hello, darling

Again, this all may be confusing because it's not true.

Prologue

I don't know if you've ever been in a fight. If you haven't, I suggest that you do not, and if for some reason you choose not to heed my advice, I suggest that you always carry a nail in your pocket. Yes, a nail. We'll get to that later.

There are times in cliched literature where people are described as going "white as a ghost" - this is a result of loss of nutrients the body, particular the extremities. The fancy word for this is hypoperfusion - hypo, meaning "low" + perfusion "process of nutritive delivery of arterial blood to vessels in the body." Ischemia is a specific term to denote an absolute or very significant lack of blood flow; chronic diseases, such as heart disease and sickle cell anemia can fall into this category. It is from the Greek ισχαιμία; isch = restriction, hema = blood. Again, we'll get to that later.

Shock is the non-fancy term for all of the above.

shock
n.
1.

• a. A violent collision or impact; a heavy blow. See Synonyms at collision.
• b. The effect of such a collision or blow.

2.

• a. Something that jars the mind or emotions as if with a violent unexpected blow.
• b. The disturbance of function, equilibrium, or mental faculties caused by such a blow; violent agitation.

3. A severe offense to one's sense of propriety or decency; an outrage.

There are four different categories of shock - hypovolemic, obstructive, distributive, and cardiogenic. While they all have specific and distinct reasons for occurring, they all result in essentially the same thing. What we're concerned about here is hypovolemic. The type of shock people get from trauma, usually; it's the result of blood loss. The adult human body has about 4 to 6 quarts of blood in it. That comes out to approx 1 to 1.5 gallons. Remember that kids have even less.

Hypovolemic shock is the result of there not being enough blood to move around oxygen everywhere (hypoperfusion) because a good portion of your 1 to 1.5 gallons is now splattered across the bedroom floor; thus, the body is not getting the nutrients it needs to function. The result of the skin being white and clammy is that the body - in an amazing display of self-preservation - has rerouted all blood to vital organs in order to try to keep working. The heart rate has maybe doubled because it's attempting to move less blood around that vast desert void of your viscera. You feel anxious and cold. You're thirsty because of how much fluid you've lost in this whole ordeal and so you drink water. You then throw it up. The first semi-essential organ to shut down is your digestive system and you've just found this out the hard way, because now you have a large amount of stomach acid interrupting your blood pH balance and it's not like you have a lot of leeway room in that area at the moment. Things are starting to get confusing.

You have approx 45 minutes to an hour to get this sorted out before your kidneys go. Once they go, you're done. And that, my friend, is not the most dignified way to die. At all. No, not in the least.

Take my advice. Never get into a fight. And if you're one of those stubborn, prideful idiots - the kind that would rather lose a battle so that their war comprised mostly of ideals (outside of this one particularly bloody and unfortunate incident) can continue on - remember that this all could have been avoided had you just carried that nail in your pocket.