how it feels to get shot

So how does it feel to get hit by a bullet? Plenty of ballistics experts and pathologists have studied the tangible effects of bullets on the body. But little research has ever been done on what it feels like to be shot, the mental and physical sensations of a slug piercing the skin and wreaking its internal havoc. The Chicago Sun-Times explores.

Here are some of the good parts (a lot of which also apply to most trauma injuries).

Interestingly,

"People don't even get knocked backward when they get shot, but you see this in the movies all the time," says Fackler, a retired military surgeon in Florida who had testified about ballistics in dozens of court cases. "Unless the guy gets hit in the head or the spine, the most common reaction to getting shot is no reaction at all."

Also, the primary reason why it takes quite some time for the pain to kick in on gunshot-wound victims is that pain can take a back seat when the brain is busy trying to figure out how to stay alive.

"It's called stress-induced analgesia," says Michael Feuerstein, a psychologist who specializes in counseling shooting victims in the Washington, D.C., area. "When you're in a life-threatening situation, your body goes into fight-or-flight mode. Blood flows to your muscles so you can either run or fight. Stress hormones are released that have been shown to reduce the amount of pain a person feels."

That isn't the only reason it can take at least a few minutes for pain to register. Part of the delay can be chalked up to the time it takes the body to rally its repair crews at the injury site, which can take an hour or so to reach its peak, Martin says.

Damaged tissue unleashes chemicals that serve as a battle cry, marshaling the body's infection-fighting white blood cells and other healing agents to the wounded area. The injury site becomes swollen, or inflamed. Tiny nerve fibers pick up on this inflammation and respond by firing off pain signals to the brain.

"By making it extremely painful for you to move that area, it promotes healing," Martin says. "But this phenomenon of inflammation takes a little while to get started."

"Gunshot-wound victims who die almost always die of massive blood loss," says Dr. Scott Denton, a forensic pathologist and Cook County deputy medical examiner.

When this happens, the body reacts by kicking the heart into high gear. Blood pressure plummets. What blood is left gets pulled away from the arms and legs and skin and gets routed to key organs, namely the heart and brain. That's why the body becomes pale, cold and clammy. People can get confused or lose consciousness. Eventually, there isn't enough life-sustaining oxygen coursing through the body.

The body is pretty amazing huh.