We’ve all watched action movies.
I’m talking about high octane, adrenaline-filled entertainment packed with car chases, wild
explosions, and guns galore.
There’s sometimes nothing more thrilling than watching a shootout on screen.
While this type of violence is glorified by our culture, the majority of us have zero
clue as to what it’s like to actually be shot.
Welcome back to Curiosity, and today we’re talking about what it’s really like to be
shot.
Do you go numb?
Are you filled with adrenaline?
Do you start seeing the white light?
We’re talking about all of this AND more…
The feeling of being shot varies.
It all depends on where you’re shot, the size of the bullet, and how many bullets hit
you.
Some people can also tolerate pain better than others.
But for the sake of the video, let’s just talk from the perspective of somebody who’s
survived a gunshot wound, and what they experienced.
Many gunshot survivors will tell you that upon being hit, they didn’t feel anything.
A lot of the time, there is no initial pain.
Much of the time, they don’t even realize they’ve been shot until they notice blood,
or somebody says, “Hey man, you’ve been shot!”
Let’s look at the account from someone who lived to tell her story.
Her name was Deborah Cotton.
Deborah was shot when two gunmen opened fire in the middle of a New Orleans parade in 2013.
She said at first, she thought someone had “chucked a small pebble” at her.
It wasn’t until she noticed other people screaming and running for their lives.
Just a moment later, she fainted.
As it turns out, she had been shot right below her left rib cage.
Instead of feeling a sharp, overwhelming pain, there was a burning sensation that just kept
getting worse.
The burning continued to spread until it was no longer only her rib cage hurting.
She said the burning in her stomach was particularly painful.
As she layed on the ground with chaos happening all around her, Deborah recalled fading in
and out of consciousness.
At this point, she thought she was about to die.
She describes laying there waiting for the “white light” and all those things people
talk about seeing when they have a near death experience.
Well, none of those things happened to her.
She remained conscious.
Realizing she probably wasn’t going to die, she began checking to see if she was paralyzed,
wiggling her fingers and toes around to make sure she could still move them.
Everything seemed to be fine.
The real problem was with the burning sensation that was still spreading.
It was getting worse, and soon became her main focus.
But at the same time, there was still no sharp, overwhelming pain.
This is something most people expect when they’re shot.
After a few minutes, her boyfriend found her and knelt down beside her to help.
She remembers him taking off his jersey and covering her with it for support.
At this point, the chaos was dying down and people still standing were trying to help
those who were wounded.
Yes, there were other people who had been shot.
Since there was so much happening at this moment, who knew how long it would really
take for paramedics to arrive?
Well luckily, they did after a few minutes.
It was at this point Deborah fell out of consciousness, coming to once again in a hospital elevator
with tubes in her nose.
You can imagine how terrified she was at this moment.
As she tried yanking the tubes out, nurses rushed to get her restrained, and reinstall
the tubes.
These tubes were meant to go through her nose and into her gut.
Deborah went out once again.
From here, she can only remember hearing the sound of voices fading in and out, as the
doctors operated.
It turns out that 19 people had been shot at the parade, and Deborah’s injuries were
the most severe.
In the beginning, doctors thought she wouldn’t live.
You see, the bullet hit Deborah in a place doctors refer to as the “soul hole”.
They call it this because most people who are hit there do not survive.
As a result of her shooting injury, Deborah stayed in the hospital for a period just under
2 months.
She ended up having 12 different surgeries!
She says that the first few weeks of her stay she doesn’t even remember.
One of the surgeries she had done was something called the Whipple procedure.
This is normally performed on people with pancreatic cancer.
With the Whipple procedure, doctors take a bunch of important organs out of your body,
but do it in a way that allows you to live.
Just hearing this is enough to make you faint.
By the end of Deborah’s procedure, doctors had taken out her gallbladder, colon, right
kidney, a duodenum, and a bile duct, along with part of her pancreas, and two-thirds
of her stomach!
As for the bullet that got her here in the first place, that left her body also, but
in a different way.
At first, the bullet was lodged too far into her body to be removed by doctors.
They didn’t want to risk digging inside and causing further damage.
After about a year, and several more surgeries, the bullet naturally made its way to the surface
of her skin, as her body started pushing it out.
At one point, Deborah could feel the object practically poking out from under her rib
cage.
During her next surgery, they were successfully able to remove the bullet.
What they got was scrap from a 9mm.
According to experts, this is what was responsible for her lack of pain in the beginning.
9mm bullets stay intact when entering into your body, rather than exploding into shrapnel
like others.
Over the course of the next three years, Deborah had a total of 36 surgeries.
Due to the trauma her body had gone through, there were still some issues doctors couldn’t
fix.
As you can imagine, her physical health was not all that suffered.
Deborah experienced horrible PTSD after the shooting, and began seeing a counselor to
help her deal with the mental stress.
Not only was she afraid of being in crowds, Deborah also hated the feeling of driving
too fast.
She said the feeling of going over 35mph made her panic.
While she doesn’t know the exact correlation between driving and her injury, she thought
the fear may have something to do with losing control over her body.
Going out into populated areas was tough for her.
She would try to go to one of the Sunday second line parades in New Orleans, but couldn’t
stand the thought of being around so many people.
She was always afraid someone would break out a gun and start firing at random.
This is where she began practicing spirituality.
She decided she didn’t want her experience to ruin things that she loved doing, so she
began meditating.
Here she would talk to a high power and decide whether or not it would be a good idea to
go out into this environment.
Deborah’s story of survival against all odds is certainly an inspiring one.
She even forgave the men who shot her when she spoke at their sentencing.
They were sentenced to life in prison.
Deborah ended up visiting one of the men and prison, where she would end up mentoring him.
In the following years, she became an advocate for criminal justice reform in the United
States.
Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse for Deborah.
On May 2nd, 2017, Deborah passed away due to complications from her injuries.
She was only 52 years old.
Like I said earlier, every experience is different.
There are some people who walk away from their injuries, while others die instantly.
It all depends on the circumstance.
The lack of initial pain after being hit with a bullet comes from the brain.
You see, after being shot, your brain goes into survival mode.
It starts pumping adrenaline into the bloodstream.
From here, your blood pressure and heart rate will increase.
The air passages to your lungs will also expand.
This gives you a boost of energy in order to survive under an intense situation.
It’s almost like you’ve become a superhero.
Mind you, this doesn’t last forever.
Eventually, your adrenaline will decrease.
Once the initial shock wears off, pain will set in.
This is where Deborah’s burning sensation set in.
Some people describe this as a really intense “bee sting”, one that only gets worse
as time goes on.
It turns out that those who feel the bee sting are actually the lucky ones.
Others describe the burning as being so painful, it feels as if you’re getting stuck with
an iron poker that just came out of fire.
This is where you start feeling the pain.
Again, not everyone is able to avoid the pain of being shot.
The type of bullet you’re shot with often determines how much pain you will feel.
The larger the bullet, the bigger the hole in your body.
Obviously, the pain is going to be unavoidable in this situation.
On top of leaving a massive hole, larger bullets break apart into shrapnel once they enter
your body.
The more damage done to your body, the more pain signals will be sent to your brain.
The shrapnel can rip through your nerves and cause the pain to radiate outwards.
This means it starts at the point of entry, and then expands to other parts of your body.
Soldiers fighting in combat report feeling excruciating pain after being shot.
This is because they’ve likely been hit with a higher caliber bullet.
On very rare occasions, gunshot survivors report feeling no pain at all.
Not even after the shock wears off.
This is usually because the bullet has entered an area where no vital organs are located.
If you’ve been hit in the calf muscle, you’re much less likely to experience the same pain
as being hit in and around the stomach.
I’m not saying it won’t hurt, but you’re less likely to go through the same type of
pain.
So what about being shot in the head?
Believe it or not, some people do survive this.
While most people are killed by a gunshot to the dome, those who experience mild shots
with smaller bullets report simply having a headache.
Many don’t even realize they’ve been shot.
Some end up hearing a loud ringing sound in their head, one that’s so intense, it drowns
out all other sounds.
That’s enough to drive you crazy.
Some describe hearing the ringing from the moment they’re shot in the head.
Violence is a terrifying thing.
Our view of it has really been tainted by TV and movies.
There are so many other painful realities we aren’t aware of.
Let’s keep the conversation going with a couple more related videos, shall we?
Here’s what you should know…
Check out What Would Happen If The Bees Went Extinct.
You should also try 8 Secrets You Never Knew About The FBI!
Go ahead, click one.
Or better yet, watch both and learn more about the realities of the world.
Have you ever been shot?
Do you know someone who has?
Let us know in the comments below!