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Sources, such as the Walked Into a Lamppost? Hurt While Crocheting? Help Is on the Way in the Wall Street Journal, say that there is a medicare code in NC for being 'stuck by a turtle'. I couldn't believe it. How is one 'struck by a turtle' when they move so slowly and secondly how could this be a medicare code? My friend also told me that there is a code for being 'bitten by a turtle' which seems much more plausible. Is this true?

Johnny
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Steve Moser
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    Its part of the new IDC -10 being implemented by us health care –  Aug 07 '15 at 01:00
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    I submitted an edit last night that includes a notable claim (an article in the WSJ) as well as restoring the title to the asker's primary question (how does one get struck by a turtle). Not sure how to flag a question to have a hold lifted. – Johnny Aug 07 '15 at 17:18
  • You should check your facts, turtles can be really fast. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkerUALPQY – Diego Sánchez Aug 07 '15 at 21:51
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    Turtles, like anything else, accelerate at -9.8m/s^2 when falling. You certainly could need medical treatment after an encounter with a falling turtle. – Loren Pechtel Aug 08 '15 at 03:01
  • Does the original notable claim state that someone was injured by being struck by a turtle? Or merely that the code exists? I think the recent title edit moves away from the actual claim, making it harder to prove - a straw man. – Oddthinking Aug 08 '15 at 13:46
  • The title edit moves it back to the original asker's question, as he said that the existence of the code was a _secondary_ point as he was questioning whether it was possible to be struck by a turtle in the first place. It seems that the existence of an official insurance industry code for an injury is a sufficient claim that such an injury can occur. And indeed, there are several documented instances. – Johnny Aug 09 '15 at 15:51

1 Answers1

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In the article More On The Risk Of Death By Turtle published in Lowering the Bar, several turtle strike incidents are noted:

  • The Associated Press reported in 1987 that a Hong Kong man was hit in the head by a turtle that had fallen out of a high-rise apartment building. The two-pound reptilian missile "struck 36-year-old Lui Wai-kwong on the head, bruising Lui's temple and badly injuring the turtle," according to the report.

  • According to this story, a 12-year-old Chinese girl was hit by a "falling black object" that turned out to be a three-pound pregnant tortoise. Police believed that the animal had been thrown out of an apartment building, but had no suspects. A picture accompanying this article shows a young girl with a pretty nasty wound on the top of her head, but there's no way to confirm what caused it. This time, the animal did not survive.

  • The more famous but equally unverifiable turtle impact happened in 456 B.C., when the Greek playwright Aeschylus (author of The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and Euripides Is a Big Fat Idiot) is said to have been killed by a turtle. The story is that the turtle was dropped on him by an eagle, which presumably was hoping to crack the turtle's shell open on a rock but mistakenly hit the playwright's bald head.

The same article links out to another story on their site, Injury Code W59.22XA: Struck By Turtle that talks about the new code:

I could see being bitten by a turtle, but how does one get "struck by a turtle," exactly? Are these turtles being thrown or propelled, and if so, how? (I'm not sure I want to know what "other contact with turtle" might be.)

That article links to a now-defunct Wall Street Journal search engine for the codes, but I believe the Wall Street Journal article referenced in the article is this one: Walked Into a Lamppost? Hurt While Crocheting? Help Is on the Way

This ICD-10 search engine also lists the code, categorized as:

-> 2015 ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Codes
    -> External causes of morbidity V00-Y99
        -> Exposure to animate mechanical forces W50-W64
            -> Contact with other nonvenomous reptiles W59
                -> Struck by turtle
Johnny
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