Jbb
04-12-2007, 03:07 PM
My name is Jesse (online name Danny Bishop). I myself was shot–in the
chest–on November 27th, 1994, at point-blank range with a .22″ magnum
revolver (single-action, convertable–to.22″ LR with alternate
cylinder). The bullet was likely 40-grain; the type: .224 caliber high
velocity (WMR–Winchester Magnum Rimfire, MAxiMag), with a nominal
muzzle velocity of 1,550 fps, from a likely 6.5″ handgun barrel
(applied pressure, point blank: 324 foot pounds per sq. inch). I can
tell you–not from watching it happen–but from actually experiencing
it, exactly what it was like. First of all, there was the most
incredible, shocking impact you could ever imagine–equivalent with
having an M-80 (quarter stick of dynmamite) go off in your shirt
pocket–and I can tell you, I was sent reeling. It felt like I was
thrown back good 2-to-5 feet or more, as my legs gave out on me.
There was simultaneously, a feeling like a bomb went off INSIDE of my
chest, and that of being jack-hammered through my chest wall–all of
this, all at once. Then, everything semed to go into slow motion, as
undoubtedly, a large amount of adrenaline was released from my adrenal
medulla, causing my central nervous system synaopses to fire
faster–like a high-speed camera, producing a slow motion effect. I
was later told that the bullet (not surprisingly) ricocheted around in
my chest like a pinball, first penetrating my entire chest mass,
fracture and bounce off my left scapula, hurle back through my chest
again, fracture a rib, and then bounce back through, trace a path
around another rib (and puncture the pleural lining of my left lung),
next flying straight into my spinal collumn, fracturing my T-9 and
T-10 thoracic vertebrae, and transecting my spinal cord (I am now
paraplegic). Feeling all of this, all at once, was equivalent roughly,
I suppose, was like being shot three times or more, not to mention
that waves of paresthesia (tingling) echoed and serged throughout my
body. My feeling in my legs was gone, just like that, at the same time
I was flying backward–into a chair and a desk. Oddly, at that moment,
I was hell-bent on protecting my head. Finally, laying on the ground
in that room, only a good 30 seconds or so post-impact, I felt my left
lung begin to squeeze, and my breaths were agonizingly painful and
teribly short. Every breath was a knife turning in my lung. Then, I
began to loose my vision–like white-out erasing my visual field) as I
began to go into hypo-volemic shock (low blood volume). I lost my
ability to see temporarily, and could not tell what was going on
around me. Then I passed out for what was probably thirty minutes. It
was a darn miracle that I did not die, as a doctor later told me, the
bullet almost ‘curved’ around my heart, within a centimeter or two of
hitting it or a major blooc vessel (it could have easily hit me right
in the inferior, or even the superior, veina cava, near the heart
muscle, in which case death would have followed in 1-2 minutes or even
fewer, and unconsciousness in thirty seconds or less. As to the
question: ‘Does a person writhe in agony?’–No, I personally did not
WRITHE in agony, like I had been lit on fire, but I was instantly
thrown into the most excruciating, truly agonizing experience of pain
I have ever known–and I have had chronic spinal pain ever since,
being on prescriptions such as morphine sulfate, Dilaudid
(hydromorphone HCl) and levorphanol tartrate. The reason I was not
WRITHING in agony is I was knocked into a state of indescribable
shock, and was incapable of much, if any movement. However, after
waking up thirty minutes or so after passing out, I managed to sit up,
despite my paralysis, and I still remember–even though my pain had
deminished somewhat at that point, dueÂ… undoubtedly, to endorphin
release–the feeling of warm blood pouring down my shirt, and adding
tot he pool of blood underneath me, the veinous flow coming directly
from the now hot, burning wound on, and in, my chest. I laid there for
about four more hours before someone found me–I could barely whisper,
much less yell, due to my 16% or so lung capacity, and as it turns
out, nearly two litersÂ… the amount of fluid in a large soda pop
bottle, on my left lungÂ… like a refridgerator crushing the left side
of my chest–and by the time the paramedics got there, I was in utter
shock. I was also beginning to hurt so badly again that no words can
describe it. It was horrible. Hospitalization was no picnic either,
let me tell you. Even after draining off the fluid once with a chest
tube–a rubber catheter inserted through your ribs, into the pleural
lining of your lung, they gave me what is known as positive-pressure
respiratory treatment, and the inflation of my lung popped a blood
vessel and caused additional pleurasy, and another ‘hemothorax’.
Originally, I also had air trapped in my chest–a pneumothorax, which
they had to releave with a cannula. That hurt too! After two
additional chest tubes and having to bear down to force the
reddish.-brown fluid out of my chest cavity and into a collector, I
finally regained around 98% lung capacity, amazingly, and then–one
month after arriving at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in the Bay
Area, California, I began Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation. I had to
learn to deal with having little control over my bowels, having to
learn how to do a ‘bowel program’ with suppositories, and the fact
that I had no feeling in my groin–meaning no future physical sexual
feelings, and no ability to masturbate–and still having a huge sex
drive… how do you like that?–I had almost no way to relieve
tension, escept exciesize, for endorphin release, and taking my pain
meds. What made it worse was, before I was shot, at age 16, I had
never had sex, and never had a girlfriend, eventhough I can say
honestly I am, and have long been, a very attractive man. And even
though I have had half a dozen girlfriends now, ten years later,
dating was no funÂ… having to explain my limitations. In October of
2003 however, I had one of the happiest days of my life, howver, when
I married my wife, Jennifer. My dad was my best man. However, even
being married, and having a willing sexual partner, I find myself
doing almost all of the pleasing, and I suppose I will never know what
it is like to be inside a woman–to actually FEEL it at all–or orgasm
therein. Any of you out there who have had there experience, count
yourselves as lucky. Unless there’s sex in there Hereafter–and I hope
there is… with my wife, I’m talking, right now–I suppose I will
never know what sex is like. You have no idea how angry that makes me,
and how much pent up sexual frustratipn a guy has after a decade of no
orgasmic release. Hey, that may sound shallow, but TRY IT SOME TIME.
ItÂ’s funny, though. So many people, when finding out I was shot in the
chest, ask the same question. “Did it… hurt?” Um, yeah, it was the
most agonizing thing I ever experience, and could ever imagine
experiencing, and so I can definately say, ‘It wasn’t like a massage.’
But hey, I understand what fascination people have with pain and
extreme injury. After all, before I was shot, watching action movies,
I wondered what it was like. Some people have imediate endorphine
releases and never have such pain symptomatology. I remember lying in
bed, in the hospital, with this bloddy patch over theupper, left
quadrant of my chest, thinking, “Wow. Was I really shot? Am I really
shot??” it’s hard to believe, when it happens to you. And assuming, if
you will, that thereÂ’s an Afterlife, I bet people, being delivered the
news that they are dead, think/say to themselves, “Wow. Am I really
dead? Dead?” Anyway, I won’t bore you any further. I’ll just leave you
with, “Being shot–does it… hurt?” Yes, sir-ee, my friend. It most
certainlyÂ… does. So now you know, like I haveÂ… for ten years. : )
chest–on November 27th, 1994, at point-blank range with a .22″ magnum
revolver (single-action, convertable–to.22″ LR with alternate
cylinder). The bullet was likely 40-grain; the type: .224 caliber high
velocity (WMR–Winchester Magnum Rimfire, MAxiMag), with a nominal
muzzle velocity of 1,550 fps, from a likely 6.5″ handgun barrel
(applied pressure, point blank: 324 foot pounds per sq. inch). I can
tell you–not from watching it happen–but from actually experiencing
it, exactly what it was like. First of all, there was the most
incredible, shocking impact you could ever imagine–equivalent with
having an M-80 (quarter stick of dynmamite) go off in your shirt
pocket–and I can tell you, I was sent reeling. It felt like I was
thrown back good 2-to-5 feet or more, as my legs gave out on me.
There was simultaneously, a feeling like a bomb went off INSIDE of my
chest, and that of being jack-hammered through my chest wall–all of
this, all at once. Then, everything semed to go into slow motion, as
undoubtedly, a large amount of adrenaline was released from my adrenal
medulla, causing my central nervous system synaopses to fire
faster–like a high-speed camera, producing a slow motion effect. I
was later told that the bullet (not surprisingly) ricocheted around in
my chest like a pinball, first penetrating my entire chest mass,
fracture and bounce off my left scapula, hurle back through my chest
again, fracture a rib, and then bounce back through, trace a path
around another rib (and puncture the pleural lining of my left lung),
next flying straight into my spinal collumn, fracturing my T-9 and
T-10 thoracic vertebrae, and transecting my spinal cord (I am now
paraplegic). Feeling all of this, all at once, was equivalent roughly,
I suppose, was like being shot three times or more, not to mention
that waves of paresthesia (tingling) echoed and serged throughout my
body. My feeling in my legs was gone, just like that, at the same time
I was flying backward–into a chair and a desk. Oddly, at that moment,
I was hell-bent on protecting my head. Finally, laying on the ground
in that room, only a good 30 seconds or so post-impact, I felt my left
lung begin to squeeze, and my breaths were agonizingly painful and
teribly short. Every breath was a knife turning in my lung. Then, I
began to loose my vision–like white-out erasing my visual field) as I
began to go into hypo-volemic shock (low blood volume). I lost my
ability to see temporarily, and could not tell what was going on
around me. Then I passed out for what was probably thirty minutes. It
was a darn miracle that I did not die, as a doctor later told me, the
bullet almost ‘curved’ around my heart, within a centimeter or two of
hitting it or a major blooc vessel (it could have easily hit me right
in the inferior, or even the superior, veina cava, near the heart
muscle, in which case death would have followed in 1-2 minutes or even
fewer, and unconsciousness in thirty seconds or less. As to the
question: ‘Does a person writhe in agony?’–No, I personally did not
WRITHE in agony, like I had been lit on fire, but I was instantly
thrown into the most excruciating, truly agonizing experience of pain
I have ever known–and I have had chronic spinal pain ever since,
being on prescriptions such as morphine sulfate, Dilaudid
(hydromorphone HCl) and levorphanol tartrate. The reason I was not
WRITHING in agony is I was knocked into a state of indescribable
shock, and was incapable of much, if any movement. However, after
waking up thirty minutes or so after passing out, I managed to sit up,
despite my paralysis, and I still remember–even though my pain had
deminished somewhat at that point, dueÂ… undoubtedly, to endorphin
release–the feeling of warm blood pouring down my shirt, and adding
tot he pool of blood underneath me, the veinous flow coming directly
from the now hot, burning wound on, and in, my chest. I laid there for
about four more hours before someone found me–I could barely whisper,
much less yell, due to my 16% or so lung capacity, and as it turns
out, nearly two litersÂ… the amount of fluid in a large soda pop
bottle, on my left lungÂ… like a refridgerator crushing the left side
of my chest–and by the time the paramedics got there, I was in utter
shock. I was also beginning to hurt so badly again that no words can
describe it. It was horrible. Hospitalization was no picnic either,
let me tell you. Even after draining off the fluid once with a chest
tube–a rubber catheter inserted through your ribs, into the pleural
lining of your lung, they gave me what is known as positive-pressure
respiratory treatment, and the inflation of my lung popped a blood
vessel and caused additional pleurasy, and another ‘hemothorax’.
Originally, I also had air trapped in my chest–a pneumothorax, which
they had to releave with a cannula. That hurt too! After two
additional chest tubes and having to bear down to force the
reddish.-brown fluid out of my chest cavity and into a collector, I
finally regained around 98% lung capacity, amazingly, and then–one
month after arriving at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in the Bay
Area, California, I began Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation. I had to
learn to deal with having little control over my bowels, having to
learn how to do a ‘bowel program’ with suppositories, and the fact
that I had no feeling in my groin–meaning no future physical sexual
feelings, and no ability to masturbate–and still having a huge sex
drive… how do you like that?–I had almost no way to relieve
tension, escept exciesize, for endorphin release, and taking my pain
meds. What made it worse was, before I was shot, at age 16, I had
never had sex, and never had a girlfriend, eventhough I can say
honestly I am, and have long been, a very attractive man. And even
though I have had half a dozen girlfriends now, ten years later,
dating was no funÂ… having to explain my limitations. In October of
2003 however, I had one of the happiest days of my life, howver, when
I married my wife, Jennifer. My dad was my best man. However, even
being married, and having a willing sexual partner, I find myself
doing almost all of the pleasing, and I suppose I will never know what
it is like to be inside a woman–to actually FEEL it at all–or orgasm
therein. Any of you out there who have had there experience, count
yourselves as lucky. Unless there’s sex in there Hereafter–and I hope
there is… with my wife, I’m talking, right now–I suppose I will
never know what sex is like. You have no idea how angry that makes me,
and how much pent up sexual frustratipn a guy has after a decade of no
orgasmic release. Hey, that may sound shallow, but TRY IT SOME TIME.
ItÂ’s funny, though. So many people, when finding out I was shot in the
chest, ask the same question. “Did it… hurt?” Um, yeah, it was the
most agonizing thing I ever experience, and could ever imagine
experiencing, and so I can definately say, ‘It wasn’t like a massage.’
But hey, I understand what fascination people have with pain and
extreme injury. After all, before I was shot, watching action movies,
I wondered what it was like. Some people have imediate endorphine
releases and never have such pain symptomatology. I remember lying in
bed, in the hospital, with this bloddy patch over theupper, left
quadrant of my chest, thinking, “Wow. Was I really shot? Am I really
shot??” it’s hard to believe, when it happens to you. And assuming, if
you will, that thereÂ’s an Afterlife, I bet people, being delivered the
news that they are dead, think/say to themselves, “Wow. Am I really
dead? Dead?” Anyway, I won’t bore you any further. I’ll just leave you
with, “Being shot–does it… hurt?” Yes, sir-ee, my friend. It most
certainlyÂ… does. So now you know, like I haveÂ… for ten years. : )