Swan Tower

I have been decked, thrown into the ground, and tripped over a power chord with my backpack on and landed face first on concrete. the throw and the trip both resulted in a broken nose and blood gushing out of my mouth. The punches resulted in black eyes (which both broken noses also gave me) and a snapped back head. I went right down. The noses actually don't hurt that much. They kind of go numb really quickly, and tingle. the black eyes though, throb, and if the punch hits the upper cheek, it hurts bad enough to make you start crying before you even realize it. Getting an uppercut to the chin hurts worst of all because it snaps the neck back. Getting hit in the lower cheek can cut up the inse=ide of the cheek on teeth. not fun.

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What about the impact itself? My imagination at the moment is being shaped by the movie Brick, which kind of makes everything burst with light when the pov character gets punched. But I don't know if that's a fair depiction.

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well, I closed my eyes before each impact except the one to the chin, so it was really dark, actually, despite the fact that I was in bright places each time. Both times I broke my nose, it crushed to the side (same side too, within months of each other) and I felt this grinding, wet, pain on impact, and then a few seconds of heat before it went numb and warm. With the eye and cheek punch, I felt this horrible pain like my eyeball was going to pop back in my skull and like someone had stabbed into my cheek bone. Everything went dark and wavy for a moment, and then blurry when I opened my eyes.

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erzebet.livejournal.com

Explosion of light and sharp pain followed by veritgo followed by blood gushing from the nose. Ew! The pain became a dull one very quickly, and then my face bruised. Fun fun.

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Light is precisely the detail I was wondering about. So "Light burst across [x]'s vision" followed by a disjointed awareness of clinging to the nearest wall would be a decent description?

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erzebet.livejournal.com

It would. I don't know if you need more detail, but I distinctly remember that the light was both white and red.

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time-shark.livejournal.com

I can tell you from experience that if it's hard enough to cause a concussion, you probably won't even register the impact in short term memory. It's more a matter of suddenly coming to on the ground with your head swimming in bruised, lacerated pain.

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I don't think the character in question is actually concussed -- just knocked around a good bit. Though admittedly I don't know where the concussion boundary is, other than somewhere this side of actually being knocked out.

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time-shark.livejournal.com

When it happened to me, I had a brief skip in consciousness, probably no more than a couple seconds.

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icedrake.livejournal.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concussion
But if you suffered a very mild concussion, you might not even realize it. Headaches can easily be explained away -- you just got punched in the head, after all.

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gah, I was asleep, woke up, and rmanomly decided' to hit my f-list when saw this, or would give you better diescription of all sorts of things than I can do now. First, where in the face? Yes, it matters. =) Mattering equally is how much adrenaline you have. And I can also give you description of other people. Like, people who get knocked out have no memory of the hit, usually, just they were fighting and "boom!, I am waking up now, wha happen?"

Getting hit in the nose but not hard enough to really splatter it is uncomfortable and feels, umm, funny. It is hard to describe now, esp from decades back. If not full of adrenaline (and for a lot of people full of adrenaline) it will stop you for a moment while you deal w/the funny feeling, and you'll blink a couple of times. I've never had mine full on broken because never got hit flush there, but people who do get flush? They don't just bleed at the time, tho they do, and they might absolutely gush, but they wind up w/two black eyes and bruises all around the nose/upper cheekbone/eye area. I dunno why, but they do. If you're in the middle of a full on fight, either athletic or for real, and you are one of the crazy types who get all cranked on adrenaline, the punches will feel like thuds but w/no actual pain unless you actually get bones broken, and then the pain will be a matter of degree depending on the severity of the break and the person (for, say, broken ribs, you will hurt *bad* later, every time you move or if you breathe wrong, even if it is a minor break, and for a long time, but during the fight, you may just think, "ow, that hurts, either that was a really hard shot or I'm a total wuss". Or you may collapse in pain on the spot and be unable to continue. It totally varies, and some of the biggest, toughtest people may fall into the second category; really no way to predict in advance.

The hardest and most hurt I ever got from an in-face impact was not from a punch, but someone during a snowball fight during college packed an iceball, and after the fight was over and all 40 or so of us were standing around wondering what to do now threw it at the back of my head. Someone yelled "look out!" so I turned to look in the direction of the voice, meaning I got hit in the eye. Again, no pain, just impact, even tho no adrenaline, but everything receeded and went black, and my entire focus was on not passing out in front of everyone. Friends told me my legs were all wobbly and it was funny the way the went rubbery and I kinda almost fell and staggered a bit. during this time I could feel myself trying to konk and fall over and even tho it was all dark my entire focus was on staying conscious and aware of my body, cause hey, cute girls were there and passing out in front of them not cool. It was less funny when I began saying "I can't see", because I went totally blind in both eyes for a few minutes. I was trying not to panic about that. Then a tiny little pinprick of orange light appeared (this was at night), and gradually, I got limited vision back in one eye. This did not hurt at the time, I was just disoriented. I told everyone I was fine but decided to go home until I could see better. They decided people needed to go with me and make sure I got there when I marched off in a totally wrong direction (the vision in the one eye was blurry and apparently limited to vague shapes that were fairly close, and streetlights). The hurt didn't really start until later. And wow did it hurt. I stayed blind in one eye for something like 36 hrs, and it was *very* light sensitive for about a week, at least (we're talking two decades ago, so some details are a bit foggy).

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Never had a face or head bone broken, but with ribs or *especially* collarbone, later, it hurts esp bad when you are trying to lie down or get up or change positions while lying down.

Getting punched in the mouth smarts a wee bit, but even if it busts your lip and there's a lot of blood, if we're talking some sort of fight, all it's gonna do is make you mad; it won't really hurt, unless you get hit hard enough to break teeth.

Umm, I think I rambled a lot w/out describing the actual physical sensations of pain. That will take a lot of effort to describe all the variations exactly. The eye thing (later* was very similar to a migraine except centered in my eye where the knife stabbing was instead of back in my brain. A normal hard punch w/gloves will just sting. No one ever caught me flush w/knuckles cause normal people just aren't fast enough; the closest was when some crackhead hit me w/out warning for being on "his" payphone, and i rolled w/that punch a bit; caught me in side of head but not too hard. Really hard shots to the the temple will make you feel all tingly and spacy; I know this from opening the freezer door into my head when I was a kid. It's also one of the two best places to hit people to knock them out, the other being the jaw. Tho both of these vary, too; the jaw especially; some people you could whack w/a tire iron and break their jaw and it will just hurt but not ko them; other people haibitually go out from a hard punch w/gloves there. I can give you a lot more detail later if you want it. Bedtime now.

I can describe a concussion (and varying degrees of them) for you too, if you want. =)

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I wonder why the jaw is an effective knockout target? The temple makes sense; that one doesn't.

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snaps the neck back, which interferes with bloodflow to the brain.

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I'm not her, but thanks! I have wondered about this my whole life. =)

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It's the same reason you can put someone under by pinching the back of their neck right. You're trying to put pressure on the same nerves and blood vessels. It also helps that uppercuts force you up off your feet and back instead of straight back like a normal punch. Works like a lever.

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Got it. Muchas gracias.

And lol, sounds similar to how faith healers used to put people out with their "Heal!" smack on the forehead, which I'd forgotten about till now. Tho that always mystified me too, that this actually worked semi-reliably.

And . . .you can actually do that w/a pinch? I understand how choke holds work, but I didn't think the vulcan nerve thingy w/just your fingers was based on anything real. I know about the pressure point stuff and I know *some* of that works (you want to put me out? Hit me in the solar plexus. I can take really hard shots to the head, no problem; but catch me in the solar plexus the right way and I will at best have trouble moving and be unable to breathe for a moment and at worst will have something resembling an epileptic fit, tho I gather I'm atypical this way; never seen it happen to anyone else and only happened to me as a kid; have no desire to find out if it still would work that way)

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It's more like a hard grab around the spine at the base of the head, but yeah. A couple of seconds, and bam. Yeah, a good hard smack to the forehead will do that (though there's no chance of crushing the frontal blood vessels) some of the time, and actually, cutting off blood flow like that can make you feel temporarily better when you wake up. It's really bad for you though.

My favorite pressure point is the pit under someone's ear. Get your thumb in there and separate the jaw a bit, and wow, pain. Also, almost no one struggles effectively when you get them there, though it works best if you get both sides at once. Also, I used to regularly win fights by jabbing my thumb into someone's bikini line. Ow.

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Oww indeed. And I just added you as a friend. Writer who shares reading tastes and also lives in desert and likes to fight and knows tricks I don't? I am so totally thinking you rock.

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