Ezekiel: I’ve Connected The Dots.

Writing Traumatic Injuries References

So, pretty frequently writers screw up when they write about injuries. People are clonked over the head, pass out for hours, and wake up with just a headache… Eragon breaks his wrist and it’s just fine within days… Wounds heal with nary a scar, ever…

I’m aiming to fix that.

Here are over 100 links covering just about every facet of traumatic injuries (physical, psychological, long-term), focusing mainly on burns, concussions, fractures, and lacerations. Now you can beat up your characters properly!

General resources

WebMD

Mayo Clinic first aid

Mayo Clinic diseases

First Aid

PubMed: The source for biomedical literature

Diagrams: Veins (towards heart), arteries (away from heart) bones, nervous system, brain

Burns

General overview: Includes degrees

Burn severity: Including how to estimate body area affected

Burn treatment: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degrees

Smoke inhalation

Smoke inhalation treatment

Chemical burns

Hot tar burns

Sunburns

Incisions and Lacerations

Essentials of skin laceration repair (including stitching techniques)

When to stitch (Journal article—Doctors apparently usually go by experience on this)

More about when to stitch (Simple guide for moms)

Basic wound treatment

Incision vs. laceration: Most of the time (including in medical literature) they’re used synonymously, but eh.

Types of lacerations: Page has links to some particularly graphic images—beware!

How to stop bleeding: 1, 2, 3

Puncture wounds: Including a bit about what sort of wounds are most likely to become infected

More about puncture wounds

Wound assessment: A huge amount of information, including what the color of the flesh indicates, different kinds of things that ooze from a wound, and so much more.

Home treatment of gunshot wound, also basics More about gunshot wounds, including medical procedures

Tourniquet use: Controversy around it, latest research

Location pain chart: Originally intended for tattoo pain, but pretty accurate for cuts

General note: Deeper=more serious. Elevate wounded limb so that gravity draws blood towards heart. Scalp wounds also bleed a lot but tend to be superficial. If it’s dirty, risk infection. If it hits the digestive system and you don’t die immediately, infection’ll probably kill you. Don’t forget the possibility of tetanus! If a wound is positioned such that movement would cause the wound to gape open (i.e. horizontally across the knee) it’s harder to keep it closed and may take longer for it to heal.

Broken bones

Types of fractures

Setting a broken bone when no doctor is available

Healing time of common fractures

Broken wrists

Broken ankles/feet

Fractured vertebrae: Neck (1, 2), back

Types of casts

Splints

Fracture complications

Broken noses

Broken digits: Fingers and toes

General notes: If it’s a compound fracture (bone poking through) good luck fixing it on your own. If the bone is in multiple pieces, surgery is necessary to fix it—probably can’t reduce (“set”) it from the outside. Older people heal more slowly. It’s possible for bones to “heal” crooked and cause long-term problems and joint pain. Consider damage to nearby nerves, muscle, and blood vessels.

Concussions

General overview

Types of concussions 1, 2

Concussion complications

Mild Brain Injuries: The next step up from most severe type of concussion, Grade 3

Post-concussion syndrome

Second impact syndrome: When a second blow delivered before recovering from the initial concussion has catastrophic effects. Apparently rare.

Recovering from a concussion

Symptoms: Scroll about halfway down the page for the most severe symptoms

Whiplash

General notes: If you pass out, even for a few seconds, it’s serious. If you have multiple concussions over a lifetime, they will be progressively more serious. Symptoms can linger for a long time.

Character reaction:

Shock (general)

Physical shock: 1, 2

Fight-or-flight response: 1, 2

Long-term emotional trauma: 1 (Includes symptoms), 2

First aid for emotional trauma

Treatment (drugs)

WebMD painkiller guide

Treatment (herbs)

1, 2, 3, 4

Miscellany

Snake bites: No, you don’t suck the venom out or apply tourniquettes

Frostbite

Frostbite treatment

Severe frostbite treatment

When frostbite sets in: A handy chart for how long your characters have outside at various temperatures and wind speeds before they get frostbitten

First aid myths: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Includes the ones about buttering burns and putting snow on frostbite.

Poisons: Why inducing vomiting is a bad idea

Poisonous plants

Dislocations: Symptoms 1, 2; treatment. General notes: Repeated dislocations of same joint may lead to permanent tissue damage and may cause or be symptomatic of weakened ligaments. Docs recommend against trying to reduce (put back) dislocated joint on your own, though information about how to do it is easily found online.

Muscular strains

Joint sprain

Resuscitation after near-drowning: 1, 2

Current CPR practices: We don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.

The DSM IV, for all your mental illness needs.

Electrical shock

Human response to electrical shock: Includes handy-dandy voltage chart

Length of contact needed at different voltages to cause injury

Evaluation protocol for electric shock injury

Neurological complications

Electrical and lightning injury

Cardiac complications

Delayed effects and a good general summary

Acquired savant syndrome: Brain injuries (including a lightning strike) triggering development of amazing artistic and other abilities

Please don’t repost! You can find the original document (also created by me) here.

Request: how about Jake getting Zeke a pet

This was not how Jacob thought he and Ezekiel would get a pet. He expected to go to a shelter and pick one out. He did not expect to be on a mission and a kitten would end up in their clutches.

“Maybe it’s lost,” Jacob said to Ezekiel who was cooing to the small ball of fluff while sitting on Jacob’s desk 

Jacob had had a plan. He wanted a puppy. And while they were picking out the puppy, we wanted to spring the question on Ezekiel. This was not part of his plan.

Ezekiel looked up at Jacob with the most heart-broken expression. “What if it’s not?”

“Well...” He hung his head again. He was trapped. “Let’s hang flyers. If no one calls, we can keep it. But I ain’t cleanin’ it’s litter box.”

Ezekiel grinned brightly at Jacob. “Oh, thank you, love,” he gasps, getting up and hugging Jacob.

“Its no problem, darling.”

It was a big problem. This kitten was the thing they’d been looking for the night they’d gone for the mission.

“Its a what?” Eve asked, looking at the kitten, well, cub, as Ezekiel played with it.

“A nemean lion cub,” Jacob said. “In Greek mythology, it’s fur was indestructible. Hercules used it’s pelt as shawl to protect himself from the monsters.”

“This kitten was causing the mischief?” Ezekiel asked, looking up at Jacob. He seemed really upset that he had to give up the kitten.

“No,” Jenkins said. “That was his mom looking for her cub.”

Jacob bit his lip. 

“And by taking him, there’s even more and that’s why the clippings book is mad a us?” Cassandra asked.

“Precisely, Miss Cillian,” Jenkins said. “Now, I suggest bringing back the cub now to save from any further damage.”

Ezekiel had disappeared, the nemean cub left on Eve’s desk.

“You guys go on without me and Jones,” Jacob told them, leaving the other three behind.

Jacob grinned as he pulled Ezekiel through the back door. It was a couple days after the team had returned the cub to it’s mother and put it in the magical creature room in the library.

“Where are we going, love?” Ezekiel questioned, hands intertwined together.

“You’ll see,” Jacob told him, grin coming through into his voice.

He wished he got Ezekiel’s expression on camera when he heard the yapping of dogs and puppies, but it’d always be in his mind.

“Lets pick one out,” he suggested to Ezekiel. “Give it the loving home it deserves.”

Jacob’s free hand pressed against the velvet box in his pocket.

Ezekiel let go of Jacob and looked into the different cages of all of the dogs and came across the biggest one. His eyes widened and his heart melted at the sight of the Saint Bernard named Parker.

“This one, eh?” one of the pound workers inquired. “He’s had his fair share of abuse and abandonment.”

“Jacob, we need this one,” Ezekiel said, looking at his partner. His eyes had the doeiness again in them and Jacob knew he wouldn’t be able to say no. How could he to an animal that needed help.

“Can we go into the kennel with him?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah. Take your time. Let him warm up to you before you decide to take him home.”

It didn’t take long for Parker to warm up to them. He was easy to trust, like Jacob, but also held back, like Ezekiel. Both men fell in love.

“Ezekiel, I... I want to ask you something,” Jacob said, suddenly nervous. “For the past two years we’ve been together, you continuously rock my world. You are the love of my life and I’m happy I never showed up for the librarian job and we met when we did.”

Jacob dropped to one knee.

“What are you doing you wanker?” Ezekiel asked, a blush coming to his cheeks. 

Parker’s head tilted to the side with a slight whine.

“Will you marry me, Ezekiel Jones?” Jacob asked, finishing his proposal.

Ezekiel launched himself at Jacob and wrapped his arms and legs around him. He kissed him passionately. “I will. I will marry you, Jacob Stone.”

They went home with a ring around one finger and with a giant, furry, drooling dog. Ezekiel was mad he hadn’t been able to ask first, though. The dog made up for it.

On December 10, 2020, Brandon Bernard is scheduled to be executed by the federal government for a crime he committed when he was 18 years old. He has spent 21 years on death row. Five out of the nine surviving jurors that found him guilty and one of his prosecutors no longer agree with his sentence. Please spread his story on social media, email President Trump, and call the Justice Department to ask them to commute his sentence to life without parole. Brandon Bernard’s crime is incompatible with his punishment and we cannot allow the federal government to follow through with this.

Please click the source link to be taken to his website, which details his life in prison and ways you can advocate for him. In the replies are a page with specific actions we can take to help his case and an Instagram post to share.

Requests are open!!

I feel confident enough in my writing to have my first request post. Please feel free to drop one into my ask box!

every so often im struck by the memory of one of my college professors getting very angry with our class (art history of pompeii 250) because when she excitedly detailed the ingenious roman invention of heated floors in bathhouses via hearths in small crawlspaces, we asked who was tending the fires. she said "oh, slaves i suppose. but that isnt the point". and we said that it actually very much was the point. she had just told us that in roman society there were dozens of people, maybe hundreds, who spent every day of their enslaved lives crawling in cramped, hot, smoky tunnels to light fires to warm pools of water (which they were not allowed to swim in). how could that not be the point?

she wanted us to focus on the art, on the innovation of heated plumbing, on the tiles and decorations of the bathhouses, and all we wanted to do was learn more about the people under the floors. and she didn't know anything more about that. in fact, she said she thought we were focusing too much on superfluous details.

it feels almost hokey to put too fine a point on the idea im getting at here but i will anyway: There are a lot of people who are still under the floors. all these beautiful, convenient, brilliant innovations of modern society (think fast fashion, chatgpt, uber, doordash) are still powered by people working in inhumane, untenable conditions.

the people who run these systems want you to focus on the good - who doesnt love warm water? - but if anything is going to improve or change in our lifetimes, you need to examine these things with an attentive, critical, and empathetic eye. and for fucks sake stop ordering from amazon

Theres a head canon where Jacob Stone is one of Eliot's personas. Jacob meeting Ezekiel was hard because he had Parker screeching in his ear to punch him or to stab him.

Jacob doesn't want to stab him... Again. Ezekiel is a little concerned when he realises that Jacob looks a lot like a certain hitter.

“I heard you ran the nastiest crew on this side of the Atlantic”

I love that the Crew becomes legend in the Leverage universe.  I love how they become CEO horror stories, classified files in government facilities, heroes in the purest sense of the word for people who need them. 

As a viewer you get to see how human they are, how failable they are, how funny, how they can mess up but at the end of day, even we know, this is the nastiest crew  not just they’re the best individually at what they do but because they help people. 

Sorry i woke up and chose to be a simp

Flynn, smacking two slices of bread onto both sides of Ezekiel’s head: What are you

Ezekiel: A snack

Flynn: No

Aristocatic Librarians.

“I don’t get why you even like-”