They may be young, active and love to enjoy everything from wakeboarding to speed-racing, but tradie brothers Josh and Brandon from Queensland reveal to New Idea they have spent their childhoods in and out of hospital.
With an onslaught of shocking accidents, the brothers were left with a series of broken bones and were covered in scars.
‘At one point in our lives when we were in school, we were in and out of hospital non-stop. We were there at least once a month,’ Josh reveals.
At just 23, Josh has had more than 10 fractures in his arms.
‘I snapped my arm riding a go-cart,’ he says.
‘I’ve had six [fractures] on one arm and four on the other.’
His 21-year-old brother Brandon hasn’t had much luck either.
‘I snapped both of the bones in my leg, so my leg was attached by skin pretty much,’ Brandon recalls, adding the accident happened when he fell off his bike coming down a big hill.
‘I remember looking at it and it was gross.’
The accident-prone pair also had one unlucky moment when they were playing golf.
‘One morning, before school, we were out in the backyard hitting golf balls and Brando swung, and his wedge hit him in the leg, and it split his leg open, and you could see his bone,’ Josh gruesomely recalls.
‘It just opened up and you could see the bone. There were scars everywhere,’ he adds.
Not that the brothers appear at all perturbed by their multiple hospital visits – in fact they are quick to make light of it.
‘At the hospital they have a file for us – it’s as thick as,’ they both laugh.
Brandon also recalls a time when he knocked all of his teeth out of his mouth.
‘They had to push them back in. I had braces at the time, I stacked it on my bike and did a face plant,’ he explains.
‘They haven’t gone dark or anything, and I’ve got no feeling in them, so it’s good to eat ice cream,’ he smiles.
Brandon also remembers a time when he had to have ‘rocks cut out of his arm’.
‘The hospital staff must have not cleaned it up properly and I could feel something hurt and they took scans and there was a rock in there still. I’ve still got it somewhere in a jar,’ he says.
And, in yet another incident, Josh tells of when they got pocket knives for Christmas one year and they were testing them out cutting paper and Brandon slit his arm open, which they attempted to hide from their parents.
‘Mum and Dad told us we weren’t allowed to play with them, so we ran upstairs and wrapped it up for him,’ Josh admits.
‘We went to our grandparents for Christmas and I wore a long shirt on the day and it was bloody hot,’ Brandon says.
‘Brandon’s face must have been really pale because Mum knew something was wrong,’ Josh adds.
When the pair finally got to hospital, Brandon ended up with multiple stitches.
‘I think I got, like, 10 stitches in it,’ he says.
For more see this weeks issue of New Idea, on sale now.
