I wish the creative minds in Hollywood would make their thousands of staged shootings a little more realistic by finding some way to communicate just how godawful agonizingly painful a bullet wound really is.
The bullet jabs a deep, ragged hole into your body almost instantly. It is much more than a simple puncture, bad as that is to start with. Besides the tissue damage and the consequently outraged nerve endings, the shock causes an enormous yellow-blue-black bruise that spreads from the wound up to halfway across your body. Even that is not all, the bullet is very hot and you can feel that heat. I described it as a red hot poker jammed through my leg with some sadist twisting it, except the bruising wouldn’t be as bad with that. With that combination of damage, it takes quite a while to heal. It keeps hurting until it does, a continuous alternating sharp and dull throb for weeks on end, and sometimes intermittently for decades afterward.
I’m thinking about this tonight because we have a big weather change coming and my leg is hurting. It’s not too bad anymore, but I could do without it.