure, left, and I stopped answering the door.  I didn't know how to approach it.
I learned fairly quickly that if i took an oversize insence holder and big trash bags, that I could shove the thing in the hand part of one cast, then use the other end to push the ends of the bag into the arm end of the other cast and vice versa.  Then, I ended up tying a shirt to the giant insence holder and shoved the other end into one of the casts.  It was crude, but with time and effort, I never had to face my fear of having a gay man wash my most likely erect penis.
After a while it was kind of second nature and there wasn't anything I couldn't do with a little extra work.  My roomate at the time had been in a bad fire years before we met, and his hands were well burnt down to stubs.  On one hand he had fingers up to almost where his knuckles used to be and all his thumb and on the other he had no fingers except he still had most his pinky which he used like a little hook and half a thumb.  There wasn't much he couldn't do.  He was facinating.  Great guy too and then one day he relapsed and I've never seen someone regress into trash so quickly as him.

The other thing people ask is... okay so like basically what would happen is two weeks would pass and then I'd be so horny that it didn't matter is that all I could do is grab skin with my finger and thumb tips and shake it vigorously.  Things built up enough to where that was dandy, and very necisarry.  I was managing another halfway house a little while later and the people there at the time were all kids and all coming from either the court system directly or were waiting on court dates and hoping to gain a good referance fro us when they left.  One day I was getting asked about it by them and someone brought that up and I explained it, that things just get desparate enough that a little bit is sufficiant and one of them says "Why don't just make a feef?"  and they all started debating wheather or not I could use a feef and how I'd use the feef exactly and they were getting pissed off at each other about it and I was panicing because they were mad at each other and arguing and no one was listening to me and I thought I was never going to be addressed because I kept saying "What's a feef?"  ("what is this magical device of pleasure you speak of yet explain not you cruel children  )  They were well into arguing about where and when it was appropriate to use a feef in jail and the weird places they'd seen people in jail use them... and the wierd ways they'de seen people use them.
Finally after fear that my question would go unaswered, I was told the mystery of the feef.
Later that day, when I thought everyone was too preocupied with other things to wonder if I had made one yet....  

Yeah, so it wasn't that bad. It just looked bad.  The first few days were very, very hard, and the first couple weeks sucked, but that was about it.

I hope your ear doesn't fall off Dara.

I wasn't really trying to be a pervert when I wrote that, now that I read it again.  It's those two things, specifically, that just happened to be the biggest hurdles overall.

Everyone's staying away from me with this?
Not even a "I would have helped with the deodorant thing MD"?

I would say something... but I don't know what to say!

I needed a shower... I needed to my 2 week old half cleaned bum washed   I needed something softer than fiberglass casts for other reasons

...like to see any of you there put up with that and then feel like they couldn't talk about it.  It was the biggest challenges involved with the experience... you there people among you who sit on your holier than thou seats.  Shame on you bastards!