I broke my nose in 1978 or 79. I was 28 and had recently started working for a small startup computer company, Floating Point Systems. Looking back at my career this was probably the most exciting job that I had had. We were working in the super computer industry with a product that performed like a Cray supercomputer at a far less cost, for certain applications.
I was working on a project that was going to be the largest sale that the company had made to date, and was the first sale to a company in France. For all of us working on the project it was a big deal. My job at that time was as a diagnostic engineer, involving both hardware and software design. It was very challenging and exciting. Remember that this was pre-world wide web. Hell, it was pre-personal computer. You didn't solve a problem by looking up the answer on the internet. I was putting in long hours. Like 20 hours per day. I was sleeping at my desk, taking catnaps. Going home just to shower and take short breaks. Eventually it had to catch up with me, and it did.
One day, a co-worker (Mark) and I went to a local hamburger joint (Herfy's for those old enough.) We sat down and started eating and talking. Suddenly I felt light headed. So, without saying anything to Mark, I turned in my seat and bent over to get some blood flowing to my head. Well, I kept going all the way to the floor, falling face first. My head hit the floor and my glasses sheared across my nose breaking it. So I a m lying there, unconscious. As I come to, I remember thinking, "crap, I am late for work", and then wondering why there was a shoe next to my face. And why was everything in my field of view bright blood red. I was turned onto my back and a paramedic asked my if my nose had always pointed to my right. I groggily said no.He asked if I had ever broken my nose. I groggily said no. He then said that my nose was probably broken. They bundled my into the ambulance and took me to the hospital.
Now I have two regrets from this incident. First I regret that I didn't see Mark's face as a passed out. Think about it. You are having a nice lunch with someone and suddenly they turn and pass out. Blood everywhere. I would give anything to have see his face. Second, I would have loved to have seen him when he got back to work. I heard that he went to our boss's office, white as a sheet. And all he could say is that they "took Bob away." And when my boss tried to find out where I was he couldn't. I was taken to a Kaiser hospital, but since my vitals were normal they parked me in the hallway in ER.
Postscript:
The doctors told me that it wasn't unusual for someone my age to pass out like that. They set my nose and sent me home with a caution. They had packed my nose with about thirty feet of gauze to keep everything in place. The next night I went out drinking and ended up pulling the gauze out, which is probably why my nose is crooked today. I remember going back to the doctor for a followup. He was disappointed and told me that he would have to reset the cartilage. He took a huge needle full of pain killer and jabbed it up my nose. Then with the nurse on one side holding my head, he, on the other side, put his thumbs on my nose and pushed it back in place. It sounded like the sound you hear when you tear off a chicken leg. They then put a wax splint over my nose.
I did recover and was able to be part of the team that went to Paris to install the system. We were supposed to be there for two weeks, but it ended up, for me, to be two months. But that is another story.