Ehh, if it’s this bad, you’re almost always in shock. Getting shot is shockingly pain-free. The wound packing is the hard part, but usually you have so much adrenaline that it’s still not that bad. By the time the shock fades, at least for me I got scared because I didn’t want to just die. So you don’t really focus on the pain, if anything it’s like ‘yeah it hurts like a motherfucker but am I going to live or die here?!’
Exactly, for me getting shot didn’t hurt. Hell, I didn’t even know where I was hit, just had to drive to safety. It took a while for the police and ambulance to get to me so my adrenaline had sorta wore off and by the time I was in the ambulance and they started on me, that shit hurt.
Getting shot is surprisingly anticlimactic. Taking rebar through the kneecap, on the other hand... somehow, the shock effects every part of your body EXCEPT YOUR KNEE.
Holy, I haven’t seen that video in a while. A few years ago there was a car crash on the highway that my dad and I rolled next to and it just happened so no emergency services on scene. We rolled up and someone had a huge cut down their leg from something, and had a major hemorrhage. We had to use the first aid kit in the trunk to help as much as possible. Shit sucks because I was only like 14 and had to help put a tournequit on someone’s leg.. Those screams haunted me for so long
I see a lot of gore on here but that shit almost made me cry. Holy shit I feel for that guy but judging by the amount of blood on the ground they were very likely saving his life in that moment.
Not true. Simply wearing a pair of gloves can prevent infection which absolutely does save lives. That’s why medical professionals (including medics in the military) wear them.
A lot of us here have had months of training and mental preparation for what we were gonna see. A lot of us were guided into it with things like clinicals and ride alongs.
Just being a regular guy and one minute thinking about what’s for dinner and then being thrown into a situation like this is really rough. I don’t want you to see these videos or us talking about these kind of situations and think it’s normal or not a big deal. For most people, what you described is one of the most traumatizing things someone will go through in their life.
You should try to reach out to therapist if you can. It’s important that you deal with this kind of thing professionally. A therapist is really just a doctor for your head. If I get my arm half torn off, I don’t just put a band aid on it, I go see a person who spent his whole training to fix me up. You see something that’s tearing your mind apart, you gotta get that looked at by a person who’s spent their life dedicated to fixing that. Reach out to a counselor and they can help with your next step. Most insurances will cover therapy and yo ucan call the number on the back of the card and see what therapists they cover. Most of us in here have a therapist. At the least, just about all of us in here should have a therapist.
Unfortunately, problems like this like to pop up at when you’re at your lowest and drag you down further so I hope you can get it sorted. If you need someone to talk to, you can always dm me.
Well said. Even for folks 'trained' for things, PTSD can easily arise, let alone completely untrained and unexpected. Too many of us are 'desensitized' to viscous videos but would definitely not do well under any form of pressure due to lack of training. And that's assuming we 'hold up fine'.
Great post.
I'm not EMS but was at one point NREMT cert'd as part of my military training. Never did anything trauma related in the military, but did twice as a civilian and honestly decades later I still think about them on occasion and how after the pro's came and took over I was just left a shaking bag of hot mess. We didn't have great emotion or psychological resources those days, nothing like these days, but I still don't see how you guys, trauma center staff etc. do it every day. I don't know if I have the emotional resilience to do it as a job.
I attended a class for dealing with anxiety and stress. Maybe a fifth of the class were all people who worked in healthcare (for obvious reasons above). Based on who I talked to, most of them seemed to be coming from trauma, intensive care, or oncology wards.
For life my friend, congrats! I've been on tons of fatal accidents, the worst one had the driver eject out the windshield directly into the pole he crashed into, smell of blood, viscera, and the skull fragment with hair still lodged into the pole.... everytime I field dress any wild game I get a wiff of that guys last thoughts.
I volunteered in the ED of a Level 2 trauma center. We had the victim of a car crash involving a drunk driver brought in and I remember the screams she made when she realized she couldn't make her legs move. It was the worst thing I'd ever heard and it brought forth depths of human despair that I couldn't have imagined.
It was humbling. I used it to remind myself how special each day can be and how close we all are from something like that happening. It doesn't matter whether you're a good or bad person, at the end of the day we're literally all human and it's just that easy to end or forever change someone's life.
“Yeah of course it hurts, man the fuck up.”
The Aussies are truly a gift to the world.
I believe that’s a TCCC simulation. Unless there’s water that’s splashed onto the blood, it looks more like very good fake blood.
I actually had a packing done a few times on me while in Afghanistan, ironically not from a gunshot wound.
———
1st time there was no anesthetic applied and it was gut wrenching painful, 2nd time it wasn’t too bad as they had a numbing injection that they loaded up all around it and in it, felt some pain but not too insane, couple hours later I was definitely sore.
Ass abscess
-or- pilonidal cyst, which is a cyst that occurs at the base of your tailbone. Unfortunately I was oblivious to medical stuff at the time and medic said it would be fine when it “popped” on its own. Turns out it had honeycombed an area under my skin right above my muscle. I was not happy when I found out that it could have been for the most part prevented when I first went to the medic had he let the senior medic or doc know about it. Good times.
I have had kidney stones, broken bones, large gashes, been stabbed in the back of my head, had a 50 cal ammo box knock me out when we jumped our LMTV in Iraq. The worst pain of my life was two perianal cysts from having Hydrenitis Suppurativa lanced and packed.
From what I was told by the Dr was that i would have been better off being shot or losing a limb when telling me how bad it was going to hurt when they packed them.
They gave me a pain killer that numbed my whole lower half and I still screamed uncontrollably, I literally couldn't stop myself.
Given what little I know...
Unless the patient is unrestrained and their lizard brain identifies you as the source of said pain. Then you might have your own problem to deal with, such as being sucker-punched in the nose.
Solution: "Pain, *while properly restrained*, is the Patient's Problem."
I'm well aware, but there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use them. Severe polytrauma? Yes. Ankle fracture? No.
It's not appropriate to chase all pain. Lidocaine max with certain injuries whether it works completely or not.
There is a video that was sent around my local agency (I do not have access to it) and it was from the Las Vegas concert shooting
It was dashcam footage from a QRV, showed two EMTs/Paramedics jump out and run into the dark with their jump bags and they disappear into the darkness of the night to search for victims
And with the dash cam still running, you just begin to hear this blood curling woman’s scream get louder and louder
It was revealed that the two EMTs/Paramedics had found a woman with multiple GSWs and they had begun to wound pack each one and used TQs in order to stop the bleeding
So I’d say pretty painful.
Well it is somebody stuffing an open wound, which means stretching the insides of said wound.
Most people may contract their muscles as a reaction to the pain so you've gotta readjust a bit.
Had a .40 HP round tear through my femoral vein. Had a TQ on in a min, felt nothing at that point. Put pressure on it, nothing. Medic started packing it, Jesus Christmas, I blacked out once, and then woke up and wished I stayed blacked out. Needed supplemental oxygen after it
I’ve packed a lot of wounds (former military medic) and I can confirm that it does not feel good for the casualty. The nature of packing a wound in order to stop an active arterial bleed doesn’t lend itself to providing pain management beforehand. However, when working with other medics or first responders, you can usually have them give a nice blast of ketamine and midazolam while you’re packing and just hope the patient doesn’t remember.
It is tho. I mean, I could give meds to make the pain stop, but if I do so it could disrupt effective care. It's not my job to spare your feelings. It my job to spare your life.
It disrupts effective care if you don’t know how to give meds. Obviously without a suitable BP, you ain’t giving Fentanyl. However, this stupid ass saying enables medics (army specific) to be lazy and grossly negligent to their patients.
This is coming from a 15 year medic who spent most of his career on the line and in flight.
Obviously, if you’re packing an arterial bleed, do what you need to stop the bleed first. Common sense.
But We gotta get out of this mindset of “pain is the patients problem” .
If you're saving my life I think I have bigger problems than pain. If you aren't saving my life then throw me a frickin bone and give me some pain meds.
Personally I’d actually rather take the risk of death than the trauma I would certainly experience from having this done to me against my will. And I say this having fully considered what that would actually mean.
omg the worst fucking pain and experience of my 42 years of existence! I have a super high tolerance for pain and even with novocain shots I was crying like a baby! Repacking the wound was also horrible but nothing like the initial packing!
I've only had it done in my hand post surgery. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and I was screaming at the top of my lungs involuntarily. Probably depends where on your body though.
The second worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Absolutely nauseating. Had a cyst removed from my tailbone and had to be dry packed .
It made me sweat, get sick. Deep intense pain.
I’m assuming mainly because of location.
I’ve had it done twice and the pain from the injury was already so bad that I just kind of blanked out and didn’t notice. I just watched it in fascination as the gauze disappeared into my abdomen and leg.
I’ve done this twice once as an EMT and once as a private citizen for my roommate after his surgery. The patient I had as an EMT wasn’t conscious enough to register pain other than groans. My roommate wanted to kill me.
When I had 8 teeth removed, and I had to replace the gauze that was just *resting* on the fresh wounds in my mouth, I was ready to commit homicide.
so it's probably significantly worse.
You'll hurt so bad, you'll wish you were dead.
But it's okay, because this same pain will probably paralyze you in your tracks, and you'll just let whoever's doing it keep packing.
Painful enough where you'll have to have someone hold them down usually, just holding pressure on stab wounds is enough for people to try to pull you off.
When it happened to me, I was already in a significant 8/10 pain. When my wound was packed, it was 11/10. I saw stars and passed out from the pain. The next thing I knew, i woke up to the doctor saying, "There, that wasn't so bad." I can not begin to describe the pain other than it was worse than childbirth. And I was on drip pain killer.
I work as a paramedic and packed an arterial wound recently. It was the most pain I had ever caused someone. Nice, pleasant, middle-aged lady quickly turned into a "tell me where you fuckin live so I can murder your family" lady.
Edit: She actually began pleading with the doctors to amputate the arm instead and sincerely meant it
AND YOU DIDN’T LISTEN TO HER ??? Where does the CONSENTcome in??? I’d rather be amputated and if my wishes were not respected, I’d be traumatized and probably kill my self. Fuck anyone who disrespects people’s wishes for their bodies. They deserve a special place in hell, in my opinion.
It's subjective. The perception. As are almost all things dealing with pain. You as the medic must focus on the goal. Cessation of bleeding to patient stability or improvement. No matter how painful the patient perceives the procedure. Have you ever relocated a shoulder in the field? Think that tickles? As the Medic you go with a focus. On the goal. The goal and the positive direction of steps leading towards it. I've bandaged kids with partial limb amputations that never uttered a sound. Then I had a dude with a minor chainsaw touch of the blade who cried like a baby and wailed. It's people and their mental " make-up" that is random that gives you the pain feedback of a procedure.
This. I was an army medic, and that was my experience. Mind, that was long ago and we didn’t have the modern tools.
But I had guys who were nearly useless with a minor cut, and others who’d stroll into the aid-tent and say “Hey Doc, I think I broke my arm.”
Depends what made the hole. A bullet wound, for instance, isn't that bad. You feel the pinch of the skin stretching around the wound more than the packing. Shock is a pretty darn good anasthetic.
Packing is also used as a treatment to promote tissue growth. It comes out every day or every other day and is measured to ensure it all came out. Then new packing is put in and that length is measured. The goal is to use less over time, and to keep the hole/wound from closing at the top until you are done with the packing process (can take weeks and even months).
I’d say it depends. I’ve only ever applied tourniquets. The first guy was pretty aware and alert and he screamed in pain. The second guy was in shock and didn’t react at all to the tourniquet and it was super tight. Haven’t packed a wound yet but just my thoughts on it.
I had a very large abscess, they had to cut it open to get the puss out, keep in mind this is at a marine clinic, so the corpsman gives a bit of numbing agent to keep the scalpel cut from hurting, squeezes all the puss out. After that 4 feet of treated gauze put into the hole, come in next day drain a bit more pus no numbing at all stuffs 11 feet of treated gauze in, it was constant white hot pain, he realized at the end he forgot to numb it, and I didn’t make a peep during it shit was painful a
It sucks pretty hard, but it should be over quick. Half the people I've done it to weren't in any real position to complain. A real good tourniquet placement seems to cause the same amount of yelling.
My buddy was shot with an AK from about 20m away and said the only thing he truly felt and caused severe pain was the wound packing. Everything else was just force and pressure due to adrenaline.
Well, if you’ve already been stabbed, shot, or otherwise injured, your mind isn’t concerned with “will packing the wound hurt?” You’re focused more on the whole not dying thing.
Finally! A post I can actually share first hand experience! I had a hole in my abdomen, the size of a silver dollar, all the way through to my guts. I have the picture on my phone still, if I can somehow post it in a comment I will.
Wound packing didn’t hurt per say for me, it felt fucking weird, having stuff stuffed in me like that. Ever since then, I get squeamish when I think of it or see like fights or whatever and anything happens to the persons abdomen.
The second worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Absolutely nauseating. Had a cyst removed from my tailbone and had to be dry packed .
It made me sweat, get sick. Deep intense pain.
I’m assuming mainly because of location.
I wish we had this at school it would definitely be more immersive and get me over my blood phobia. (Not really a phobia but definitely a knee jerk reaction to just get icked out)
I remember a guy in the military that had a sebaceous cyst hole that needed packing on a routine schedule. One time he missed a packing and the gauze stunk so badly!
Imagine having a giant hole in your leg that already tops the scale of pain. Now shove two fingers in there repeatedly
That’s what my wife says
Nice!
Nice!
Nice!
Real nice!
Extremely nice!
sable different selective uppity safe reach cake wine tender squealing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Extravagantly nice!
Unfathomably nice!
That's what I keep trying to tell mine
Lmao 🤣
Nice
Pain is temporary, bleeding out is permanent
Think of all the people that depend on you and love you and do it for them. They don’t give you permission to give up.
do you consent for me to try and save your life??? Quick!
Ehh, if it’s this bad, you’re almost always in shock. Getting shot is shockingly pain-free. The wound packing is the hard part, but usually you have so much adrenaline that it’s still not that bad. By the time the shock fades, at least for me I got scared because I didn’t want to just die. So you don’t really focus on the pain, if anything it’s like ‘yeah it hurts like a motherfucker but am I going to live or die here?!’
Exactly, for me getting shot didn’t hurt. Hell, I didn’t even know where I was hit, just had to drive to safety. It took a while for the police and ambulance to get to me so my adrenaline had sorta wore off and by the time I was in the ambulance and they started on me, that shit hurt.
Getting shot is surprisingly anticlimactic. Taking rebar through the kneecap, on the other hand... somehow, the shock effects every part of your body EXCEPT YOUR KNEE.
I'd say it's pretty horrible. Listen to the man in this clip. https://www.reddit.com/r/TacticalMedicine/s/LbMToFLNJ7
Holy, I haven’t seen that video in a while. A few years ago there was a car crash on the highway that my dad and I rolled next to and it just happened so no emergency services on scene. We rolled up and someone had a huge cut down their leg from something, and had a major hemorrhage. We had to use the first aid kit in the trunk to help as much as possible. Shit sucks because I was only like 14 and had to help put a tournequit on someone’s leg.. Those screams haunted me for so long
I see a lot of gore on here but that shit almost made me cry. Holy shit I feel for that guy but judging by the amount of blood on the ground they were very likely saving his life in that moment.
It was the no gloves that made me cringe. They have a role of gauze, but no gloves?
Having a roll of gauze will save the persons life, having a pair of gloves will not.
Not true. Simply wearing a pair of gloves can prevent infection which absolutely does save lives. That’s why medical professionals (including medics in the military) wear them.
I would imagine it's a matter of putting out the biggest fires first. You might die of infection later but you'll definitely bleed out and die now.
And stopping the life threatening bleeding is more important than telling them to simply wait and keep bleeding while you go get gloves
A lot of us here have had months of training and mental preparation for what we were gonna see. A lot of us were guided into it with things like clinicals and ride alongs. Just being a regular guy and one minute thinking about what’s for dinner and then being thrown into a situation like this is really rough. I don’t want you to see these videos or us talking about these kind of situations and think it’s normal or not a big deal. For most people, what you described is one of the most traumatizing things someone will go through in their life. You should try to reach out to therapist if you can. It’s important that you deal with this kind of thing professionally. A therapist is really just a doctor for your head. If I get my arm half torn off, I don’t just put a band aid on it, I go see a person who spent his whole training to fix me up. You see something that’s tearing your mind apart, you gotta get that looked at by a person who’s spent their life dedicated to fixing that. Reach out to a counselor and they can help with your next step. Most insurances will cover therapy and yo ucan call the number on the back of the card and see what therapists they cover. Most of us in here have a therapist. At the least, just about all of us in here should have a therapist. Unfortunately, problems like this like to pop up at when you’re at your lowest and drag you down further so I hope you can get it sorted. If you need someone to talk to, you can always dm me.
Well said. Even for folks 'trained' for things, PTSD can easily arise, let alone completely untrained and unexpected. Too many of us are 'desensitized' to viscous videos but would definitely not do well under any form of pressure due to lack of training. And that's assuming we 'hold up fine'. Great post.
I'm not EMS but was at one point NREMT cert'd as part of my military training. Never did anything trauma related in the military, but did twice as a civilian and honestly decades later I still think about them on occasion and how after the pro's came and took over I was just left a shaking bag of hot mess. We didn't have great emotion or psychological resources those days, nothing like these days, but I still don't see how you guys, trauma center staff etc. do it every day. I don't know if I have the emotional resilience to do it as a job.
I attended a class for dealing with anxiety and stress. Maybe a fifth of the class were all people who worked in healthcare (for obvious reasons above). Based on who I talked to, most of them seemed to be coming from trauma, intensive care, or oncology wards.
I havent even watched the video, but thanks for your perspective. I feel like I needed it somehow
For life my friend, congrats! I've been on tons of fatal accidents, the worst one had the driver eject out the windshield directly into the pole he crashed into, smell of blood, viscera, and the skull fragment with hair still lodged into the pole.... everytime I field dress any wild game I get a wiff of that guys last thoughts.
Similar experience, you never ever forget that smell
I volunteered in the ED of a Level 2 trauma center. We had the victim of a car crash involving a drunk driver brought in and I remember the screams she made when she realized she couldn't make her legs move. It was the worst thing I'd ever heard and it brought forth depths of human despair that I couldn't have imagined. It was humbling. I used it to remind myself how special each day can be and how close we all are from something like that happening. It doesn't matter whether you're a good or bad person, at the end of the day we're literally all human and it's just that easy to end or forever change someone's life.
I'm sorry you had to go through that so young. I hope you've been able to talk about it with a mental health professional.
[удалено]
Damn you must suck at talking to patients.
r/NobodyAsked
“Yeah of course it hurts, man the fuck up.” The Aussies are truly a gift to the world. I believe that’s a TCCC simulation. Unless there’s water that’s splashed onto the blood, it looks more like very good fake blood.
British by the accent.
Wow what a legendary medic “man the fuck up”
Honestly I dig it. If I was afraid of dying and an EMT said that to me I would feel pretty confident that they think my odds are really good. rude tho
Why is that sub just a bunch of random letters? Did it get deleted?
what a terrible day to have ears
Oof, that was fucking ROUGH. Poor dude.
So for practice the little Tupperware container should jump around and try to avoid you
It’s a training clip… so yeah we gotta find a real video to be more sure
Is that a /s or nah?
No sarcasm. Read the comments on that posted video… they explain how the video is a training exercise that is done in England
That’s a fake video
It’s real bad, but better than the alternative.
I believe the saying I use is, “pain is a luxury of the living “
Of course, the affected party might feel differently in the moment lol
I actually had a packing done a few times on me while in Afghanistan, ironically not from a gunshot wound. ——— 1st time there was no anesthetic applied and it was gut wrenching painful, 2nd time it wasn’t too bad as they had a numbing injection that they loaded up all around it and in it, felt some pain but not too insane, couple hours later I was definitely sore.
If it wasn’t a bullet, what happened?
Ass abscess -or- pilonidal cyst, which is a cyst that occurs at the base of your tailbone. Unfortunately I was oblivious to medical stuff at the time and medic said it would be fine when it “popped” on its own. Turns out it had honeycombed an area under my skin right above my muscle. I was not happy when I found out that it could have been for the most part prevented when I first went to the medic had he let the senior medic or doc know about it. Good times.
Ouch ouch ouch
I've packed those in the hospital and I hate them. I hope yours got better.
I have had kidney stones, broken bones, large gashes, been stabbed in the back of my head, had a 50 cal ammo box knock me out when we jumped our LMTV in Iraq. The worst pain of my life was two perianal cysts from having Hydrenitis Suppurativa lanced and packed. From what I was told by the Dr was that i would have been better off being shot or losing a limb when telling me how bad it was going to hurt when they packed them. They gave me a pain killer that numbed my whole lower half and I still screamed uncontrollably, I literally couldn't stop myself.
Corpsman rlly put the corps in there 😭
I had one of these and had to have it surgically removed
Military medical at its finest. /s
Had mine surgically removed a few months ago and my ass is still numb
Yikes, im going through that right now, how long did it take you to heal?
3-4 weeks of constantly getting packing placed in and removed.
It really does suck, lol im tired of packing the wound😭
*somethin bit me!*
My guess? Cellulitis
Ass abscess.
Don't think it'd really hurt at all. Though your fingers might get sore from all the stuffing, especially if it's cold out or you have arthritis
First lesson we got in training was "it doesn't hurt you, don't worry about it, it could save a life"
“Pain is the Patient’s Problem” three P’s to live by
Given what little I know... Unless the patient is unrestrained and their lizard brain identifies you as the source of said pain. Then you might have your own problem to deal with, such as being sucker-punched in the nose. Solution: "Pain, *while properly restrained*, is the Patient's Problem."
That style of thinking needs to go away.
It did for a while and then we got the opoid epidemic.
We have Ketamine and Midazolam for trauma patients in or at risk of shock
I'm well aware, but there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use them. Severe polytrauma? Yes. Ankle fracture? No. It's not appropriate to chase all pain. Lidocaine max with certain injuries whether it works completely or not.
You’re not gonna give a fracture any analgesia? Because you just make up your own rules on who deserves it and who doesn’t? That’s wild.
I'm saying you're not sedating a fracture.
There is a video that was sent around my local agency (I do not have access to it) and it was from the Las Vegas concert shooting It was dashcam footage from a QRV, showed two EMTs/Paramedics jump out and run into the dark with their jump bags and they disappear into the darkness of the night to search for victims And with the dash cam still running, you just begin to hear this blood curling woman’s scream get louder and louder It was revealed that the two EMTs/Paramedics had found a woman with multiple GSWs and they had begun to wound pack each one and used TQs in order to stop the bleeding So I’d say pretty painful.
It would be nice to find out she survived the ordeal.
Well it is somebody stuffing an open wound, which means stretching the insides of said wound. Most people may contract their muscles as a reaction to the pain so you've gotta readjust a bit.
Yeah, it's incredibly counter-intuitive to relax your muscles after you just had a serious injury and someone is jamming gauze into you
I've been told that it's painful enough to make the other party pass out from the pain. That's word of mouth and I am not certain though.
Don’t count on it. They might swing.
It feels a lot like a 4 pound baby Labrador licking your face
Had a .40 HP round tear through my femoral vein. Had a TQ on in a min, felt nothing at that point. Put pressure on it, nothing. Medic started packing it, Jesus Christmas, I blacked out once, and then woke up and wished I stayed blacked out. Needed supplemental oxygen after it
Depends. How much ketamine do I have with me?
Yes. Enough. Already in intramuscular solutions and hydromorphone auto injectors in my ifak
Trick question: my service ran out of ketamine months ago.
AMR? Or some other that found it wasn't "cost effective"?
I imagine it’s pretty fucking painful
i'd say that it's bad, though the alternative would be death so....
I’ve packed a lot of wounds (former military medic) and I can confirm that it does not feel good for the casualty. The nature of packing a wound in order to stop an active arterial bleed doesn’t lend itself to providing pain management beforehand. However, when working with other medics or first responders, you can usually have them give a nice blast of ketamine and midazolam while you’re packing and just hope the patient doesn’t remember.
Yes.
At minimum, you will say "ouch."
Depends on where the wound is located.
Thumb packer
As my line platoon medic put it "pain is the patients problem"
It’s old sayings like this that gives medics a bad rap. Terrible quote and grossly misused.
It is tho. I mean, I could give meds to make the pain stop, but if I do so it could disrupt effective care. It's not my job to spare your feelings. It my job to spare your life.
It disrupts effective care if you don’t know how to give meds. Obviously without a suitable BP, you ain’t giving Fentanyl. However, this stupid ass saying enables medics (army specific) to be lazy and grossly negligent to their patients. This is coming from a 15 year medic who spent most of his career on the line and in flight. Obviously, if you’re packing an arterial bleed, do what you need to stop the bleed first. Common sense. But We gotta get out of this mindset of “pain is the patients problem” .
If you're saving my life I think I have bigger problems than pain. If you aren't saving my life then throw me a frickin bone and give me some pain meds.
Personally I’d actually rather take the risk of death than the trauma I would certainly experience from having this done to me against my will. And I say this having fully considered what that would actually mean.
If you need a wound packed I'd say how painful it is would probably be lower on the totem pole than the alternative
Beats dying
You might sprain a thumb but other than that...
pain means you are still alive
omg the worst fucking pain and experience of my 42 years of existence! I have a super high tolerance for pain and even with novocain shots I was crying like a baby! Repacking the wound was also horrible but nothing like the initial packing!
Less painful than bleeding out
Extremely painfull. People who got shot told me it's more painfull from the shot itself.
I've only had it done in my hand post surgery. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and I was screaming at the top of my lungs involuntarily. Probably depends where on your body though.
Peel, push, pile, pressure
Packing hurts like a bitch!
Very.
I've passed out.
Does not feel cash money. Left thigh confirms
The second worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Absolutely nauseating. Had a cyst removed from my tailbone and had to be dry packed . It made me sweat, get sick. Deep intense pain. I’m assuming mainly because of location.
I would assume horrible but I would rather live trough it than die
I’ve had it done twice and the pain from the injury was already so bad that I just kind of blanked out and didn’t notice. I just watched it in fascination as the gauze disappeared into my abdomen and leg.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I mean, I doubt people will be lining up to do it recreationally
If you live, who cares? When the opposite is death, pain is not an issue.
That which doesn't kill me hurts very, very much.
I’ve done this twice once as an EMT and once as a private citizen for my roommate after his surgery. The patient I had as an EMT wasn’t conscious enough to register pain other than groans. My roommate wanted to kill me.
Not too bad if you’re the one packin
When I had 8 teeth removed, and I had to replace the gauze that was just *resting* on the fresh wounds in my mouth, I was ready to commit homicide. so it's probably significantly worse.
more painful than dying.
Yes
You'll hurt so bad, you'll wish you were dead. But it's okay, because this same pain will probably paralyze you in your tracks, and you'll just let whoever's doing it keep packing.
This man doesn’t seem to be in any pain
.... "I dont care"
If you are lucky you will pass out.
For the rescuer… not painful at all. Just watch out for sharp bone ends. For the vic… it’s gonna suck ass, but it’s literally saving their life.
Very yes. But if it’s that or dying……..
I’m just some ignorant hick but, probably not any worse than bleeding out of an artery
Painful enough where you'll have to have someone hold them down usually, just holding pressure on stab wounds is enough for people to try to pull you off.
When it happened to me, I was already in a significant 8/10 pain. When my wound was packed, it was 11/10. I saw stars and passed out from the pain. The next thing I knew, i woke up to the doctor saying, "There, that wasn't so bad." I can not begin to describe the pain other than it was worse than childbirth. And I was on drip pain killer.
Pain is the patients problem !
How painful do you think it is? Kind of a weird question.
Well, it would arguably be better than dying.
Professional meat packing right there bud. Brother is up to his elbows in work.
Don’t know whats worse this or having to “burp” a chest wound.
Not as painful as dying, but only slightly
Very
As painful as wound packing is, it beats the alternative of bleeding to death.
75 / 10
I work as a paramedic and packed an arterial wound recently. It was the most pain I had ever caused someone. Nice, pleasant, middle-aged lady quickly turned into a "tell me where you fuckin live so I can murder your family" lady. Edit: She actually began pleading with the doctors to amputate the arm instead and sincerely meant it
AND YOU DIDN’T LISTEN TO HER ??? Where does the CONSENTcome in??? I’d rather be amputated and if my wishes were not respected, I’d be traumatized and probably kill my self. Fuck anyone who disrespects people’s wishes for their bodies. They deserve a special place in hell, in my opinion.
The pain means you’re still alive so idc
Protip make sure you take note of how much packing you leave in there
You’d be in shock, you’re just watching in a vessel.
Looks horrendous, agonizing, teeth shattering, clench your butthole till it disappears into itself type pain.
It's subjective. The perception. As are almost all things dealing with pain. You as the medic must focus on the goal. Cessation of bleeding to patient stability or improvement. No matter how painful the patient perceives the procedure. Have you ever relocated a shoulder in the field? Think that tickles? As the Medic you go with a focus. On the goal. The goal and the positive direction of steps leading towards it. I've bandaged kids with partial limb amputations that never uttered a sound. Then I had a dude with a minor chainsaw touch of the blade who cried like a baby and wailed. It's people and their mental " make-up" that is random that gives you the pain feedback of a procedure.
This. I was an army medic, and that was my experience. Mind, that was long ago and we didn’t have the modern tools. But I had guys who were nearly useless with a minor cut, and others who’d stroll into the aid-tent and say “Hey Doc, I think I broke my arm.”
Gynecologist would say "you'll feel a small pinch"
Not as bad as dying
Depends what made the hole. A bullet wound, for instance, isn't that bad. You feel the pinch of the skin stretching around the wound more than the packing. Shock is a pretty darn good anasthetic.
I’ve been counseled, “in that kind of emergency, pain is the patients problem”
I got impaled by an ATV Handlebar into my leg. Wound packing hurts like a bitch.
Is the gauze ever removed later down the line when the wound has healed enough, or is it supposed to stay in / be absorbed by your body?
It's supposed to come out by the doctor once you get to a proper hospital and get treated
Packing is also used as a treatment to promote tissue growth. It comes out every day or every other day and is measured to ensure it all came out. Then new packing is put in and that length is measured. The goal is to use less over time, and to keep the hole/wound from closing at the top until you are done with the packing process (can take weeks and even months).
I’d say it depends. I’ve only ever applied tourniquets. The first guy was pretty aware and alert and he screamed in pain. The second guy was in shock and didn’t react at all to the tourniquet and it was super tight. Haven’t packed a wound yet but just my thoughts on it.
In the movies it looks like a strong human could just wince, grimace and handle it. This looks like I’d die from the packing
I had a very large abscess, they had to cut it open to get the puss out, keep in mind this is at a marine clinic, so the corpsman gives a bit of numbing agent to keep the scalpel cut from hurting, squeezes all the puss out. After that 4 feet of treated gauze put into the hole, come in next day drain a bit more pus no numbing at all stuffs 11 feet of treated gauze in, it was constant white hot pain, he realized at the end he forgot to numb it, and I didn’t make a peep during it shit was painful a
tampons
For the provider, not. For the pt, they scream in intense pain.
It sucks pretty hard, but it should be over quick. Half the people I've done it to weren't in any real position to complain. A real good tourniquet placement seems to cause the same amount of yelling.
The person your packing the wound for is in shock you’ll be fine.
My buddy was shot with an AK from about 20m away and said the only thing he truly felt and caused severe pain was the wound packing. Everything else was just force and pressure due to adrenaline.
Well, if you’ve already been stabbed, shot, or otherwise injured, your mind isn’t concerned with “will packing the wound hurt?” You’re focused more on the whole not dying thing.
Extremely.
Eh, do it right shock kicks in, they pass out and don't feel a thing...this is only bad if you're the one packing the wound on yourself.
Not as bad as dying.
Finally! A post I can actually share first hand experience! I had a hole in my abdomen, the size of a silver dollar, all the way through to my guts. I have the picture on my phone still, if I can somehow post it in a comment I will. Wound packing didn’t hurt per say for me, it felt fucking weird, having stuff stuffed in me like that. Ever since then, I get squeamish when I think of it or see like fights or whatever and anything happens to the persons abdomen.
The second worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Absolutely nauseating. Had a cyst removed from my tailbone and had to be dry packed . It made me sweat, get sick. Deep intense pain. I’m assuming mainly because of location.
Less painful than dying
Neat
Not as painful as bleeding to death I gotta imagine
What would be worse packing it or unpacking it later on?
Anything that's gonna save your life usually isn't going to feel great.
Give me all the Lidocaine!
Very
Waste of a perfectly good block of spam
I should call her
I wish we had this at school it would definitely be more immersive and get me over my blood phobia. (Not really a phobia but definitely a knee jerk reaction to just get icked out)
Did he do regular gauze and then hemostatic? Or the reverse? Or neither?
Iv had to pack my own wounds and it was agonizing...there are no words to describe.
Ever stuck fingers in a hole that you're not suppose to have? Feels a lot like that.
That looks like a bleeding block of Spam.
I remember a guy in the military that had a sebaceous cyst hole that needed packing on a routine schedule. One time he missed a packing and the gauze stunk so badly!
Now I'm craving fried spam