That time I sank a framing nail into my thigh on a barn job up near Grass Valley

Was working alone on a frosty November morning and slipped off a muddy ladder while holding a nail gun, drove a 16-penny nail clean through my jeans and into my leg about an inch deep before I even knew what happened, just yanked it out and wrapped it with duct tape and finished the wall because I didn't have cell service and the nearest ER was 20 miles away, has anyone else done something stupid like that and just kept working?

2 comments

2 Comments

joseph482d ago

@jana509 brings up a good point about how we all seem to think stopping for a minute is going to wreck everything. I read somewhere once that this "push through" mentality actually comes from old survival instincts where stopping meant danger. Makes sense for cavemen, less sense for guys with nails in their legs. But yeah, I did something similar once with a circular saw and just wrapped it in a shop rag and kept going.

jana5092d ago

People do this kind of thing all the time, it's almost like we're wired to ignore our own safety if there's work to finish. That whole "just push through it" mindset is so common in construction and manual labor, but really it's everywhere. I see it all the time in regular life too - people walking around with a fever because they can't miss a day, or driving on a flat tire because they're almost home. We all act like stopping for a minute will somehow be the end of the world when it really won't.