Overzealous Wii playing causes injuries

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Matt Tornow was in his apartment playing his brand new Wii for the first time. He was trying to figure out how to perform a power-serve in a Wii tennis game. Tornow gripped his Wii remote, slammed a powerful overhead swing and ended up in a Lawrence Memorial Hospital emergency room.

Tornow, Sioux Falls, S.D., senior, smashed his remote into one of three glass light bulb covers hanging from a ceiling fan. Shards of glass stabbed into his right thumb, splitting his nail in half. At the hospital, doctors and nurses gave him novacaine, peeled back the skin at the base of his cuticle and removed chunks of glass piece-by-piece with tweezers.

Tornow is not the only person who has had bad experiences with his Nintendo-manufactured Wii. Gamers around the country have been reporting Wii-related injuries to Web sites such as www.wiihaveaproblem.com.

Andrew Conyers

Andrew Conyers, Kansas City, Kan., freshman, injured himself playing a friend’s Wii. Like Tornow, it was Conyers’ first time playing. He said he was playing a baseball game and grasped his remote with both hands, like a bat, and swung with all his might.

“Then my arm felt kind of weird and tingly and numb,” Conyers said. “I noticed that when I flexed I had two bumps instead of one.”

Conyers went to Watkins Memorial Health Center the next day and discovered he had torn his right bicep. The staff at Watkins gave him a sling for the arm and told him to do special exercises while the tear healed.

Patty Quinlan, Watkins spokeswoman, and Belinda Rehmer, Lawrence Memorial Hospital spokeswoman, said their institutions did not keep count of Wii-related injuries, but said people had come in for treatment. They said that their facilities kept count of injuries by complaint, such as wrist, arm or leg, but not by cause.

Rehmer said she had spoken with a doctor who said he had treated someone for a Wii-related eye injury.

Tornow and Conyers both said that their first impressions with the Wii would not dissuade them from playing again.

“I will play Wii again, but not with so much vigor,” Conyers said.

Tornow said he would just make sure he had a little bit more room.

Kansan staff writer Nathan Gill can be contacted at ngill@kansan.com.

— Edited by Joe Caponio

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