Basejumper.com - archive

Sitting here in the hospital with a broken femur after a building strike last night... what a weird feeling, flying a canopy to the ground knowing that your leg is all kinds of fucked up. Really lucky its just the femur, but you all know that. Also lucky the jump went relatively unseen... no cops or ambulances, made a clean getaway straight to the hospital. Told the doctors i was trying to balance beam a handrail and fell 15 feet.. if they only knew... haha
anybody wanna entertain me with some stories about how they explained base injuries to the docs?

I know you're probably on happydrugs right now, but I would advise you against putting actionable information that may be used against you in the future onto open forums -- or any forum for that matter -- until well after things are over.

I'm no pro, and this free advice is worth every penny, but if it were me, I'd delete this thread.

summer time = dirt bike accident
winter time = snowmobiling accident

I told everyone I fell off a ladder. After a bunch of getting a lot of crap from co-workers, I changed my story to something like this: "There I was, hanging out in the jungle bush, when a Bengal tiger jumped on me and was viciously trying to tear my Medal of Honor off. That Medal of Honor meant a lot to me because I was the only astronaut to have ever received one. The only thing that kept me going through that hard time was reciting the Constitution, over and over..."

i shattered my right heel and broke my left tibia from a cliff strike.told the hospital i jumped off a rock about 15' high and just landed funny.they seemed very confused.

tiger attack in the jungle.. why didn't i think of that? way more believable, and a story like that probably would have got me some action from the hot nurses.. haha.
they definitely seemed confused by my explanation.. oh well. As far as future investigation, I'm not too worried, one of the GC stayed behind and cops never showed up, don't think the jump was even called in.

It's not always about the cops, your health insurance might not pay out if you were injured during an illegal activity.

I used skateboarding last time.

I broke a woman's femur once because I was porking her too hard.

She told the doctor she went basejumping and hit a building.

Haha! OP just got owned!

Glad you survived and are in good spirits.
Remember to be strong when it comes
time to do the rehab because that damn
passive movement machine hurts.

I broke my femur on a motorcycle but did
not have to say shit, because the 23 y.o.
Baptist kid who was driving the church bus
was still shaking me and praying in weird
tongues when the ambulance arrived.

haw I had a wholistic healer girl crackin eggs on my head when I got concussed/clavicle fracture after my motorcycle accident outside her house.

If y'all are makin u-turns on the road, plz check for bikes. or at least signal.

Thanks for the laughs and well wishes.. woke up from surgery feeling really good. I was surprised when the doc told me i could put 50% of my weight on it immediately. physical therapy starts today, hopefully all goes well.
Some of you guys who have broken the femur, out of curiosity, what was your total recovery time? did you eventually get the hardware removed?

Yep, mine was a u-turn also.

Had a few friends hit while

sitting still at a red light.

ok we know you survived, had a hot nurse, got some good PK, on your way to speedy recovery, docs believed your story......care to share what happened? 180? 180 w/ twists? winds? scopeing out the hot nurse who was just leaving a night club? ate too many PK from your last injury?

just curious. glad you made it out w/o a worse outcome.

FWIW, i hit the KL tower once...yes its possible :)

I shattered my femur. It took about 6 months before I could jump again. The rod in my leg started bothering me a great deal about 2 years after the accident so I had it removed. It felt a lot better with it out. I was in a constant slight aching pain from the accident but by chance, I joined a gym and worked with a trainer to get in shape. This was 12 years after the accident. I had to intent for rehab; he just worked my ass off. The pain disappeared for good after working with him. For that, I am eternally grateful.

I broke mine above the ball and below the ball, basically the hip, which is worse than a mid femur break, depending on how bad it actually broke. I have a screw mid femur, a small rod at the top of the femur into the pelvis area and another rod straight down into the femur below the ball. This was before I was jumping, but I never had the hardware removed, did have some shooting pains for a bit from it, but it went away. I can run and ride my mountain bike and do everything just fine. Just try and stay positive, find a really good physical therapist who is aggressive and stay off the bottle and away from nicotine.

Yes, 100% what he said, NO alcohol or smokes
while you are healing, it reduces your O2 and
really affects how and/or if you ever heal.

Don't believe us? Ask "Stitch"

Yeah, i was surprised that i was standing on my repaired femur the day after also. Got a rod down the full length of my femur. I was on crutches for 3 or 4 weeks. Worked out every day. Base jumped again 59 days after the break without problems. Having broken other things, I think that the sooner you are using it again, the better off you will be in the long run.

I still have the hardware in. It's as good as new now except my leg is about 1/2" shorter.

The xrays are a fine addition to the wall in my rigging room ;)

yeah, i suppose some details about my fuckup could be beneficial to others...
pretty much all comes down to a slippery wet metal exit point.

B was about 320'.. handheld, flat and stable was the plan, but that didn't exactly work out. canopy was a fox 255, 3 vents(which probably saved my life), i weigh 160 lbs.
I was the second to exit of 2 jumpers. The cause of the accident was a slip on exit. the ledge was metal and wet form dew, therefore very slippery, although we dried it as best we could with our shirts. Jumper one exited and deployed with no issues, as soon as I saw forward flight I stepped up on the ledge, calm and not rushed, I leaned forward and pushed off. as i pushed off, feet slipped out backwards and I almost immidiately went head down very close to the building since i didnt really get to push off, threw pc maybe a half second after exit. brought my knees towards my chest to avoid an entanglement. canopy deployed approx 160 degrees off heading to the left and i was flying directly at a row of balconies. I was on the rears immediately but i was too close to avoid a strike. Here is where it starts to get hazy as to exactly what happened. hit a balcony feet first, then started to fall vertically and struck another balcony which i believe was when my right femur was broken.. somehow I was able to back up the canopy and turn it 120 degrees right towards out planned landing area which was a parking lot with wide aisles to land in. I knew my leg was broken as I was approaching so I made a last minute decision to try and land on a car butt first rather than smash into the much harder asphalt. The impact hurt but I believe it ultimately helped avoid further injury. I yelled to GC that my leg was broken and to bring the car as close as possible. Got myself out of my harness and slid myself along the ground to the car and was able to get myself in. approx 5 mins from landing to getting myself in the car. hospital was nearby.

Luckily it was a relatively clean break and there was no artery damage. Surgery went really well according to the docs and they are already ordering 50% weight bearing. Ive been walking around a bit with the crutches, but the pain is pretty fucking bad at the moment...
I've never drank alcohol or had a cigarette in my life, and I have no plans of changing that during my recovery
Thanks again for all the advice guys...

My femur injury nearly killed me. My leg was 90 off at the region of the break, with about 15 large pieces perforating the muscles. I lost 60% of my blood on it. Fire ants nearly killed me while I was on the ground. I landed on a Texas fire ant nest.

Oh dear god you poor bastard

Good times! Those were the days bro...;)

If exit looks slippery it's a good idea to push with one foot from the corner of the edge, preferably perpendicular. You kind of relax your foot and let it go over the ledgge, and push.
Cauze this shit is almost 100% likely to cause serious offheding
(2:19)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5oQyR211Vo

fuck! that slip looks exactly what happened to me... feel so stupid because it would have been so easy to prevent. On the bright side, at least I'm still here to learn the lesson.