For all of those injured...

This is a post to help Shelly laugh. And to give those in blissful ignorance an idea of the kind of pain tolerance/bullheadedness I descend from. And to remind those who are already familiar a chance to sigh and roll their eyes. Since the lasagna is in the oven and the kids are watching Noggin, I have a chance.
What follows is TRUE. While I did not see it myself, my mother did and she's a pretty credible witness. I'm not making it up though some of the details may be a bit vague. The pertinent stuff is absolutely factual.

My maternal grandmother was living alone when she broke her wrist at 88 years old (born in 1905, so this was 1993--I was away at college). She had previously broken an ankle and hated the cast; she didn't like this one any better.
Somehow, either she could wobble her hand around in her cast or they realized later with the X-rays she needed pins in her wrist. Either way, she needed a second cast with pins.
My mother was visiting her twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. When Mom left her, she had instructions to write down when she took her pain medication and not to get her new cast wet. I thought, "She's 88 years old. So she gets addicted to morphine. Wouldn't that be a happy way to go?"
When Mom went back three or four days later, Grandma (according to Mom) "had it all off."
My 88-year-old grandmother, who had trouble opening the cellophane on the McDonald's danish wrapper (do they still have those?), had decided she didn't like this cast. She had gone to the garage where she found a hammer. She broke the cast off. What was left she removed with scissors.
She wasn't done. Since she didn't like the pins any more than the cast, she got a pair of pliers and pulled the three pins out. All by herself.
I'm fairly sure Mom wavered a bit, then recovered enough to ask, "Where did you write down when you took your pain medication?"
Grandma replied, "Pain medication? I thought I wasn't supposed to take that medicine."

You read that right. Pounded on her own casted wrist with a hammer and then used ordinary garage pliers to pull the pins out while stone cold sober.

And my husband wonders why I feel like a wimp for taking Motrin for a headache...