How tough are you? (Page 3)

Good gawd, in your own bed? No drugs? That's just unnatural. If God had wanted us to have babies that way he wouldn't have invented anesthesiologists!

My favorite part of the whole thing was the hospital stay: 24 hour nursing staff on call at the push of a button, surprisingly good food made and cleaned up after by someone else, someone to do anything I didn't feel like doing, and all the prescription strength Motrin I could handle. Why would you want to give that up??

Oh.My.God.

Marine Corps boot camp AND child birth.  But not at the same time. 

I'm impressed by the toughness/stupidity of everyone here.

Chipmunk - I'm starting to see a theme here.

How the hell...nevermind. I don't wanna know.

Nola was 7lbs 11oz, but Amy is tiny. She was induced at 6am, didn't progress for hours. Stopped the Pitocin at 2am, she slept two hours. Started again at 5am. Decels at 10pm, wanted to do a section, but gave they gave her another hour. Nola was born at 11:37pm with a prolapsed cord, but otherwise fine, 35 hours and 37 minutes after first being induced.

Not me personally, but credit to my wife.

Our third son was 21 1/2" and 7 pounds.
His "bigger" brother, was 22" and 7#1 oz.

9 minutes later.

Toughtest thing I've ever done. About three weeks after my second partial knee replacement I grunted out a walk to the end of my block and back in the sleet (probably qualifies as stupid also). It was pure torture as I had to even concentrate on heel toe walking.

Next toughest thing is icebathes - they seem to teach me new thing about pain every time!

McFuzz - I wouldn't argue with a woman capable of that!

3 days of labor.  No drugs, no sleep, little food.

full marathon at age 13 for me was the toughest thing Ive done as far as racing goes

compared to full IM's and 1/2's though its nothing.

An epidural is a wonderful thing.  I lit up when the Anesthesia Man came in the room.  ahhhhhh........

they saw a man doing them, and didnt want be "out done" by a man.

i had kidney stones. i had a freind that told me having them was sort of like having a kid. i donno... wrong plumming for that stuff..... i just remmember being terrified of the toilet the year after. so many bad memories.

Could the woman who went into labor immediately after having sex, spent 9 months in labor without meds/sleep/food/water/doctor/nurse/ in fact stranded on an island with no trees and then delivered a 40 lb baby who was carrying an 8 foot 2 by 4 sideways, please step forward so we can end the child delivery competition.
btw my own tough entry
I once castrated a mountain lion in a phone booth with a rusty c-rat lid.
I'm out.

i have that beat. i'm a man and i gave birth to a child.

step off ladies.

Me, anything I've done that could be called "tough" could just as easily be called "stupid."

Very true.

Often, the distinguishing factor is simply the result.

Whatever y'all. I totally have that beat. Former ballet dancer here. I can balence on three toes. Babies? Whatev.

(by the way, I hope you all appreciate that this whole thread has made my ovaries crawl even further up inside my body to cower and hide. Ironic, actually, since having this stupid heart surgery means I might actually be able to have a darn kid. THEORETICALLY.)

Tough. Hmmm.

First, if your ovaries even THINK of coming back out to play: I caught my son's puke in my hand at Gate A20 in the Detroit airport on Thanksgiving day. People with kids: sympathy and aid. People without: sheer horror and hormone-free birth control, for weeks, I'm thinking. It wasn't tough, exactly. The part where I swabbed his mouth and let him blot on my very cool sweater? THAT was tough. My poor little guy.

Umm. The only remote tri tough thing I've done is train for one while getting divorced and living in a new town. As it turns out, it's been my key to social critical mass, so it's not that tough.

Others: I spent 1993-1998 in Nepal and Indonesia, with jaunts to Thailand for hedonistic pleasure. I lived between the water buffalo and the corn in Nepal, ate fried wasp grubs as a bar snack (did NOT taste like chicken), and got myself tested for leprosy (wasn't, just inexplicable nerve damage--yay!) and got five sets of rabies booster shots (three dogs, the first of which was actually rabid, hence my zeal for continuing the shots), one kitten and one bat. Also got evacuated by the US military during the fall of Suharto AND CHARGED $400 USD FOR IT. I paid, that was not so tough.

In retrospect, balancing on three toes and all the birthing still have me beat. My son was 7 lbs., 1 oz. and he was a caesarean exit, b/c I did prenatal yoga and he did it with me. WAY beyond transverse. That said, I was pushing him around the lake in a stroller when he was 10 days old. Also nursing trailside.

It's the summer of 1999, I'm playing left field, up on the balls of my feet, waiting for the big butch girl at the plate to knock one my way. She does (she had a blond crew cut and was downright scary), and I take off after it. I'm charging across left field as the ball was hit down the line. I'm heading to the lane of gravel that acts like our warning track before the woods beyond. I've got the ball in my sights. I give it one more burst ... and my foot hits the gravel and slides out from under me.

I've been told you could hear the breath punched out of me two fields over. I landed hard on my knees then flat on my chest.

Then I jumped up, PISSED off that I missed the ball, tore into the woods, found it, and hurled it back.

Then I realized I couldn't breathe. I put my hands on my thighs and bent over. People were asking me if I were okay, and I wheezed, "I just gotta walk it off. Just give me a minute to walk it off." I finally caught my breath and realized two things: blood was running down my legs from my knees, and I couldn't feel my knees at all even though they had gravel sticking out from them.

My teammates washed out the wounds and picked gravel out, and I still couldn't feel anything. I trotted back out to left field with little squares of gauze taped over my knees and played the rest of that game. By the 7th inning, my legs had started to stiffen up.

When I got home that night, after a shower, I decided I needed to clean out the ol' knees a little better. My roommates had to peel me from the ceiling after I doused them with hydrogen peroxide. The next day, people at work all thought I had hurt my back because I was walking so funny. I had percussion bruises all the way down my legs to the top of my feet because I hit so hard.

I still have the scars to prove it.

And let's not even talk about the time I broke my finger then played the rest of a double header ...

Edited by akabak 2005-12-01 2:20 PM

I was riding home from work on a patched flat, constantly looking down at the rear wheel, when I rear-ended a parked car and landed on the rear windshield, shattering it with my forearms. Without insurance of any kind at that age, my first instinct was to make a quick escape. The front wheel was bent beyond any hope of rotating through the forks, so I picked the bike up over my head and smashed it down several times on the curb in order to straighten the wheel enough to make it ride again.

Back on the bike, I quickly rode away as fast as I could before an angry car owner could demand financial restitution. Once away from the scene of my crime, I took stock of myself. My forearms were dripping with blood from the hundreds of tiny shards of glass embedded in them. The adrenaline rush was intense, but my head was okay, so I decided to ride the five miles home. There was a bike shop right around the block, so I stopped there, dirt on my face, dripping with bood and andrenal sweat, and asked what they would give me for the remaining components on my bike. I gladly accepted the $50 certificate towards my next bike, after they overcame their looks of shock and went hope to pick glass out of my arms.

Epilogue: I cleaned up the story for my boss, and they had mercy on me, as my bike was my main transportation to and from work. They gave me a bonus, which enabled (key word here) me to buy another bike. This experience helped shape my character to make me the person I am today!

In a 6 week period druing college, I was hit 3 times by moving vehicles while riding my bike. One was a T bone in whicha a car blew threw stop sign and t-boned me! Feet stayed attached to pedals but pedal platforms tore off as I was thrown off bike. Walked away from all 3.
Participated in a drunken toughman contest after a powermax too. Only lost a half pint of blood and no teeth!

wow...  I am just humbled by your comment....   Thank you very much...
I think we all  are tougher and stronger than we think we are, we just don't realize it.  My toughest moment?....  writing my living will before the removal of my brain tumor.. did not know if I was going to walk that one out.