Injuries and accidents [Archive]

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Skater Bubbles

11-05-2005, 02:05 AM

Ok so does anyone have any good accident or injury stories from camp? Lots of ambulance visits at your camp?

camper

11-05-2005, 03:29 AM

my PC summer (last summer as a camper, really big deal!) we were playing an intercamp soccer game about a week and a half before color war. i went to steal the ball from a girl from the other camp and she kicked it up into my eye (it was an accident i think haha). i thought it knocked my contact out so i opened my eye to pull it out and it turned out i couldn't see out of a big spot in that eye...REALLY scary. i came out of the game and eventually had to go to an eye doctor about an hour away from camp who thought i might have detached my retina. he said until i went to a retinal specialist at home, i couldn't play sports. i was DEVESTATED with it being so close to color war. my parents let me cheat a little bit during the war- i wore goggles and played non-contact sports like softball, volleyball, and a few mins in each of the contact sports as long as i wore the goggles. i was really upset about it though. luckily, i was camper chief in the war so it really didn't matter b/c i got excited about that!

Flukie

11-05-2005, 05:48 AM

Ooh... I have one. Our older girls were on a lunch sail to a nearby beach when a walkie call came in a bit garbled. Something about camper, cut foot, some blood... So our director sent the AD in the golf cart to get as close as she could to the beach, "just in case". As they came closer, we got the message that the cut seemed "kinda" deep and there was a lot of blood. We also sent the EMT down with gauze. Yeah - it wasn't a little cut, it took like 10 stitches to shut it! She couldn't walk so she she had to hop from the whaler to the golf cart and from the cart to the van. Oh man!

In her own words, she says: "Cutting my toe open on the lunch sail and riding back to Favorite in the whaler with Bendy practically shoving thin mints down my throat and then trying to get from the whaler to the golf cart by leaning on digger and boom but they were way too short so i just walked on my own. And then getting to ride in the golf cart which was super fun!" Fantastic camper. <3

I also took a staff and a camper to the clinic because of a canoe trip gone bad - they ended up COVERED in poison ivy. Guess I'm not allergic because I didn't get it and I was on the same trip! :)

collissimon

11-05-2005, 07:07 AM

It's usually me injuring myself! My first year I broke my toe dancing on the horseshoe field, dancing with no shoes on and colliding with my co-counsellors shoe.

Second year I didn't do anything!

This year was the doozie: on my day off I went to this great waterfall. Me and a couple of others went for a hike. On the way back we had to hike down the watercourse. When we got to the rest of the group, the others took the easy way down: they dived off the 35ft fall into the plunge pool. I knew I couldn't do it, so tried to find an alternative route down. I climbed up to find an alternate route down.

Unfortunately, after I got to the top my feet went from under me and I fell about 25ft onto a slab of rock! I didn't break anything (thank God!) but badly bruised my back, arms and foot, and scratched up my arms and stomach.

I'm never being adventurous again!

Dave

11-05-2005, 11:22 AM

Our camp has a lot of ambulance visits. Last summer we didn't have a whole lot, but the summer before there were at least a few per week. Most of the time it's because of a bee sting or something like that, not because the staff weren't paying attention and something happened. Luckily none of my kids have ever had to go to the hospital during camp.

I do have an injury story though. It was two years ago. It must've been raining for several days and our camp was flooded out. Not too soon after the busses started picking up, the camp told them all to stop picking kids up, and take everyone who was on the busses to the JCC center. I was one of those people on the busses so I had to go. Well there was a good amount kids there, and we were all sitting around in the basketball courts doing nothing.

After lunch, there was an announcement for all of the age groups to separate so the kids could start doing stuff. Our age group was allowed to go outside on the playground. Bad idea. Playground + kids running around + wet equipment = accidents. Well there was one accident. A girl was on one of those zip lines that are sometimes on playgrounds. Well she was on that and her hands slipped and she fell off. All of a sudden I saw a bunch of people run over. I go over and see a white thing sticking out of her arm. I thought she fell and they already put some cotton on her arm to stop some bleeding. That wasn't the case. Here, it was her bone sticking out of her arm. Her arm just snapped in half when she hit the ground. It was disgusting. Actually, there was hardly any bleeding, and she didn't seem to be crying. Well we took everyone inside and we sat in this little room for the rest of the day. What fun.

But that was something I'll never forget.

rockinsmiles

11-05-2005, 09:18 PM

Oh lord! I dont ever remember an ambulance coming to camp but injuries are quite common. We had a guy brake his arm from doing the unwise idea of running around the pool...the day camp director broke her tail bone doing the same thing last year. well maybe she was just walking. i dont remember. I also had a girl sprain her ankle (what fun that was). And it wasnt really an injury but still...I had a girl bleed out her nose for 30 minutes straight. She said that was common for her but I thought it was freaky. Then one of the counselors broke her toe by playing soccor without any shoes on. And she broke her arm the year before playing kick ball.

However I have to agree with collissimon, its normally me injuring me. The running joke was i wasnt going to make it out of training. i was stepped on by a horse, smacked my head on a table, and lots of other things. The one I most remember though was the bruise that wouldnt go away. During training i was going up on the stage in the rec hall but didnt make it. so i ran into the side and got this big, ungly, painful bruise. Well around 3 weeks later (maybe 4) it was finally going away. i went on our staff canoe trip though and banged the same spot. so i few more weeks went by and it was starting to disappear again. then a camper pushed their metal chair into the bruise! what a time.

Indigo

11-05-2005, 10:05 PM

We've had a lot of injuries and accidents... The worst usually happen at (or related to) the barn, people falling off of horses... We've had a couple get thrown into walls and such.

One of my worst camper injuries was my first summer as a counselor, one of my campers decided it would be a good idea to take the railing off of her bunk bed, lay it across the top of two cabinets, and swing from it. Well it fell, and so did she, and her head hit the concrete floor. She blacked out 7 times before the ambulance arrived. We all thought she wouldn't be back, but she was back the next day!

I have a funny injury story about myself, from the same year... My UL took our whole unit out on a pranking spree in the middle of the session. First we TP'd a unit that was sleeping out at the bottom of our hill, then we ran back to our unit before going back out to do something with the CITs' bikes. As we were walking past the TP'd unit, a little girl sat up in her hammock and hissed "Have a nice hike!" My campers whispered, "Run!" so we all ran... Of course, having no flashlight and bad ankles, I stepped on the edge of the pavement and fell, grinding my knee, arm, and chin into the pavement (our UL ran back and yelled "Where's your buddy?" and the girl went back to her hammock). But I still went along with the others to make a trail of bikes from the CITs' house to the dining hall. When we got back I just wanted to wash off the blood and go to bed, but my campers held me down while my UL poured on water and hydrogen peroxide, pulled out gravel with a tweezers, and wrapped my knee and arm in bandages. I still have the scar on my knee!

Skater Bubbles

11-06-2005, 03:14 AM

Well I teach one of the most dagerous programs at my camp and so I have seen my share of injuries. I was spotting a girl as she was going down on a mountianboard and I still had a hold of her when she fell and twisted all funny. I have had tons of kids fall and they have been just fine so I figured she was the same, but then she started crying and screaming like no other!! I immediately had my co counselor stay with her and I ran up to the infirmery to get our EMT's. They came down quick and the ambulance came and I ended up riding down in teh ambulance with her to the hospital. She ended up breaking her thigh bone and needing surgery so they had to send her down to Phoenix's Children's Hospital. It was pretty bad and I felt responsible, so I had a really hard time getting over that one!

collissimon

11-06-2005, 11:46 AM

I've thought of another one!

My first year, I was floating between two bunks, and I got a call from my original bunk over the tannoy asking to go to the med centre. One of the kids had flipped out and gone to hit another kid with a hockey stick. Unfortunately for the first, the second kid got there first and cracked the first kid a good one on his noggin.

I had to take the kid to the local ER [which was quite scary for me, having never been to a UK Casualty, let alone a US ER!] for him to have his head stapled together. I remember reading him Charlie and the Choc Factory with silly voices whilst they did it. The silly doctor stapled the wound, and trapped his hair underneath which meant that you couldnt touch any of his head, because it would hurt his wound... and he was probably lucky it didn't get infected!

Fallen

11-07-2005, 02:49 AM

This story is still mentioned at camp even though it happened 4 years ago.

I worked at a day camp my first summer being a counselor. I was lifeguarding that week because one of ours had to go somewhere so I was filling in. While I was in the chair I noticed a fire truck in our parking lot which is very small and next to the pool. Turns out that two boys from a at risk center or something of the sort has escape and thought that they could just climb over a mountain in flip flops and no water. One of them fell and the other was running away. They were disoriented since they were in Arizona with no water and the temperture was around 110 that day. They were getting close to camp since it sites at the base of the mountains.

They had to treat both of them for heat exposure and one of them hurt himself falling.

Nothing happen to any of our girls, but this was the worst I have seen at a camp.

Dave

11-07-2005, 04:03 PM

That's a very unusual story, Fallen. I don't think I've ever heard something quite like that. :speechles

Fallen

11-07-2005, 10:26 PM

HEHE yeah. It was an interesting day and I am shocked to hear that they still talk about it at the camp to let the staff know that people could come from over the mountain and wonder onto camp.

runrachrunn

01-26-2006, 01:12 AM

Most unsual injury story was actually not an injury, and actually not a camper.
A parent came to pick up a child at the end of a half-day session, and she had passed out in her SUV while waiting to pick up the child. The nurse was sent out, and the woman came back to consciousness, but she vommited non-stop for over an hour, while drifting in and out of consciousness.

We ended up calling EMS to take her to a hospital, and apparently she was in the hospital for several days. Turns out that she had just gotten back from the carribean and had severe food poisoning...

The only other situation I can think of is during pre-camp during my first summer - the nurse was demonstrating how to use an Epi-pen and instead of injecting herself with the demo dummy, she used the real epi-pen instead. OMG. SHe was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo manic for the rest of the day - I never, ever, ever want to have that much adrenaline in my body.

speedx5xracer

01-26-2006, 01:28 AM

During pre camp my second year the waterfront staff was recruited to unload campers luggage into the divisions. we would load up a box truck and then transport the luggage to teh divisions. As we were going to reload we(4 of us) were sitting on the back edge with the gate open. I know before you say anything it was dumb. So the driver realized it was starting to get late and we had about 60 more bags to move before we were done for the day so he started picking up speed. when he hit 35 mph he hit a bump and i fell off. being the student of the GTA series and john woo movies i knew i had 2 choices keep running or stop my self. If i stoped my self immediatly i would risk major injury. so i ran once i hit the ground....tevas+me in motion at 35mph+concrete = rolling down about 10 yards. surprisingly the only damage incured was a scraped knee (got worse skate boarding and my sunglasses broke.

Sparkes

01-26-2006, 08:10 PM

Well, last summer my age group was plagued with injuries. And they were all to counselors. We had one girl with a black eye (another counselor who was her boyfriend had poked her by accident), another broke his ankle playing soccer (he was waterfront), another had to be saved by the lifeguards when a kid fell on him in the water, a fourth left camp halfway through because she was so sick, a fifth was carried off in an ambulance because of a heart problems, sixth and seventh each spent a day in the infirmary because of exhaustion, and the eigth counselor broke her finger. We were a pretty sorry looking bunch for awhile!

Dave

01-26-2006, 08:39 PM

Fleur

01-26-2006, 09:39 PM

During my first year as a counsellor at an overnight camp, one of my girls jammed a wire through her finger during her sculpture class. A couple of my other campers who were in the same class came running to get me (I was in the same building, but in the next room). I went to the hospital with her, and they fixed her up pretty quickly. She was laughing it off by dinner.

Then two summers ago in the junior crafts program, a four year old camper leaned too far back on the bench and fell off, smacking her head on the concrete floor which knocked her unconscious. She was taken to the hospital, but thankfully was okay. The first and only time an ambulance has ever had to come to the A&C barn, even when we share it with woodworking.

CAMPFRIEND

01-26-2006, 09:52 PM