I've been wondering about gunshot wounds

[Guinevere]

I'm sorry this is an unpleasant question.

 

You know how people who have lost limbs get phantom pains?  Or how certain nerve injuries sort of "remember" the pain and cause a pain sensation years later, after the injury is healed?

 

Will these kids who have been shot, but live, always have pain from the gunshots?  

[Samm]

It's really hard to say.  CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome) results in general from some sort of external trauma, but often from orthopedic surgery even when the surgery was planned with utmost care.  The more revision surgeries you need, the more chances something will literally touch a nerve.  With CRPS, nerves have gone haywire, signals cross, and it can get so bad that simple things become unbearably painful -- like clothing merely being pulled over your skin.

 

I know that Joni Erickson, the Christian artist whose quadriplegia resulted from a diving accident 40+ years ago suffers from chronic pain.  The only thing she can move is her face and neck but she has pain all over.  That is how unfair CRPS can be.

 

https://rsds.org/telltale-signs-and-symptoms-of-crpsrsd/

 

(I don't know anything about CRPS and  bullet or knife wounds.)

Edited February 28, 2018 by Samm

[Guinevere]

Thank you. :(

[Dmmetler]

I still have pain from surgeries that took place over a decade ago.  What is even more frustrating is that I also have numbness in the area-how the heck can something be numb, and still sometimes hurt??? I can't imagine that gunshot victims won't have long term effects. Which can then (at least in my case) trigger psychological effects-you hurt, you think about the event, and suddenly, it's like you're caught in that event all over again.

 

[FaithManor]

If my car accident injuries are any indication, then yes I do think many of these victims will suffer lifelong chronic pain.

[Katy]

Yes, and judging by my dad's wounds from Vietnam they will bother them on & off for the rest of their lives.