Regardless of one’s political views, this is excellent news. But how is the precious, precious gun? The poor gun is another victim here.
Not only is he out of intensive care but, thanks to the ACA which he worked so tirelessly to repeal, he hasn’t reached his cap on medical costs. Lucky guy.
I can’t really come up with any snark, and wish the Congressman a speedy recovery. (When they go low, I go high!)
Get well, sir. We will try to defeat you politically in the future but we do wish you good health and a complete recovery.
It will be a long recovery for him. What people don’t often know about gun shot wounds is that, with high powered rifles, it’s not the bullet but, rather, the speed of the bullet that does most of the damage.
When a bullet enters the body at a high speed (much greater than the speed of sound) it causes a large shock wave inside the body that will do severe damage to all of the surrounding tissues. That means that the organs near the bullet’s pathway can be severely damaged even though they may look OK on initial inspection. This is why injuries like these can sometimes require multiple surgeries and prolonged hospitalizations.
Pelvic shots can be especially problematic because of how much they bleed. There are a lot of arteries coursing near and around the pelvic bones so, when a bullet goes through one of those bones, it shatters it causing bone fragments to sever the nearby arteries. Sometimes the bleeding is so intense that the source of the bleeding can’t even be found before the patient has lost several (or several dozen) units of blood.
Even after Rep. Scalise is released from the hospital, he’ll probably need months of rehab. Also, he’ll be very lucky if he ever walks again.
Yeah, “if” he recovers, it will take a very long time.
Hydrostatic shock is why a .45 ACP round can kill you no matter where it hits, yeah. The body’s just a big bag of jelly when it comes to things like that.
He’ll probably recover. Very few gun shot wound victims who arrive at the hospital alive end up dying from their wounds. That’s been the case ever since the early 50’s, trauma surgeons are extremely good at this.
…a .45 ACP round can kill you no matter where it hits
That’s not exactly true. The lungs are extremely good at absorbing shock (they’re basically just large sponges) so chest shots that don’t pierce the heart or sever a major artery are usually non lethal. Also, a shot to the extremities isn’t usually lethal unless it severs the femoral artery and the person bleeds to death before getting treated.
Any high speed shot to the abdomen or pelvis is going to do serious damage, though, and high speed head and neck shots are almost always lethal.
I’m thinking about the infections.
Infections will be set backs in his recovery, but rarely does a relatively young person succumb to an infection while in the hospital. He’ll probably recover in spite of them.
The Colt 1911A1 .45 ACP has been known to induce fatal hydrostatic shock with shots to the extremities, actually. It’s not common, but it’s possible.
Mostly those are elderly and/or immunologically impaired patients, many of whom already had a number of chonic, debilitating medical conditions… It can happen to young, otherwise healthy patients as well, but it’s far less common. And, yes, I’m a doctor, so I’ve done plenty of work in hospitals including a medical residency at Los Angeles County Medical Center.
Edit: and infants, but infants also have weak immune systems when compared to young adults.
“Mostly those are elderly and/or immunologically impaired patients”
Your evidence for this is where?
Not trying to push buttons, but looking for data, other than anecdotal.