June 8, 2022 • 46 mins
Do you like hot dogs? You might not after this. Scars and scrapes are the stars of this episode. Grab your bubble wrap and meet us in MedBay for a bloody, spine-curling ride. Be glad this is only audio.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I have the same. Let's go to the mission one
ready for wondering a theme unch. Welcome back to our
(00:31):
intergalactic gnarly queer space travel craft from another dimension, baby,
where you are all welcome? How was that? Baby? That
was wonderful? I wanted it to feel like everyone was welcome,
you know. Yeah, I mean it's still Pride Month after all, right, yeah,
(00:51):
and don't you forget it? Never Well, today, funnily enough,
it is a rainy, rainy a in Miami, Florida, and
more specifically Miami Beach Intergalactia, Florida, because we are here
on the beach and it is pouring torrential cats and dogs,
(01:13):
and Miami loves to do this thing, and specifically Miami
Beach where it just gets so flooded that you can't move,
and people like to do these really funny things like
go out in kayaks or being pulled behind the car
and like, uh, what's I called the wakeboard or something
like that. I was doing research for today's topic and
(01:34):
I dropped my phone on my lip and I split
it enough so without for the ado. Today's topic is
pra injuries done. I feel like if there was an
injury university. You should get an honorary doctorate. I mean,
(01:57):
thank god, I think she was based on favorite care.
Your scare response alone, you deserve a doctorate an injury.
I've definitely lost at least forty million skin cells due
to scares. I mean, you know, fight or flight. I'm
the flighter. If you scare me, I will throw myself
(02:18):
on the floor. And yes, you like to dive into
the air for some reason, because and that's what I
don't understand, because usually between fight or flight fight is
that you know somebody that will go up and try
to defend themselves and then fly to somebody who will
run away. But you actually attempt to soar and then
you land face first and then don't feel attacked. I
(02:39):
am feeling attack. I'm just worried about you. Why are
you worried? And my brain a small percentage is like, oh,
I'm going to be able to escape the situation. I'm
either going to burrow a small hole underground or I
will grow wings and soar into the sky. Either way,
I'm escaping the situation. And if not, you can't die
right here anyway. So whatever, I'm less. You did it
(03:02):
sore and maybe ran away you'd actually have a better
chance of surviving, you know, like if there was like
a big scot man chasing you and you instead of
you know, diving into the floor into a comatose state,
you actually like maybe ram if defending yourself isn't your
thing like that it might be a novel idea, but
(03:24):
it's a good one. Well, in your case, you will
literally grab the nearest weapon and charge at anything that
is a threat to you. So yeah, I'm not the
I'm not the like hide behind doors and a way
to get found kind of person. I don't know how
people do that. I have so much anxiety when I
see those scenes in movies because I'm like, just get
(03:45):
up and do something. I'd rather find you. I'd rather
find you. I'd rather find you. I'd rather use the
element of surprise on you. That's the only thing I
have in my favor because I am small and I
don't know a lot about fighting. I'm inventive, though, so
be aware in what movies I'm curious. You will not
watch that with me, So I don't know what things
you're saying that you watch that are spooky gig So yeah,
(04:09):
of my body maybe covered in scars, from Scares, Scars
from Scares. That's a cool band name, Ladies and Gentlemen
Scores from Scares. But that's me literally, I yeah, you're pretty,
you're pretty injury prone. You're pretty injury prone. And that's
what inspired this topic. Really, was you more than me,
(04:30):
because as you will see, I don't have as many
injury experiences as M does. M Thank god, let's not
go on wood right now. And another thing about that
I think we all can relate to is there's something
there's a tie between pain or watching other people, obviously
mild pain, watching other people experience mild pain, and comedy,
Like it's really funny when you knows dive and you know,
(04:52):
I never want you to be hurt, but it's really funny. No,
I mean they're like, hello, look at Jackass. We grew
up on a society like jack or like Star or
all those shows or like or like cracking up at
people doing ridiculous, very painful things. And it's not her fault.
It's not her fault. It's been funny forever. It's been
(05:13):
funny forever. That's what's Comedy's pain is comedy gold No, seriously,
slapstick comedy has been around since the sixteenth century. Well,
also like being able to laugh at yourself. Laughing at
other people is easy, and laughing at yourself sometimes in
the moment when you're getting hurt it's not easy, but
(05:33):
after the fact it is part of the healing process. Yeah,
I think, yeah, oh my gosh. Yes, if you can't
laugh at yourself, then people have a misconception about pain.
And like our pain thresholds first, our pain tolerance, like
we as human beings actually have a similar pain threshold.
(05:55):
I'll give you an example. Most human beings when they
touch water this me a hundred and ten hundred and
twelve degrees hot, they say ouch because it hurts. But
pain tolerance, which is how much of that pain you
can tolerate, is with berries. Ah. So it all affects
(06:15):
us the same way, but we react to it differently. Yes,
some of the some of us are just mental, like me,
what degree shower? Or do I shower in? Well, I
don't mean about just okay, that's that's different. You love
hot water, but I don't know how how much injury
can you withhold without like losing your mind. Pain tolerance
(06:37):
is a big thing. I think about that with tattoos
a lot too. Oh yeah, you're somebody who can tolerate
the pain of tattoos but screams when you get your
eyebrows plug. I don't understand that. You sound like my mother.
She all agree with me. You don't. It's a different
kind of pain. You have a weirdo. I know you
don't know this, and I only know this because I
(06:59):
looked it up on the inner It. Okay, the six
most painful experiences the human beings can have, and I'm
here for your reactions, all right, I'm so ready starting
with number six, tearing your achilles heel. Number five, a
(07:22):
tooth absis Yeah, teeth and ears are gnarly teeth, even
just a little even just a tiny little chip of
a tooth so much. We'll talk about that Number four,
which I wanted to debate this, but we can go there. Childbirth,
Oh people, I know, because people talk about child players
(07:47):
like stabbing, being stabbed in the stomach and having their
organs like ripped from the inside, like them pooping out
a bowling ball on fire. That's oh yeah, that's terrible.
Um Oh, number three is tetanus really isn't that crazy? Well? Hello,
(08:09):
this is why the tetanus shot hurts so much because
when you have tetanus, all of your joints lock up.
You're like, it's not the vibe. It's not the vibe. Okay.
Number two testicular or vary in torsion. Oh no, She's
really funny because the other day I was reading an
(08:30):
article about a guy who mass was masturbating so much
that he had gesticular torsion and had took go to
the hospital. What does that mean? Like it's like, yeah, yeah,
like we're doing a visual cube, but it twists and
a vary in torsion, which is like not nearly as
common as gesticular torsion, which says a lot um No.
(08:55):
I mean, obviously it's their internal organs. They're can be
caused by things like cists that way too heavily, or
even ligaments or ligaments that are too long twisting. Pregnant
women sometimes experienced it, but it's like anyway, don't worry.
It's like ten and every hundred thousand women verse men
(09:16):
is I think like one in four thousand. Don't quote me,
don't quote me, don't quote me. And number one here
we go. Second degree burns. Second degree burns because thirty
third degree burns are only painful for like a few
seconds before all your nerves are burnt off and then
you don't experience pain. But second degree burns are supposed
(09:40):
to be the most painful experience a human can have, which, honestly,
I agree, because I once had a very minor second
degree burn when I was trying to remake the blooming
onion from out back at my house. I'm sorry, from
where from out back? Out back? Sakehouse. Yeah, that's why
(10:00):
I was trying to do it in my house, blu
Onionion onion. We'd be lying if we didn't tell you
that we wrote that song years ago. But yeah, it
caused me. It caused a second degree burning. That thing
(10:20):
hurt for like days days, it felt like it was
still on fire. Burns are bad. I heard toothpaste helps.
I don't. I think that's a lie, and I don't
think anyone should do that. I actually think that that's
a lie. Yeah, because I imagine that the toothpaste would
irritate that poor skin. But okay, it can probably worse
(10:48):
than the burden. Yeah, please don't do that. I've done
it so many times. Okay, Well, how did it go?
For you who said that to us us, Mrs Frizzle,
what this is a lot of people. I was never
told to put toothpaste on a burnither It's counterintuitive, right,
so crazy, so why would you? Okay anyway, moving off,
(11:13):
so speaking of you and your weirdo burn solutions, um,
let's get into your injuries, babe. You the more injury
prone one of the duo. You know, I am very
accident prone from a long time ago when I was
a child. I've heard that I put my hand in
a toaster. I know, way how old were you? Well
(11:37):
I was like too, but like the slot for the
toaster is really inviting for your hands. I mean I
would honestly no, no, ok yeah, I don't think I
ever did stuff like that. Yeah, I need to knock
on one because I don't want to call this upon
myself at all. But I have maybe because I've lived
a very sedentary life because my mom put me in
(11:57):
art school since the third grade, and so I've just
been sitting at a chair playing violin my whole life.
But you know, as opposed to you, who's out there
playing sports and like doing the thing, I have not
experienced many injuries, thankfully, you know, I don't cut here
and there, a burn here and there. I don't think
(12:18):
I've ever actually even seen you be hurt. Let's knock
on wood right now. I'm telling you I'm not a
little stitious. I'm superstitious. Shout off the office. But um, yeah,
I don't even think I've seen you be like cut
or anything like that. I don't want to see it.
But as you said, you could not handle it at
this point, what's the first injury that you remember experiencing
(12:40):
in your life. I decided to play tennis barefoot, not
a good idea, and in Miami, in certain places, as
we all know who lives in Miami, there's some bamboo
depending on what part of Miami your and I hit
a fourhand and then I felt like this warmth my
(13:00):
toe and I looked down and it literally turned out
that I kicked a small shard of bamboo and it
went under my big toe nail and out the side
of it. So that's the first thing that I remember.
I mean, it really went downhill from there. Wow, what
(13:22):
was your first injury? You remember? Baby? So I remember
this happening, but I filled in the story with my
family's recollection of it and I don't remember like the
experience of it hurting. And my dad, you used to
love to go on bike rides and I was like
two or three, you know, I have like a photographic
(13:45):
memory at two or three. Yeah, I remember a lot.
And he had me on the bike with him and
I didn't he didn't put shoes on me because I
was small. He was just like carrying me and my
I guess my foot got caught in the chains, like
sliced the bottom of my foot. That was my first injury.
(14:08):
Then I remember apparently I was dropped and I was
six months old. Also my dad, I fell asleep, and uh,
but I have a theory us dropped children that were
dropped in infancy. I have a special about us. Is
(14:29):
that what you call it? Yeah? So if you if
you know if your parents dropped you, is that what
you call it? No, I'm playing, but yeah, he I
was six months old and I was laying on his
chest and he was exhausted and I rolled off the
bed and I fell. Oh lord. Yeah, I don't remember
that one though, Dude. The next injury that I have
(14:49):
that I actually like remember, being like I'm an idiot,
is older, like thirteen. Okay, here's the or maybe older.
I think I might have been older at this point.
I think I blocked it out. But I have like
a long history with my teeth, Like I had braces
(15:11):
and spikes behind my teeth right before Halloween that they're like,
we're gonna put spikes behind your teeth because my tongue.
I have a thrusting tongue. I know, lesbians, My god, no,
you did not say thrusting. I literally have a condition
called a thrusting tongue. Wow, and your parents didn't know
you were gay. I'm sorry it wasn't this. It could
(15:33):
have been the basketball shorts. But the coole calls him
as you see them any female drummers, and really had
thrusting tongue, and they wanted to put because when you swallow, God,
here we go. We're just going down the true You
keep opening yourself up. When normal people swallow food or beverages,
(15:59):
nothing dirty one. Normal people swallow. You put your tongue
on the roof of your mouth. I thrust my tongue forward,
and what did I do? Push your front teeth out?
A k A. All of my drama with my teeth.
The point is that I walked into my orthodontist office
(16:21):
and I was like, I can't do this anymore, Like,
please rip my braces off, rip them off. I'm about
to do it myself. He takes all of my komflamma
off my teeth. And that weekend, I was going away
with my family. So we decided we want to go
to bike ride. And me and Lowering, my cousin are
(16:41):
going on a bike ride and it starts to rain
and we decide that it's a good idea to race
each other. But the sidewalk is right next to the expressway,
and I decided to ride a three wheel bicycle, which
is the safest bicycle because you're so low to the
ground right and you don't have to balance, you're just
sitting there. It's a recumbent bicycle. So I'm riding this
(17:03):
bicycle and I'm racing him and I'm thinking that I'm
killing the game. And my right tire gets stuck on
the pavement, so I literally start rolling into Highway A
when a in Vero Beach and I'm like, that's it.
I'm gonna get hit by a car and I'm thinking
I'm gonna die. This is it. Thank you for everything.
And I stand up and I'm like, I'm fine, up, alive.
(17:26):
I go back into the sidewalk, I sit in my bike.
I'm like ha ha ha, like laughing at my cousin,
and I start going ha ha. And as I'm laughing,
I'm rolling my head back and forth and I smack
my tooth to the bar of the bicycle and I
have split in half your tooth. You split it in half? No,
(17:48):
no, no no, no no, but split it in half. That
my nerve is exposed. My my nerve is exposed. The
up to this day, you can see the spot on
the bike where I chipped it. I'm like, I just
rolled into the goddamn highway and I chipped my tooth.
Lapping at myself. Oh no, oh, my god, in the
(18:11):
pain and the whelp to this day, Hello, this tooth
right here. Yeah, I know I've gone with you and
I've never gotten a permanent one. That's crazy. I can't
believe that, especially after surviving the real fall, for you
to just go onto the sidewalk smash your own face
against your bike and teeth. Paine hurt so much. I
(18:34):
only had one tooth injury, and it's because I was
playing this twang. A little instrument called the jaw harp.
What is that? It's a U shaped instrument that has
this like little metal stick that you you place in
front of your lips and you flick the stick and
it just makes this interesting reverberated sound and like exactly,
(18:57):
and um, I was practicing playing the Our Heart because
you know it would be like that sometimes. And I
guess I flicked the twang too hard and it um slapped,
the metal slapped into my tooth and chips it and
it's so funked up. I gotta get that fixed, actually
(19:20):
accountability that I need to get my tooth fixed. And
love your teeth. So babe, um, remember when we got
each other's scooters without each other knowing that was that's
a really cute story. Let's have a quick intervention right
here and then get into that adorable story as a
palate cleanser for what's to come. Okay, sounds good, Ready, one, two, three,
(19:57):
and we're back O. Okay, quick little story. So for Christmas,
Emily and I always go really hard in the paint
for each other. So I was doing my research on scooters.
I wanted something that Emily and I could adventure. On
Christmas morning arrives and I wanted Emily to open her
(20:20):
gift last because I was convinced that I had the
mac Daddy gift that year. Emily does this adorable little
trail with yarn and mistletoe whatever, and it hooks around
the doorknob. And when I opened the door, there were
two scooters there. So you could just imagine what it
was like to open the door of my room and
(20:41):
for Emily to have another scooter. It was scooters Central.
It was scooter Central. What we did is we returned
the two that m got and got another one of
the one that I got her. So I was really excited.
And I'm riding my scooter up and about I'm coming
back into the neighborhood and I was going the slowest
I hae gone my entire journey. And I see this
(21:02):
guy coming around the curb and he must have been
going like fifty. My first instinct was, I'm going to
throw myself off the scooter because either the scooter's gone
or I'm gone. Like he was traveling so fast and
I was traveling so slow. I thought for sure he
was that was it. Like I was done. I really
was scared, and I don't think I've told you this
until now, but I was. I was shading myself, so
(21:24):
I throw the scooter to the right and I threw
myself to the left, and I was really left up,
like I obviously looked like I hurt myself, and the
guy stopped his car saw me and kept going. And
I don't know if you remember, I ran into the
house because I really messed up my elbow. It was
(21:46):
like all yeah, I remember, it was all like scuffed
up and bloody, yeah, and like gnarly. But the first
thing I was like, let's go to the cameras like
il and he was going so fast we couldn't even
like see his license plate. So long story short, I
not only still have this car on my elbow right here,
(22:06):
but if you look up, embraceable you Emily Stefan. I'm
singing with my mom and I literally have That was
like a week or two after it happened, and I
have like this. It looks like a band aid, but
it's literally a scar of my elbow. Yeah, you can
see the ed. Oh I almost wasn't here. Oh you
really are in here, girl, my car accident. Let me
(22:30):
tell you something when I was twenty years old, I
bought a Fiat for looks and looks only because that
was one cute, assid little car with its little red
soft top convertible situation and the whole retro dashboard interior.
I loved that car, but driving it felt like driving
(22:56):
a toy, like driving a fake car. I felt like
I was driving a fake car, like a car that
should be on a set somewhere. And after all the
ship that I talked about, that car, even though I
loved it and I had so many incredible memories, that
little piece of ship saved my life. What do you
mean it saved your life? Okay, So at that time
(23:19):
in my life, twenty on the cusp of one, I
was working a lot. I was working a lot, and
I was also studying full time. It was my best
friend at the time's birthday, and because of my hectic schedule,
I had been pretty m i a but you know,
I felt like I was investing in my future. It
(23:40):
was a transitionary period and I was happy to do it.
I get home, I'm living with my mom, and I'm exhausted.
I had left work at like nine o'clock at night,
and I was like, oh, Mom, you know I have
to go out, and she was like, gem, why just
you're tired, Just stay home, and I'm like, no, I
have to go. And plus, you know me, Fomo will
(24:01):
eat away at me like a festering infection. So so
I I I wanted to be there for her, and
I was like, Mom, you know you don't understand whatever.
She was like, Jim, honestly, I have a bad feeling
about this. But you know my mom, I love her
to death. She's withchy, but she's also super dramatic, and
she's told me, oh, I have a bad feeling about
this several times, and I'm like, girl, and everything's fine,
(24:23):
So I just shoot her away. I was literally falling
asleep on the couch, just waiting for it to be later,
because you know Miami, you don't even start going out
until eleven, and no, at this time, I was early.
So I leave and I go there, I hang out
for a little bit. I'm on my way home and
(24:47):
I didn't actually have a very long way to drive,
but I stayed out super late, and I felt I
felt myself falling asleep on my drive. But you know,
I did, like all the thing I blasted the a C.
I lowered the window, I blasted music. I tried to
like pop around to the music, and I was getting there,
but my body, my whole body, might I was done.
(25:10):
You were pushing on and I almost made it. I
almost made it. I was five blocks from my house
and I fell asleep in such a deep way. In
such a deep way. You know when you're so deep
in your sleep that your alarm is going off, but
it's first integrated into your dream before you realize that
(25:31):
it's your alarm going off. Okay, so that was me,
except with the trees that I had run over upon
impact with my car. By the time when I woke
up and came to the situation, my entire windshield was
completely shattered, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna die,
Like I thought this car might explode and might you know,
(25:52):
burst into flames. I've got to get out. When I
take off my seatbelt to open the door, I can't
feel my ankles on either of my feet. So I
threw myself onto the side of the road beside my
car and watched like five or six cars who definitely
saw my car smoking and probably saw me waving them down.
(26:15):
Just drive past me, which was a super desperate moment
because I didn't have my phone. My phone was in
my car somewhere. And luckily a woman stopped and she
was a nurse, an angel Um, and she called the
ambulance for me, and UM, help me call my mom.
(26:38):
To this day, my mom you can't can't receive a
late phone call because she received that phone call of
a woman saying, you know, your daughter got into an
accident and freaking out until she didn't know that I
was safe and alive and okay. But um, when the
ambulance came, the cops came, and I remember it was
like six troopers. It was crazy. You think that I
don't know. I don't know what they thought happened. And
(27:00):
when the cops we're telling me that they were going
to take me to the hospital, I was in tears
and I was sobbing, and I was saying to them,
you don't know, my boss, I've got to go to
work tomorrow. Like even still in that moment, my focus
was all the stuff that I wanted to accomplish that
(27:23):
I had denied my body priority for. So what were
your injuries? So I tore the ligaments and both of
my ankles at different varying levels. One was like level two,
one was level three, and it wasn't terrible. Other than that,
I had a couple of burns. I had like bruises
(27:47):
near where the seatbelt was, but minor nothing to my face,
thank god. The right side of my car, the passenger
side of my car to the middle of my car
was completely smashed in. I was like inches from being
hitting head on another tree, and I don't think I
would have survived. What are the odds that a nurse,
(28:07):
What are the odds that a nurse then a nurse
stops stops? What are the odds that I take down tree,
three trees, three palm trees and stop at an electrical
pole and lived to tell the tale. Have you ever
spoken to that nurse again? No? Um, No, I don't know.
I don't. I don't think my mom has. Maybe maybe
she did at that time, but no, I don't. I
(28:29):
don't know her name. I don't even know who she is.
I think she worked at Baptist because that was near
where I was living at the time. So if she
if a Baptist nurse happens to come across this podcast
and that was you thank you. Wow, I thank you too. Yeah. Yeah,
it wasn't bad though, you know, I did, I did.
I was in a wheelchair for a while and then crutches,
(28:52):
but you best believe I went out for my twenty
one birthday work crutches and old go maybe. Yeah, injuries
like that really really teach you a lot about life
and who your friends are. Well, I'm really happy that
you're here, and car accidents are really scary. I think
(29:13):
it's time time for what for the injury of all injuries?
What my figure? Oh no, you mean the time that
your finger turned into a split hot dog, because that's
what it looked like, well like halfway split, like if
(29:35):
just the top, you know, they didn't cut all the
way down. The precursor to the story is that when
I try to show the pictures of this injury to anybody,
jem is like, you need to ask them first, yes, Emily,
because a lot of people can't tolerate the sight of blood,
and your injury is extremely was extremely gory, and you
love to shove it in people's face, like the gorious
(29:58):
video that you have on your phone without being like
can you see blood? And people have almost passed out
on us because of that. I just I don't want
to go through it alone. You know you don't have to,
but you could give them a heads up your evil
and I have a disclaimer. I'm like, so my girlfriend
tells me, I have to ask if you can see bloods?
Can you see blood? I'm glad I'm there to help you.
(30:20):
Buffer all right. Let me set the scene. Poor people
and it's bad. What a good way to go out? Baby,
Here we go. Listen, injuries are This is actually I
know that it's funny because it's one of the smallest
pieces of my body, but it's one of the largest
things I've actually ever gone through mentally. Honestly, it like
(30:44):
really taught me what mind over matter means and what
it means to be mentally fit, Because what it means
to be mentally fit in a moment when your body
cannot show up for you says a lot. And I
think that that's kind of what I took away from
not only this experience, but like any time that you
(31:04):
get hurt, you know, not that I've had, and this
was a different This was to a different degree. They
told you that you probably weren't going to play guitar
for over a year. Yeah. I mean at first they
told me that if I didn't take care of it,
I could have lost my finger. Yeah, that I could
have gottenn infection and it could have been really bad.
The night is December. What year was it? You remember
(31:29):
or no? I think it was. So it was me
and Gem and one of our friends at our house
and Jem and our friend was in the kitchen. Funny enough,
you know why Amanda was there that day? Why is
that she was helping me build your scooter? Wow, because
(31:51):
I wanted when you open the door, we're back to
the scooters. There you go. So our friend, So our
friend is there helping jem unbeknounced to me. And until
this moment build my scooter. And I'm in the bathroom
getting ready to take a shower to go to and
(32:11):
I am naked, which is relevant because of the trauma
that I suffered from being me. I felt it. I mean,
one thing is getting injured, but when things getting injured naked,
that was like a whole other moment, I am getting
ready to get into the shower. If you have a
glass shower, you really really need to invest into a
plastic the rubber strip shower snake the rubber stripping. The
(32:35):
rubber strip at the edge of the door and then
stops from going. You know, I originally thought that it
was for keeping the water getting out of the shower. No,
I think it's first saving fingers because yaws. So anyway,
I didn't have any of this plastic stripping, and it
was just glass on glass. But I had never had
(32:56):
an issue with my shower. So I pulled the door back,
and usually it would cock back in place and be
stuck there. It would lock right. Well, today it decided
I wanted to keep on swinging. Baby, So I'm naked,
I'm getting the shower, I'm excited for Santa to come.
And the I pull it back and the door starts
swinging back to the closed position. And in my peanut mind,
(33:21):
I decided, oh, let me just catch the door with
my left hand and I'll be able to stop it.
That didn't happen. What ended up happening was that it
was a glass edge against a glass edge, and my
finger is flesh and liquid, and when the glass on
(33:42):
glass hit at that particular angle, my finger literally exploded. Literally,
it was like the pressure cause it to burn. The
pressure and the angle of the door caused my finger
to explode, like cutting a hot Let's let's pay the picture,
not the whole finger. It's the first philange. Like Gems said,
(34:07):
the entire first joint of my finger was like the
tip of a hot dog split open, and because the
glass was so strong, its splintered my heavy and the
blood from my finger literally hit the roof, the mirror,
the floor. I'm naked, I fall to the ground. I'm
(34:27):
freaking out, and Jem think I'm laughing. So that's the
scene she entered upon with Amanda, who did not like
blood and turned a very lovely sea foam green. My dad,
Oh my gosh, yes, because on top of all of this,
Amanda the only person that's with us that going to
be of any use. I can't see blood. So what
(34:49):
happens is I originally I immediately go into resolution mode.
But I have never experienced an injury like this. It
hadn't been long since M left I here. This like
what I interpret is like a maniacal laughter, which is
like not new. If you know em, if you've been
in M's presence, Like she's loud, she's proud, and she
(35:10):
will often go to the bathroom and spend thirty five
minutes they're scrolling through funny videos. Uh, and so that
is what my brain interpreted. I kind of stopped for
a second by a man, and I kept talking, and
then I hear it again, and I looked at Amanda,
like at the same time, we looked at each other,
and we both kind of like locked eyes, like, Okay,
(35:32):
what the funk was that? I burst into our bedroom
and I turned the corner and I go into the
bathroom and I find them on the floor, crouched screaming,
clutching her finger as it's like bleeding everywhere, with blood everywhere,
And so I didn't know if I should call the ambulance,
drive you to the hospital, like I didn't know what
was going on. I called your mom because I thought
(35:53):
you were going to bleed out. Hold on my mom,
who was in full blown, full bill down hair, the makeup,
god like, she was beat to the gods. She was
ready to go and them and I'm and she tells
me to this day she heard me screaming in the
(36:13):
back of the phone call and that you were like
she's gonna die. I was, She's bleeding everywhere. There was
so much blood. So I run to the kitchen because
I know that we had just in laundroom, Like, what's
the cleanest towel that I had I can find? So
I grabbed this towel and I put it around him
(36:35):
his finger, and we agree that I'm going to drive
you to Mount Sinai, which was not far in the hospital.
I was freaking out that you were in pain. I
was freaking out that I didn't know what was going
to happen. I didn't know the extent of the injury.
It was a lot. Yet I was driving and holding
your finger for you because you didn't want to put
pressure on it enough for it to stop bleeding, and
(36:59):
trying to home Amanda down in the back seat, who
was like turning pale, and do breathing exercises with you
because you're hyperventilating from the sobbing screaming, well not only
the sobbing screaming, Like there are certain things that you're
not ready to see as a human being until you
have to see them. And when I saw my finger,
(37:21):
I remember like I fell over. You know what's hilarious.
I fell over on my right leg because I was
on my knees and I don't know why I was slipping.
I was like, why am I slipping? And it was
literally fucking blood. It was like blood on the floor
and I was slipping and the piece of my finger
that was hanging like moves no, not too much, and
(37:43):
that that got goose bumps on my scalp. Okay, but
that's when I knew. That's when I was like, oh,
I'm aft like something really like I need help, like something.
We're on the way to the hospital, right And the
towel that was very sanitary. Thank you so much, babe.
I appreciate it. But the one thing I would have
appreciated more is if it wasn't a microfiber, because what
(38:08):
happened is that the tiny fibers got all entrapped in
my hot dog finger, like fucking breading on a chicken finger.
I was like, it was so bad. And we get
to the hospital and they're like, oh, sweetie, um, it's
um Christmas Eve and Santa's at the workshop, honey, so um,
(38:33):
if you want a surgeon for your finger, it's going
to be about two hours. Well, so let's explain that.
Because of Emily's profession, and I recommend this to anybody
who works in a professional with their hands matter. We
requested specifically a hand surgeon, so that you know, you
could be sewn up by the best. And yeah, he
(38:55):
was two hours away. The injury was terrible, and I
have to tell you not only because I severed my
nerve and I splintered my bone. The pain was unbearable.
But worse than that pain was the nerve block. Oh
my gosh, that was a big needle. It was Explain,
(39:16):
explain where it was. They said, well, it's going to
be a while until he gets here. And I was screaming, like,
what's the thing in Harry Potter, you were screaming like
(39:38):
the man Drake, the mandrake, man Drake, like like that
was me. So a nerve block is about a what
would you say, like four inch five inch needle. Guys,
right now, wherever you are, spread your fingers out, Spread
your fingers out. Let me know when they're spread out, okay,
(39:59):
thank you. And so in between your fingers, like where
the webbing is, imagine taking a needle that's about half
the width, a little bit less than half the width.
It wasn't that wide, but it was, you know, about
a quarter of the with your finger in between the
webbing about halfway down your hand and then they inject
(40:21):
what only feels like I don't know what, burning fire.
I don't understand. It was like I screamed. And that
was when Amanda left. That's when she finally turned like
the darkest trait of green I've ever seen a human being.
Good night, Thank you so much like your poor dy Amanda,
thank you, and Dad, who was of course ready before
(40:42):
her mom for dinner, comes to the hospital. The poor
guy could not handle it. I wanted to watch him
so my hot dog finger and take the shrap shrapnels
of bone out of my finger. And actually I feel
like we're connected because he put his finger's side my finger.
(41:02):
We're gonna be together forever, love the doctor. The point is, yes,
it was traumatic, it was crazy. The most important thing
that I want to take away from this is that
I still showed up to now you deserve an award.
Thank you. I feel I felt so bad because okay,
so when you add up the whole shabako, the whole
(41:22):
two hours of waiting for the surgeon, the surgeon arriving,
and you know that wasn't easy. And of course Emily
asked us to film the whole thing. Because she's a
massacus that way. Emily still wanted to go to and
I whimp it. I know. She made us go home
to change, to change, that's right, baby, and then go
to went on dinner. Your family and my family waited
(41:46):
for us. We got there, both of our families. Thank you.
And the next morning was a fun, fun, fun ride.
And thank god that I don't like percoset because I
felt like the tele tell me that never was. That's
what I was. I woke up Alex Santa, good morning,
oh Finger, what is that like? It was ridiculous. Days
(42:07):
after Christmas, we were all leaving on a cruise. My
doctor was like, um, if you go on the cruise,
you might get an infection and die, and that's on you.
I'm like, all right, got this girl goes on a
zip line. Zi. Yeah, but I couldn't swim, and you
know how much I know. Yeah, that's what said, you
(42:28):
could not swim. I'm not complaining. Listen. That was a
great cruise. It was amazing, dog Finger and all freaking blast. Yeah.
I changed my bandages for each day of the week.
I was a fabulous nurse. I you change your bandages,
you change my Emily Mariko Swillow, Stepfan, don't call you
right now. I'll call her right now. I changed your bandages.
(42:53):
She taught me, you did you did? You did? You did?
I had a whole little medical pack for you. You
did you did? You do? After that cruise and everything like,
we had a great time, and at the beginning of
your injury, it can all be like, you know, everyone's
taking care of me and whatever. I'll get through it.
What was really hard for me was when it was
(43:15):
numb and it was shooting through my body. And I'm
a guitarist and that's my job, and it is my
left hand, and it is my finger, which if you're
a guitarist, you know, like your bend fingering, your most
important finger if you're a guitarist, if you're a right
handed guitarist. When we got back from the cruise and
(43:36):
all that fun and all that holiday whatever, I was devastated.
I was in a lot of pain and as you know,
like I had to go to therapy, which I encourage
you if you get an injury. Therapy is really a
physical theraphysical therapy O t PT. You gotta go and
rehabilitate your injury. I can't starress to you so important
(44:00):
only if you can afford it, if you know, if
you if that's something that's available to you, you know,
or or always looking up online. The idea is that
to continue the rehab process once you leave the hospital
makes a huge difference in how you heal. Absolutely absolutely,
and not only physically but mentally. You know, because there
(44:21):
were certain moments where I was like, f this, like uh,
the way the place that my scar is in my
finger at first, like it was getting caught in the
guitar string. To this day, if I played too long,
it'll hurt. But you know what, there are so many
more difficult things that you could go through in life,
and you can look at it with a positive outlook
(44:43):
and say, hey, I'm going to appreciate playing more because
there's a possibility that I couldn't have played again. There's
a possibility that I could have severed my entire finger.
There's a possibility that And there are people who can't,
and there are people who can't, or there are people
who don't even have arms at all, and they still
manage to find a way to play an instrument. It's
(45:03):
all about determination, It's all about your mental strength. There's
a documentary called Heal that's incredible on Netflix that I
recommend that everybody go out there and watch. That's you know,
about just that about how how no matter the severity
of your injury, how you need to put your mind
first and what how powerful the mind is what it
(45:27):
can do for the body. You know, It's true though,
I mean, healing is a natural thing. It's a natural phenomenon.
We're not actively thinking of the cells that are regenerating,
you know, in our fingers where we get a paper cut.
It's just like something that happens automatically. The body knows
what to do. Yeah, that's why my lip in the
time of this video has already healed more, it actually has. There.
(45:53):
You go full circle, grab your first aid kids, y'all,
especially if you're around Emily. Let's say, knock on, knock
on all the wood because no injuries today, just healing, healing, healing,
and that's a day. Get bickin. I hope you guys
(46:15):
had your seatbelts on and then everybody got off the
flight today injury free. And don't forget y'all, it's Pride
month out there. Give your money to the gays. That's right, baby,
and don't forget that our Mission Control highline is officially open,
where you can give us a call and say whatever
the FU you want. You can find it on our
website at www dot in our Own World pot dot com.
(46:39):
We'll see you next week on in Our Own World.
This is a Moonflower production in partnership with I Hearts
Michael podcast Network. For more podcasts, visit the I Heart
Radio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
I have the same. Let's go to the mission one
ready for wondering a theme unch. Welcome back to our
(00:31):
intergalactic gnarly queer space travel craft from another dimension, baby,
where you are all welcome? How was that? Baby? That
was wonderful? I wanted it to feel like everyone was welcome,
you know. Yeah, I mean it's still Pride Month after all, right, yeah,
(00:51):
and don't you forget it? Never Well, today, funnily enough,
it is a rainy, rainy a in Miami, Florida, and
more specifically Miami Beach Intergalactia, Florida, because we are here
on the beach and it is pouring torrential cats and dogs,
(01:13):
and Miami loves to do this thing, and specifically Miami
Beach where it just gets so flooded that you can't move,
and people like to do these really funny things like
go out in kayaks or being pulled behind the car
and like, uh, what's I called the wakeboard or something
like that. I was doing research for today's topic and
(01:34):
I dropped my phone on my lip and I split
it enough so without for the ado. Today's topic is
pra injuries done. I feel like if there was an
injury university. You should get an honorary doctorate. I mean,
(01:57):
thank god, I think she was based on favorite care.
Your scare response alone, you deserve a doctorate an injury.
I've definitely lost at least forty million skin cells due
to scares. I mean, you know, fight or flight. I'm
the flighter. If you scare me, I will throw myself
(02:18):
on the floor. And yes, you like to dive into
the air for some reason, because and that's what I
don't understand, because usually between fight or flight fight is
that you know somebody that will go up and try
to defend themselves and then fly to somebody who will
run away. But you actually attempt to soar and then
you land face first and then don't feel attacked. I
(02:39):
am feeling attack. I'm just worried about you. Why are
you worried? And my brain a small percentage is like, oh,
I'm going to be able to escape the situation. I'm
either going to burrow a small hole underground or I
will grow wings and soar into the sky. Either way,
I'm escaping the situation. And if not, you can't die
right here anyway. So whatever, I'm less. You did it
(03:02):
sore and maybe ran away you'd actually have a better
chance of surviving, you know, like if there was like
a big scot man chasing you and you instead of
you know, diving into the floor into a comatose state,
you actually like maybe ram if defending yourself isn't your
thing like that it might be a novel idea, but
(03:24):
it's a good one. Well, in your case, you will
literally grab the nearest weapon and charge at anything that
is a threat to you. So yeah, I'm not the
I'm not the like hide behind doors and a way
to get found kind of person. I don't know how
people do that. I have so much anxiety when I
see those scenes in movies because I'm like, just get
(03:45):
up and do something. I'd rather find you. I'd rather
find you. I'd rather find you. I'd rather use the
element of surprise on you. That's the only thing I
have in my favor because I am small and I
don't know a lot about fighting. I'm inventive, though, so
be aware in what movies I'm curious. You will not
watch that with me, So I don't know what things
you're saying that you watch that are spooky gig So yeah,
(04:09):
of my body maybe covered in scars, from Scares, Scars
from Scares. That's a cool band name, Ladies and Gentlemen
Scores from Scares. But that's me literally, I yeah, you're pretty,
you're pretty injury prone. You're pretty injury prone. And that's
what inspired this topic. Really, was you more than me,
(04:30):
because as you will see, I don't have as many
injury experiences as M does. M Thank god, let's not
go on wood right now. And another thing about that
I think we all can relate to is there's something
there's a tie between pain or watching other people, obviously
mild pain, watching other people experience mild pain, and comedy,
Like it's really funny when you knows dive and you know,
(04:52):
I never want you to be hurt, but it's really funny. No,
I mean they're like, hello, look at Jackass. We grew
up on a society like jack or like Star or
all those shows or like or like cracking up at
people doing ridiculous, very painful things. And it's not her fault.
It's not her fault. It's been funny forever. It's been
(05:13):
funny forever. That's what's Comedy's pain is comedy gold No, seriously,
slapstick comedy has been around since the sixteenth century. Well,
also like being able to laugh at yourself. Laughing at
other people is easy, and laughing at yourself sometimes in
the moment when you're getting hurt it's not easy, but
(05:33):
after the fact it is part of the healing process. Yeah,
I think, yeah, oh my gosh. Yes, if you can't
laugh at yourself, then people have a misconception about pain.
And like our pain thresholds first, our pain tolerance, like
we as human beings actually have a similar pain threshold.
(05:55):
I'll give you an example. Most human beings when they
touch water this me a hundred and ten hundred and
twelve degrees hot, they say ouch because it hurts. But
pain tolerance, which is how much of that pain you
can tolerate, is with berries. Ah. So it all affects
(06:15):
us the same way, but we react to it differently. Yes,
some of the some of us are just mental, like me,
what degree shower? Or do I shower in? Well, I
don't mean about just okay, that's that's different. You love
hot water, but I don't know how how much injury
can you withhold without like losing your mind. Pain tolerance
(06:37):
is a big thing. I think about that with tattoos
a lot too. Oh yeah, you're somebody who can tolerate
the pain of tattoos but screams when you get your
eyebrows plug. I don't understand that. You sound like my mother.
She all agree with me. You don't. It's a different
kind of pain. You have a weirdo. I know you
don't know this, and I only know this because I
(06:59):
looked it up on the inner It. Okay, the six
most painful experiences the human beings can have, and I'm
here for your reactions, all right, I'm so ready starting
with number six, tearing your achilles heel. Number five, a
(07:22):
tooth absis Yeah, teeth and ears are gnarly teeth, even
just a little even just a tiny little chip of
a tooth so much. We'll talk about that Number four,
which I wanted to debate this, but we can go there. Childbirth,
Oh people, I know, because people talk about child players
(07:47):
like stabbing, being stabbed in the stomach and having their
organs like ripped from the inside, like them pooping out
a bowling ball on fire. That's oh yeah, that's terrible.
Um Oh, number three is tetanus really isn't that crazy? Well? Hello,
(08:09):
this is why the tetanus shot hurts so much because
when you have tetanus, all of your joints lock up.
You're like, it's not the vibe. It's not the vibe. Okay.
Number two testicular or vary in torsion. Oh no, She's
really funny because the other day I was reading an
(08:30):
article about a guy who mass was masturbating so much
that he had gesticular torsion and had took go to
the hospital. What does that mean? Like it's like, yeah, yeah,
like we're doing a visual cube, but it twists and
a vary in torsion, which is like not nearly as
common as gesticular torsion, which says a lot um No.
(08:55):
I mean, obviously it's their internal organs. They're can be
caused by things like cists that way too heavily, or
even ligaments or ligaments that are too long twisting. Pregnant
women sometimes experienced it, but it's like anyway, don't worry.
It's like ten and every hundred thousand women verse men
(09:16):
is I think like one in four thousand. Don't quote me,
don't quote me, don't quote me. And number one here
we go. Second degree burns. Second degree burns because thirty
third degree burns are only painful for like a few
seconds before all your nerves are burnt off and then
you don't experience pain. But second degree burns are supposed
(09:40):
to be the most painful experience a human can have, which, honestly,
I agree, because I once had a very minor second
degree burn when I was trying to remake the blooming
onion from out back at my house. I'm sorry, from
where from out back? Out back? Sakehouse. Yeah, that's why
(10:00):
I was trying to do it in my house, blu
Onionion onion. We'd be lying if we didn't tell you
that we wrote that song years ago. But yeah, it
caused me. It caused a second degree burning. That thing
(10:20):
hurt for like days days, it felt like it was
still on fire. Burns are bad. I heard toothpaste helps.
I don't. I think that's a lie, and I don't
think anyone should do that. I actually think that that's
a lie. Yeah, because I imagine that the toothpaste would
irritate that poor skin. But okay, it can probably worse
(10:48):
than the burden. Yeah, please don't do that. I've done
it so many times. Okay, Well, how did it go?
For you who said that to us us, Mrs Frizzle,
what this is a lot of people. I was never
told to put toothpaste on a burnither It's counterintuitive, right,
so crazy, so why would you? Okay anyway, moving off,
(11:13):
so speaking of you and your weirdo burn solutions, um,
let's get into your injuries, babe. You the more injury
prone one of the duo. You know, I am very
accident prone from a long time ago when I was
a child. I've heard that I put my hand in
a toaster. I know, way how old were you? Well
(11:37):
I was like too, but like the slot for the
toaster is really inviting for your hands. I mean I
would honestly no, no, ok yeah, I don't think I
ever did stuff like that. Yeah, I need to knock
on one because I don't want to call this upon
myself at all. But I have maybe because I've lived
a very sedentary life because my mom put me in
(11:57):
art school since the third grade, and so I've just
been sitting at a chair playing violin my whole life.
But you know, as opposed to you, who's out there
playing sports and like doing the thing, I have not
experienced many injuries, thankfully, you know, I don't cut here
and there, a burn here and there. I don't think
(12:18):
I've ever actually even seen you be hurt. Let's knock
on wood right now. I'm telling you I'm not a
little stitious. I'm superstitious. Shout off the office. But um, yeah,
I don't even think I've seen you be like cut
or anything like that. I don't want to see it.
But as you said, you could not handle it at
this point, what's the first injury that you remember experiencing
(12:40):
in your life. I decided to play tennis barefoot, not
a good idea, and in Miami, in certain places, as
we all know who lives in Miami, there's some bamboo
depending on what part of Miami your and I hit
a fourhand and then I felt like this warmth my
(13:00):
toe and I looked down and it literally turned out
that I kicked a small shard of bamboo and it
went under my big toe nail and out the side
of it. So that's the first thing that I remember.
I mean, it really went downhill from there. Wow, what
(13:22):
was your first injury? You remember? Baby? So I remember
this happening, but I filled in the story with my
family's recollection of it and I don't remember like the
experience of it hurting. And my dad, you used to
love to go on bike rides and I was like
two or three, you know, I have like a photographic
(13:45):
memory at two or three. Yeah, I remember a lot.
And he had me on the bike with him and
I didn't he didn't put shoes on me because I
was small. He was just like carrying me and my
I guess my foot got caught in the chains, like
sliced the bottom of my foot. That was my first injury.
(14:08):
Then I remember apparently I was dropped and I was
six months old. Also my dad, I fell asleep, and uh,
but I have a theory us dropped children that were
dropped in infancy. I have a special about us. Is
(14:29):
that what you call it? Yeah? So if you if
you know if your parents dropped you, is that what
you call it? No, I'm playing, but yeah, he I
was six months old and I was laying on his
chest and he was exhausted and I rolled off the
bed and I fell. Oh lord. Yeah, I don't remember
that one though, Dude. The next injury that I have
(14:49):
that I actually like remember, being like I'm an idiot,
is older, like thirteen. Okay, here's the or maybe older.
I think I might have been older at this point.
I think I blocked it out. But I have like
a long history with my teeth, Like I had braces
(15:11):
and spikes behind my teeth right before Halloween that they're like,
we're gonna put spikes behind your teeth because my tongue.
I have a thrusting tongue. I know, lesbians, My god, no,
you did not say thrusting. I literally have a condition
called a thrusting tongue. Wow, and your parents didn't know
you were gay. I'm sorry it wasn't this. It could
(15:33):
have been the basketball shorts. But the coole calls him
as you see them any female drummers, and really had
thrusting tongue, and they wanted to put because when you swallow, God,
here we go. We're just going down the true You
keep opening yourself up. When normal people swallow food or beverages,
(15:59):
nothing dirty one. Normal people swallow. You put your tongue
on the roof of your mouth. I thrust my tongue forward,
and what did I do? Push your front teeth out?
A k A. All of my drama with my teeth.
The point is that I walked into my orthodontist office
(16:21):
and I was like, I can't do this anymore, Like,
please rip my braces off, rip them off. I'm about
to do it myself. He takes all of my komflamma
off my teeth. And that weekend, I was going away
with my family. So we decided we want to go
to bike ride. And me and Lowering, my cousin are
(16:41):
going on a bike ride and it starts to rain
and we decide that it's a good idea to race
each other. But the sidewalk is right next to the expressway,
and I decided to ride a three wheel bicycle, which
is the safest bicycle because you're so low to the
ground right and you don't have to balance, you're just
sitting there. It's a recumbent bicycle. So I'm riding this
(17:03):
bicycle and I'm racing him and I'm thinking that I'm
killing the game. And my right tire gets stuck on
the pavement, so I literally start rolling into Highway A
when a in Vero Beach and I'm like, that's it.
I'm gonna get hit by a car and I'm thinking
I'm gonna die. This is it. Thank you for everything.
And I stand up and I'm like, I'm fine, up, alive.
(17:26):
I go back into the sidewalk, I sit in my bike.
I'm like ha ha ha, like laughing at my cousin,
and I start going ha ha. And as I'm laughing,
I'm rolling my head back and forth and I smack
my tooth to the bar of the bicycle and I
have split in half your tooth. You split it in half? No,
(17:48):
no, no no, no no, but split it in half. That
my nerve is exposed. My my nerve is exposed. The
up to this day, you can see the spot on
the bike where I chipped it. I'm like, I just
rolled into the goddamn highway and I chipped my tooth.
Lapping at myself. Oh no, oh, my god, in the
(18:11):
pain and the whelp to this day, Hello, this tooth
right here. Yeah, I know I've gone with you and
I've never gotten a permanent one. That's crazy. I can't
believe that, especially after surviving the real fall, for you
to just go onto the sidewalk smash your own face
against your bike and teeth. Paine hurt so much. I
(18:34):
only had one tooth injury, and it's because I was
playing this twang. A little instrument called the jaw harp.
What is that? It's a U shaped instrument that has
this like little metal stick that you you place in
front of your lips and you flick the stick and
it just makes this interesting reverberated sound and like exactly,
(18:57):
and um, I was practicing playing the Our Heart because
you know it would be like that sometimes. And I
guess I flicked the twang too hard and it um slapped,
the metal slapped into my tooth and chips it and
it's so funked up. I gotta get that fixed, actually
(19:20):
accountability that I need to get my tooth fixed. And
love your teeth. So babe, um, remember when we got
each other's scooters without each other knowing that was that's
a really cute story. Let's have a quick intervention right
here and then get into that adorable story as a
palate cleanser for what's to come. Okay, sounds good, Ready, one, two, three,
(19:57):
and we're back O. Okay, quick little story. So for Christmas,
Emily and I always go really hard in the paint
for each other. So I was doing my research on scooters.
I wanted something that Emily and I could adventure. On
Christmas morning arrives and I wanted Emily to open her
(20:20):
gift last because I was convinced that I had the
mac Daddy gift that year. Emily does this adorable little
trail with yarn and mistletoe whatever, and it hooks around
the doorknob. And when I opened the door, there were
two scooters there. So you could just imagine what it
was like to open the door of my room and
(20:41):
for Emily to have another scooter. It was scooters Central.
It was scooter Central. What we did is we returned
the two that m got and got another one of
the one that I got her. So I was really excited.
And I'm riding my scooter up and about I'm coming
back into the neighborhood and I was going the slowest
I hae gone my entire journey. And I see this
(21:02):
guy coming around the curb and he must have been
going like fifty. My first instinct was, I'm going to
throw myself off the scooter because either the scooter's gone
or I'm gone. Like he was traveling so fast and
I was traveling so slow. I thought for sure he
was that was it. Like I was done. I really
was scared, and I don't think I've told you this
until now, but I was. I was shading myself, so
(21:24):
I throw the scooter to the right and I threw
myself to the left, and I was really left up,
like I obviously looked like I hurt myself, and the
guy stopped his car saw me and kept going. And
I don't know if you remember, I ran into the
house because I really messed up my elbow. It was
(21:46):
like all yeah, I remember, it was all like scuffed
up and bloody, yeah, and like gnarly. But the first
thing I was like, let's go to the cameras like
il and he was going so fast we couldn't even
like see his license plate. So long story short, I
not only still have this car on my elbow right here,
(22:06):
but if you look up, embraceable you Emily Stefan. I'm
singing with my mom and I literally have That was
like a week or two after it happened, and I
have like this. It looks like a band aid, but
it's literally a scar of my elbow. Yeah, you can
see the ed. Oh I almost wasn't here. Oh you
really are in here, girl, my car accident. Let me
(22:30):
tell you something when I was twenty years old, I
bought a Fiat for looks and looks only because that
was one cute, assid little car with its little red
soft top convertible situation and the whole retro dashboard interior.
I loved that car, but driving it felt like driving
(22:56):
a toy, like driving a fake car. I felt like
I was driving a fake car, like a car that
should be on a set somewhere. And after all the
ship that I talked about, that car, even though I
loved it and I had so many incredible memories, that
little piece of ship saved my life. What do you
mean it saved your life? Okay, So at that time
(23:19):
in my life, twenty on the cusp of one, I
was working a lot. I was working a lot, and
I was also studying full time. It was my best
friend at the time's birthday, and because of my hectic schedule,
I had been pretty m i a but you know,
I felt like I was investing in my future. It
(23:40):
was a transitionary period and I was happy to do it.
I get home, I'm living with my mom, and I'm exhausted.
I had left work at like nine o'clock at night,
and I was like, oh, Mom, you know I have
to go out, and she was like, gem, why just
you're tired, Just stay home, and I'm like, no, I
have to go. And plus, you know me, Fomo will
(24:01):
eat away at me like a festering infection. So so
I I I wanted to be there for her, and
I was like, Mom, you know you don't understand whatever.
She was like, Jim, honestly, I have a bad feeling
about this. But you know my mom, I love her
to death. She's withchy, but she's also super dramatic, and
she's told me, oh, I have a bad feeling about
this several times, and I'm like, girl, and everything's fine,
(24:23):
So I just shoot her away. I was literally falling
asleep on the couch, just waiting for it to be later,
because you know Miami, you don't even start going out
until eleven, and no, at this time, I was early.
So I leave and I go there, I hang out
for a little bit. I'm on my way home and
(24:47):
I didn't actually have a very long way to drive,
but I stayed out super late, and I felt I
felt myself falling asleep on my drive. But you know,
I did, like all the thing I blasted the a C.
I lowered the window, I blasted music. I tried to
like pop around to the music, and I was getting there,
but my body, my whole body, might I was done.
(25:10):
You were pushing on and I almost made it. I
almost made it. I was five blocks from my house
and I fell asleep in such a deep way. In
such a deep way. You know when you're so deep
in your sleep that your alarm is going off, but
it's first integrated into your dream before you realize that
(25:31):
it's your alarm going off. Okay, so that was me,
except with the trees that I had run over upon
impact with my car. By the time when I woke
up and came to the situation, my entire windshield was
completely shattered, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna die,
Like I thought this car might explode and might you know,
(25:52):
burst into flames. I've got to get out. When I
take off my seatbelt to open the door, I can't
feel my ankles on either of my feet. So I
threw myself onto the side of the road beside my
car and watched like five or six cars who definitely
saw my car smoking and probably saw me waving them down.
(26:15):
Just drive past me, which was a super desperate moment
because I didn't have my phone. My phone was in
my car somewhere. And luckily a woman stopped and she
was a nurse, an angel Um, and she called the
ambulance for me, and UM, help me call my mom.
(26:38):
To this day, my mom you can't can't receive a
late phone call because she received that phone call of
a woman saying, you know, your daughter got into an
accident and freaking out until she didn't know that I
was safe and alive and okay. But um, when the
ambulance came, the cops came, and I remember it was
like six troopers. It was crazy. You think that I
don't know. I don't know what they thought happened. And
(27:00):
when the cops we're telling me that they were going
to take me to the hospital, I was in tears
and I was sobbing, and I was saying to them,
you don't know, my boss, I've got to go to
work tomorrow. Like even still in that moment, my focus
was all the stuff that I wanted to accomplish that
(27:23):
I had denied my body priority for. So what were
your injuries? So I tore the ligaments and both of
my ankles at different varying levels. One was like level two,
one was level three, and it wasn't terrible. Other than that,
I had a couple of burns. I had like bruises
(27:47):
near where the seatbelt was, but minor nothing to my face,
thank god. The right side of my car, the passenger
side of my car to the middle of my car
was completely smashed in. I was like inches from being
hitting head on another tree, and I don't think I
would have survived. What are the odds that a nurse,
(28:07):
What are the odds that a nurse then a nurse
stops stops? What are the odds that I take down tree,
three trees, three palm trees and stop at an electrical
pole and lived to tell the tale. Have you ever
spoken to that nurse again? No? Um, No, I don't know.
I don't. I don't think my mom has. Maybe maybe
she did at that time, but no, I don't. I
(28:29):
don't know her name. I don't even know who she is.
I think she worked at Baptist because that was near
where I was living at the time. So if she
if a Baptist nurse happens to come across this podcast
and that was you thank you. Wow, I thank you too. Yeah. Yeah,
it wasn't bad though, you know, I did, I did.
I was in a wheelchair for a while and then crutches,
(28:52):
but you best believe I went out for my twenty
one birthday work crutches and old go maybe. Yeah, injuries
like that really really teach you a lot about life
and who your friends are. Well, I'm really happy that
you're here, and car accidents are really scary. I think
(29:13):
it's time time for what for the injury of all injuries?
What my figure? Oh no, you mean the time that
your finger turned into a split hot dog, because that's
what it looked like, well like halfway split, like if
(29:35):
just the top, you know, they didn't cut all the
way down. The precursor to the story is that when
I try to show the pictures of this injury to anybody,
jem is like, you need to ask them first, yes, Emily,
because a lot of people can't tolerate the sight of blood,
and your injury is extremely was extremely gory, and you
love to shove it in people's face, like the gorious
(29:58):
video that you have on your phone without being like
can you see blood? And people have almost passed out
on us because of that. I just I don't want
to go through it alone. You know you don't have to,
but you could give them a heads up your evil
and I have a disclaimer. I'm like, so my girlfriend
tells me, I have to ask if you can see bloods?
Can you see blood? I'm glad I'm there to help you.
(30:20):
Buffer all right. Let me set the scene. Poor people
and it's bad. What a good way to go out? Baby,
Here we go. Listen, injuries are This is actually I
know that it's funny because it's one of the smallest
pieces of my body, but it's one of the largest
things I've actually ever gone through mentally. Honestly, it like
(30:44):
really taught me what mind over matter means and what
it means to be mentally fit, Because what it means
to be mentally fit in a moment when your body
cannot show up for you says a lot. And I
think that that's kind of what I took away from
not only this experience, but like any time that you
(31:04):
get hurt, you know, not that I've had, and this
was a different This was to a different degree. They
told you that you probably weren't going to play guitar
for over a year. Yeah. I mean at first they
told me that if I didn't take care of it,
I could have lost my finger. Yeah, that I could
have gottenn infection and it could have been really bad.
The night is December. What year was it? You remember
(31:29):
or no? I think it was. So it was me
and Gem and one of our friends at our house
and Jem and our friend was in the kitchen. Funny enough,
you know why Amanda was there that day? Why is
that she was helping me build your scooter? Wow, because
(31:51):
I wanted when you open the door, we're back to
the scooters. There you go. So our friend, So our
friend is there helping jem unbeknounced to me. And until
this moment build my scooter. And I'm in the bathroom
getting ready to take a shower to go to and
(32:11):
I am naked, which is relevant because of the trauma
that I suffered from being me. I felt it. I mean,
one thing is getting injured, but when things getting injured naked,
that was like a whole other moment, I am getting
ready to get into the shower. If you have a
glass shower, you really really need to invest into a
plastic the rubber strip shower snake the rubber stripping. The
(32:35):
rubber strip at the edge of the door and then
stops from going. You know, I originally thought that it
was for keeping the water getting out of the shower. No,
I think it's first saving fingers because yaws. So anyway,
I didn't have any of this plastic stripping, and it
was just glass on glass. But I had never had
(32:56):
an issue with my shower. So I pulled the door back,
and usually it would cock back in place and be
stuck there. It would lock right. Well, today it decided
I wanted to keep on swinging. Baby, So I'm naked,
I'm getting the shower, I'm excited for Santa to come.
And the I pull it back and the door starts
swinging back to the closed position. And in my peanut mind,
(33:21):
I decided, oh, let me just catch the door with
my left hand and I'll be able to stop it.
That didn't happen. What ended up happening was that it
was a glass edge against a glass edge, and my
finger is flesh and liquid, and when the glass on
(33:42):
glass hit at that particular angle, my finger literally exploded. Literally,
it was like the pressure cause it to burn. The
pressure and the angle of the door caused my finger
to explode, like cutting a hot Let's let's pay the picture,
not the whole finger. It's the first philange. Like Gems said,
(34:07):
the entire first joint of my finger was like the
tip of a hot dog split open, and because the
glass was so strong, its splintered my heavy and the
blood from my finger literally hit the roof, the mirror,
the floor. I'm naked, I fall to the ground. I'm
(34:27):
freaking out, and Jem think I'm laughing. So that's the
scene she entered upon with Amanda, who did not like
blood and turned a very lovely sea foam green. My dad,
Oh my gosh, yes, because on top of all of this,
Amanda the only person that's with us that going to
be of any use. I can't see blood. So what
(34:49):
happens is I originally I immediately go into resolution mode.
But I have never experienced an injury like this. It
hadn't been long since M left I here. This like
what I interpret is like a maniacal laughter, which is
like not new. If you know em, if you've been
in M's presence, Like she's loud, she's proud, and she
(35:10):
will often go to the bathroom and spend thirty five
minutes they're scrolling through funny videos. Uh, and so that
is what my brain interpreted. I kind of stopped for
a second by a man, and I kept talking, and
then I hear it again, and I looked at Amanda,
like at the same time, we looked at each other,
and we both kind of like locked eyes, like, Okay,
(35:32):
what the funk was that? I burst into our bedroom
and I turned the corner and I go into the
bathroom and I find them on the floor, crouched screaming,
clutching her finger as it's like bleeding everywhere, with blood everywhere,
And so I didn't know if I should call the ambulance,
drive you to the hospital, like I didn't know what
was going on. I called your mom because I thought
(35:53):
you were going to bleed out. Hold on my mom,
who was in full blown, full bill down hair, the makeup,
god like, she was beat to the gods. She was
ready to go and them and I'm and she tells
me to this day she heard me screaming in the
(36:13):
back of the phone call and that you were like
she's gonna die. I was, She's bleeding everywhere. There was
so much blood. So I run to the kitchen because
I know that we had just in laundroom, Like, what's
the cleanest towel that I had I can find? So
I grabbed this towel and I put it around him
(36:35):
his finger, and we agree that I'm going to drive
you to Mount Sinai, which was not far in the hospital.
I was freaking out that you were in pain. I
was freaking out that I didn't know what was going
to happen. I didn't know the extent of the injury.
It was a lot. Yet I was driving and holding
your finger for you because you didn't want to put
pressure on it enough for it to stop bleeding, and
(36:59):
trying to home Amanda down in the back seat, who
was like turning pale, and do breathing exercises with you
because you're hyperventilating from the sobbing screaming, well not only
the sobbing screaming, Like there are certain things that you're
not ready to see as a human being until you
have to see them. And when I saw my finger,
(37:21):
I remember like I fell over. You know what's hilarious.
I fell over on my right leg because I was
on my knees and I don't know why I was slipping.
I was like, why am I slipping? And it was
literally fucking blood. It was like blood on the floor
and I was slipping and the piece of my finger
that was hanging like moves no, not too much, and
(37:43):
that that got goose bumps on my scalp. Okay, but
that's when I knew. That's when I was like, oh,
I'm aft like something really like I need help, like something.
We're on the way to the hospital, right And the
towel that was very sanitary. Thank you so much, babe.
I appreciate it. But the one thing I would have
appreciated more is if it wasn't a microfiber, because what
(38:08):
happened is that the tiny fibers got all entrapped in
my hot dog finger, like fucking breading on a chicken finger.
I was like, it was so bad. And we get
to the hospital and they're like, oh, sweetie, um, it's
um Christmas Eve and Santa's at the workshop, honey, so um,
(38:33):
if you want a surgeon for your finger, it's going
to be about two hours. Well, so let's explain that.
Because of Emily's profession, and I recommend this to anybody
who works in a professional with their hands matter. We
requested specifically a hand surgeon, so that you know, you
could be sewn up by the best. And yeah, he
(38:55):
was two hours away. The injury was terrible, and I
have to tell you not only because I severed my
nerve and I splintered my bone. The pain was unbearable.
But worse than that pain was the nerve block. Oh
my gosh, that was a big needle. It was Explain,
(39:16):
explain where it was. They said, well, it's going to
be a while until he gets here. And I was screaming, like,
what's the thing in Harry Potter, you were screaming like
(39:38):
the man Drake, the mandrake, man Drake, like like that
was me. So a nerve block is about a what
would you say, like four inch five inch needle. Guys,
right now, wherever you are, spread your fingers out, Spread
your fingers out. Let me know when they're spread out, okay,
(39:59):
thank you. And so in between your fingers, like where
the webbing is, imagine taking a needle that's about half
the width, a little bit less than half the width.
It wasn't that wide, but it was, you know, about
a quarter of the with your finger in between the
webbing about halfway down your hand and then they inject
(40:21):
what only feels like I don't know what, burning fire.
I don't understand. It was like I screamed. And that
was when Amanda left. That's when she finally turned like
the darkest trait of green I've ever seen a human being.
Good night, Thank you so much like your poor dy Amanda,
thank you, and Dad, who was of course ready before
(40:42):
her mom for dinner, comes to the hospital. The poor
guy could not handle it. I wanted to watch him
so my hot dog finger and take the shrap shrapnels
of bone out of my finger. And actually I feel
like we're connected because he put his finger's side my finger.
(41:02):
We're gonna be together forever, love the doctor. The point is, yes,
it was traumatic, it was crazy. The most important thing
that I want to take away from this is that
I still showed up to now you deserve an award.
Thank you. I feel I felt so bad because okay,
so when you add up the whole shabako, the whole
(41:22):
two hours of waiting for the surgeon, the surgeon arriving,
and you know that wasn't easy. And of course Emily
asked us to film the whole thing. Because she's a
massacus that way. Emily still wanted to go to and
I whimp it. I know. She made us go home
to change, to change, that's right, baby, and then go
to went on dinner. Your family and my family waited
(41:46):
for us. We got there, both of our families. Thank you.
And the next morning was a fun, fun, fun ride.
And thank god that I don't like percoset because I
felt like the tele tell me that never was. That's
what I was. I woke up Alex Santa, good morning,
oh Finger, what is that like? It was ridiculous. Days
(42:07):
after Christmas, we were all leaving on a cruise. My
doctor was like, um, if you go on the cruise,
you might get an infection and die, and that's on you.
I'm like, all right, got this girl goes on a
zip line. Zi. Yeah, but I couldn't swim, and you
know how much I know. Yeah, that's what said, you
(42:28):
could not swim. I'm not complaining. Listen. That was a
great cruise. It was amazing, dog Finger and all freaking blast. Yeah.
I changed my bandages for each day of the week.
I was a fabulous nurse. I you change your bandages,
you change my Emily Mariko Swillow, Stepfan, don't call you
right now. I'll call her right now. I changed your bandages.
(42:53):
She taught me, you did you did? You did? You did?
I had a whole little medical pack for you. You
did you did? You do? After that cruise and everything like,
we had a great time, and at the beginning of
your injury, it can all be like, you know, everyone's
taking care of me and whatever. I'll get through it.
What was really hard for me was when it was
(43:15):
numb and it was shooting through my body. And I'm
a guitarist and that's my job, and it is my
left hand, and it is my finger, which if you're
a guitarist, you know, like your bend fingering, your most
important finger if you're a guitarist, if you're a right
handed guitarist. When we got back from the cruise and
(43:36):
all that fun and all that holiday whatever, I was devastated.
I was in a lot of pain and as you know,
like I had to go to therapy, which I encourage
you if you get an injury. Therapy is really a
physical theraphysical therapy O t PT. You gotta go and
rehabilitate your injury. I can't starress to you so important
(44:00):
only if you can afford it, if you know, if
you if that's something that's available to you, you know,
or or always looking up online. The idea is that
to continue the rehab process once you leave the hospital
makes a huge difference in how you heal. Absolutely absolutely,
and not only physically but mentally. You know, because there
(44:21):
were certain moments where I was like, f this, like uh,
the way the place that my scar is in my
finger at first, like it was getting caught in the
guitar string. To this day, if I played too long,
it'll hurt. But you know what, there are so many
more difficult things that you could go through in life,
and you can look at it with a positive outlook
(44:43):
and say, hey, I'm going to appreciate playing more because
there's a possibility that I couldn't have played again. There's
a possibility that I could have severed my entire finger.
There's a possibility that And there are people who can't,
and there are people who can't, or there are people
who don't even have arms at all, and they still
manage to find a way to play an instrument. It's
(45:03):
all about determination, It's all about your mental strength. There's
a documentary called Heal that's incredible on Netflix that I
recommend that everybody go out there and watch. That's you know,
about just that about how how no matter the severity
of your injury, how you need to put your mind
first and what how powerful the mind is what it
(45:27):
can do for the body. You know, It's true though,
I mean, healing is a natural thing. It's a natural phenomenon.
We're not actively thinking of the cells that are regenerating,
you know, in our fingers where we get a paper cut.
It's just like something that happens automatically. The body knows
what to do. Yeah, that's why my lip in the
time of this video has already healed more, it actually has. There.
(45:53):
You go full circle, grab your first aid kids, y'all,
especially if you're around Emily. Let's say, knock on, knock
on all the wood because no injuries today, just healing, healing, healing,
and that's a day. Get bickin. I hope you guys
(46:15):
had your seatbelts on and then everybody got off the
flight today injury free. And don't forget y'all, it's Pride
month out there. Give your money to the gays. That's right, baby,
and don't forget that our Mission Control highline is officially open,
where you can give us a call and say whatever
the FU you want. You can find it on our
website at www dot in our Own World pot dot com.
(46:39):
We'll see you next week on in Our Own World.
This is a Moonflower production in partnership with I Hearts
Michael podcast Network. For more podcasts, visit the I Heart
Radio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Gemeny Hernandez
Emily Estefan
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