Battle Scars

[Fencing Passion]

I got a cool 1,
Ok me and my friend r fencing sabre and we were very tired and desprate because u know two 15 year old boys at lebel..............
and it was sabre anyway so we r goin crazy lol......so anyway we both lunge but at some time in contact his sabre breaks and some how he pierces my glove at the finger and cuts all the way around it and comes out the other side(i dont know how he got past a huge sabre bell guard).Anyway it left a half ring on my right middle finger, im actualy glad that happend cause this is like the coolest scar ever lol......well tell me if u have any strange or intresting scars.....lets c if anyone can top me new ring lol.

[KBayDog]

Ah, the inevitable "injuries" thread...

Just out of curiosity, has anyone received 'myositis ossificans' from fencing? It would take a very severe blow, but I imagine it is possible.

(For those who do not know, 'myositis ossificans' is basically calcification within a muscle at the sight of a severe contusion. It can produce a hard, painful lump, and also limit muscle flexion.)

[Fencing Passion]

I have 1 more,
its right on my left elbow, its a little check..........does no one else have scars? Are there no other sabre fencers on lol?

Lol this one was actualy more painfull then the ring but no blood lol...............

[civiltech]

I was fencing foil with my wife many moons ago. During the bout, the weak part of her blade snapped off. She didn't notice, however I had. I dropped my guard thinkg she had seen the top 6" go flying off. Apparantly not. Her next lunge caught me as I was trying to move out of the way in the lower arm, scratching right across. I bet if I had just taken it in the chest it wouldn't have penetrated my vest, and no cut! hOwever, i tried to move, and bam! Not as macho as your was wound though!

Oh, one other time I was fencing our beloved Maestro. The only way I could possibly score a point was to get in quick, amek a few lunges, etc/ and then retreat quickly, before his barrage of well placed, well thought attacks cam e flying at me. As I retreated, I got a little eager, lost my footing at a high pace of retreat, smacked the back of my head on the end of the piste, and blacked out for I think a few seconds. I don't think there was any permanent damage (though many would disagree ) However, I had a wicked headache the rest of the day!

[remise]

During my first month of fencing, I mistakenly put my glove on first, then my jacket. My opponent didn't notice, and when we were on the strip, he lunged to the wrist. His blade (an old rusty thing) went straight past my wrist, into my jacket, up my arm - all the way to the elbow. Not bad, till he went to pull his blade out. That's when the tip tore the skin off the underside of my arm all the way down as he yanked it out. I have a nice scar running down my arm and I had to get a tetnus shot.

Oh, and my glove was never worn on the inside again. Beware, beginners!

[Fencing Passion]

Lol,
mine the coolest i think but yea r we the only people with any scars from fencing? Come on guys gimme something 2 chew on...................

[pkt]

FP,

You must have seen one too many 007 movies wherein the more scars one have the more manly he is. Apologies to the ladies.

I think this is ... well, I'll let you decide after my tale.

civiltech, you know the Fred Wach memorial tournament, right?

Fred, bless his soul, was a very generous soul. He escaped Hungary ____ (fill in the blank) the 1956 Soviet invasion. He did not drive. He taught fencing in Toronto as well as I beleive Hamilton and London, ON. He bussed it to his sessions.

While givng a foil lesson to one of the ladies (Veronika - V for short, she has since moved to Victoria, BC) V made a lunge, Fred fell over dead. She didn't even hit him.

V for obvious reasons thought that she had killed Fred. she swore off fencing for the next few months till someone convinced her that Fred had a humongous heart attack and he was dead before he hit the floor.

civiltech, you can ask any of the older fencers in TO to verify this.

----------(---

I myself have invisible scars. And let this be a lesson to the sabruers and sabreures.

One of the sabreurs in Vancouver is shorter than me, but stronger. He had this propensity of hitting with the flat of the blade - that was illegal: a plaque' is not counted as a hit in the pre-electric sabre days. He hit me quite a few times on the left side of my mask so that the tip of the blade would wrap around the mask and hit me on the back of my head, sometimes drawing blood.

Well it turns out that these ahits to the head had a cumulative effect: they caused a microscopic blood clot in my brain.

How did I find out?

I suffered grand mal seizures. Cat scans, etc couldn't find out what was wrong. Only EEG could.

Oh, my seizure's under control. Hadn't had an occurrence for almost 20 years.

----------(---

civiltech, I'm sure you know from watching hockey that you should be careful. The first concussion is 'on the house'.

----------(---

So, FP, how do you rate my injury?

PK

[Fencing Passion]

that couldnt have been fun,
i would say ures was alot more devastating then mine but mines still cooler lol.

No this isnt about being manly i just wanted something 2 post about lol and no i cant stand bond movies i think they suck.

[NinjaFerret]

Actually, I had one of those weird lumps under a bruise. But it went away. I fence epee, and I got hit inside my arm, almost right under my bicep in practice. Hard enough to bleed. I had this beautiful multicolored bruise, a veritable sunset that extended all over my arm. I may have gotten like one other... but they go away over time.

Dude, I like Bond movies, tho. But I like them for what they are. Cheap thrills. Still haven't seen the latest one.

I'm hungry. Later, people.

[Fencing Passion]

I dont know if ures is cooler,
u had a sunset on ure arm lol so i dont know which is cooler ures or mine, I think it will be awhile before this scar goes away it was pretty deep, Im not on cheap thrill movies or anything like it(slashers i think would be in there). Im more into funny movies or a good dramatic 1.

[pkt]

OK, FP,

If you're Asian - the correct anthropological term is 'mongoloid' as in 'of the Mongols' vs 'caucasoid' - like me you may have a condition called killoids. i.e. more cells grow back in a wound than you started with, a condition more Asian 'suffer' from than caucasoids.

I have a 3-inch long wound on my fencing hand tha's shaped a bit like Long Island. when people ask me how i got it i'd tell them 'the brother of the girl friend caught me where my hand does not belong...' .

The truth is it was an industrial lesson, it was a mild laceration the veins underneath were not even touched in the laceration. but the killoid made it look cool or gross, depends on one's point of view.

PK

[Fencing Passion]

Ure scar has alot better story than mine lol,
but im not sure if ures looks cooler, im not sure this scar my heal up its only been a few days but this one is pretty deep.

Now that we are talking about getting scars from atractive weman i haveto tell u this story. Me and my dad went out 2 my grandpas way out in Arkansas were i was born( no im not imbred)
We were helping him cut wood because he lives in this caben/shake thing and we cant get him to live in a real house,
my uncle came over also to help but he took his new girl friend along( VERY attractive ). Anyway we were cutting down this tree with a chainsaw and she said she would like 2 try........... so she is told how 2 do it and when she is about 2 cut the tree she miss steps will trying 2 get better footing and she sprans her ankle but she drops the saw( more like throws ) the saw cuts me on the arm leaving a pretty cool chainsaw patern on my arm luckly the cut wasnt 2 deep, its mostly invesable.

Dont say my dad and grandpa r stupid i wasnt even standing close 2 her i dont know i guess she didnt like me or something lol.

[Aoife]

I don't have many scars at all, let alone from fencing... I guess I heal well.

Anyway; the one tiny, mark I have from fencing is a small shiny patch of skin on my sword-arm wrist (on the boney bit on the outside top). My coach, bless him, binded me and as the blade passed over mine, it somehow nicked the boney bit of my wrist. I felt a bit of pain, but ignored it, at the end when I took off my gove, I found I was bleeding, just a tiny tiny bit, but I thought it was fairly cool all the same. It was only about a month ago though, so it will probably fade.

As for other scars... I have a 2cm line on my right (forward) leg from where I dropped a curling iron in Decemeber 2001. I felt silly, needless to say

I also have a 1/2 a centimeter line on my left little finger, which I've had since I was 4 and I've never known how I did it.

Oh! And one on my non-sword thumb from a craft knief (I was putting the pastic blade cover thingy on, but the blade went right through it and sliced my thumb).

Theres a gravel sized-purplish mark on my forward knee from falling in the playground when I was seven.

No 'cool' ones though. (A BCG scar on my left arm.... but most people have that: what I want is a smallpox one)


My coach has a good one from Tai-Kwon-Do. If he rolls his eye (I forget which one) to the side, there's a pinkish scar from where his retna got detached. I think he has one on his upper-sword-arm as well, from where a blade broke.

[Fencing Passion]

I cant count all the scars,
I lived in Arkansas so long........ heres 1 good one me and my friend chad got back in the 1st grade, well we were jumping on his trampalin( spelling? ) and my sister came out at this time she was in the 4th grade and she asked "Can i try?" and like the smart 2 kids we were we said no not for girls.... did i say my sister is very tall and strong and i would never doubt her abillty 2 beat me into submission........ so we keep tellen her no so she gets mad, she gets on the trampalin (spelling? ) and goes ahead and teaches us a leason it ended with us both being throwen off with me getting a scar on the back of my left arm, not a big deal but i like the story lol.

[DarkHelmet64]

One of the last times I fenced foil (I'm an epeeist now) my opponent's blade slipped under the bib of my mask. He sliced off a nice piece of my neck. It didn't hurt, but it freaked people out. The next one isn't a scar, but it hurt: some kid hit me repeatedly in the right leg, and eventually the tip made a nice indent, which soon started bleeding.


This one I believe I heard from my grandfather: some guy he knew was fencing (in the olden days), and jabbed the opponent through the heart. He then took out a pocket knife and performed open heart surgery on the guy on the strip. He saved his life.


Boston Fencing forever!


-DarkHelmet

[LKS_Blade]

I havent got anything... i bearly even get bruises that last for long (they come up blue after the bout but are gone by the time i get home, its really wierd ) wether this is a good thing is yet to be decied... then again, if i want a scar i guess i could start doing some more sabre (no offence guys )

[civiltech]

civiltech, you know the Fred Wach memorial tournament, right?

Fred, bless his soul, was a very generous soul. He escaped Hungary ____ (fill in the blank) the 1956 Soviet invasion. He did not drive. He taught fencing in Toronto as well as I beleive Hamilton and London, ON. He bussed it to his sessions.

While givng a foil lesson to one of the ladies (Veronika - V for short, she has since moved to Victoria, BC) V made a lunge, Fred fell over dead. She didn't even hit him.

V for obvious reasons thought that she had killed Fred. she swore off fencing for the next few months till someone convinced her that Fred had a humongous heart attack and he was dead before he hit the floor.





civiltech, I'm sure you know from watching hockey that you should be careful. The first concussion is 'on the house'.



Your first story is amazing, and believable. I have heard of wierd things like that hapening all the time.

Your second statement.....point taken. I agree...to many concussions are not good. And I would hope few and far between in the "civil" sport of fencing!



Howver, there is nothing like a purposeful heavy hit, which rakes your blade accross your oponent to piss him off, and throw off his game. Let's face it phsych warfare is just as much a part of fencing as it is in any other sport.

[Aoife]

I nearly had a great one on Monday.

I have this terrible habbit of being lazy with my un-armed arm, and just sticking it behind my back (sort of balancing in the curve of my lower back). This serves me well most of the time (not as well as holding it classically probably would... but like I said it's a bad habbit... one which I'm keen to break).

Unfortunatly my coach has a nasty habbit of flicking onto my back (partly to point out when I lean, partly because it amuses him that he ahs a foot height advantage over me). This one time on Monday the flick went round the side, and hit my lazily-rested unarmed-hand's thumb. Hard. It hurt like Hell, and I instantly thought it had drawn blood. I finished the bout, de-masked, shook hands (which didn't help it ) and checked it. No external blood, but it was bright red and there was a linear blood-blister. By that night my thumb had swollen to twice the size of my sword thumb, and was a deep purple from one knuckle to another. The tip was numb until Wednesday.

Luckily, it's now a week later, and aside from a shadow of a bruise and a slight tenderness, there is nothing but a 1/2 centimeter line of scar-like tissue from where the blood blister was (which may scar or may go away).


Nevertheless, I have learnt not to be lazy with my arm

[Boo Boo]

Am not a huge fan of "holding your hand/arm up classically" (victim of fashion I guess, although am sure that I hold my left arm in a wierd position myself.... 8-)), but you really don't want to keep your back arm behind your back. Its not laziness, its just that it will restrict your movement and, in particular, your lunge: your back arm acts as a counter-balance. If you free your back arm up, you should be able to move more freely and lunge better (it may also reduce your lean).

Boo

[Catlady]

No permanent scars yet, but I have been flicked in the hand more often than I'd like to admit. My fault for not keeping my hand out of the way, but that doesn't make it hurt any less I've also gotten whacked in the leg hard enough to leave a foil shaped impression/bruise, complete with visible wire groove, across my thigh.

On Thursday I had what I believe I will call the "Taco Bell" incident--no it does not involve the restaurant of the same name, or Mexican food at all for that matter, tho' I did have nachos for dinner come to think of it. I was advancing down the strip trying to find a way to make the person who is more or less one of my coaches actually have to work to get a touch off me when I stepped on my shoelace and tripped. I found myself heading for a face plant on the strip having failed to catch myself. I did manage to twist sideways so that I landed on my side and didn't bump my head, but it was still quite spectacular according to the people watching. I also manage to land partially on the bell guard of my foil. I was mostly unhurt--my right hip it a little sore if I lie or lean on it-- albeit somewhat stunned, but my bell was folded in half--hence the title of taco bell. I'm sort of embarassed, but at the same time oddly proud of myself. I always did wonder how other people's bells got bent out of shape like that.

To prove I am a bit wierd, I later though, "You know, if I could have saved that, it would have been an excellent fleche".