That’s how long Doctor Faust (you have to love that name) says it’s going to be before I have all my strength back. I saw him today to have the stitches removed, which only hurt moderately since my skin was trying to bond with it. I also got back my MRIs and am wondering if there’s any market for them on ebay or at the CBLDF auction at San Diego. I mean, they’re of no use to me since they’re out of date.
But man, six months. It really underscores for me how absurd it is when you see characters injured and/or hospitalized on TV or in movies and they’re back up and around in no time. Consider when Josh was shot on “West Wing.” Although there was much exploration of his psychological trauma, he was basically up and around and back at work in a couple of weeks, even within their own continuity. Chances are in real life he wouldn’t have been back to work for several months. Then again, it’s nothing new: Didn’t someone once do a study that said Nancy Drew would have been a dribbling idiot if she’d really been knocked unconscious as many times as she was in her books? It’s just that when you actually experience surgical intrusion or trauma, it gives you a new appreciation for the gulf between reality and fiction.
PAD
Updated; Yeah, okay, I checked. I didn’t realize “The Midterms,” the third episode of that season,actually took place over a period of twelve weeks, which would be enough time for Josh to recuperate. Although I still think he would have been working restricted hours even after returning to work.
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The ineffectual injury and amazingly rapid recovery are two areas of comic books (and much fiction) that definitely falls into the category of “willing suspension of disbelief.” Not only can characters be hit or thrown into walls by super-powered beings, but they never break their bones, snap their neck, suffer head trauma, or wind up impaled on anything. (Of course, massively super-strong heroes can also beat up non-powered people without reducing them to stains on a wall.) I suppose it’s more dramatic to see a tough hero shrug off an injury with a groan and a shrug than lie helpless for hours, then spend months in recovery. (Oddly, one of the few exceptions to this was the otherwise utterly forgettable ICEMAN mini-series, where Bobby Drake gets a grazing gunshot to the arm, comments that it’s a minor wound, worse happens all the time — and them collapses from the pain.)
You might as well try selling the MRI: It sounds like you don’t want it anymore, and worst case you lose the listing price on eBay, which should be less than a dollar. I bet you’d get a lot of bids.
The only accurate fight I recall offhand is in “Witness” when Harrison Ford punches out the guy hassling the Amish. He punches the guy exactly once in the face and the guy’s done. There’s blood all over the guy’s face, as opposed to fights where guys get hit twenty times in a minute and they have maybe a trickle of blood from their lip.
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PAD
It depends on the person, how much conditioning they have, and where exactly they are hit.
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I’ve read a lot of your books where you say that it hurts when bone hits bone. And that’s not exactly true: it hurts when the nerves between your knuckles get pinched between them and someone else’s bone. That’s why people have to condition their knuckles, and why the girl punching someone hurts herself when Chuck Norris doesn’t.
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Also, don’t punch someone in the jaw, teeth cut. 🙂 …and it’s not nice, either.
Glad you’re feeling better!
Josh took three months to return to work, as I recall. Still probably a bit soon, though.
One of the most ridiculous recoveries I can recall in recent entertainment history is when Det. Elliott Stabler went undercover in the November 2008 Law & Order: SVU episode “Wildlife”, was shot in the upper torso while not wearing any type of body armor, and not only ignored his doctor’s orders to remain at rest, but went right back to work to arrest the guy who shot him, while limping. It was silly. Granted, Benson was busy arresting another member of the dude’s gang (who turned out to be an undercover fed himself), but they could’ve had Finn or Munch or Cragen nab the guy who shot Stabler. There was no reason for Stabler to do it.
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Peter, may the next six months pass as quickly as Erik Larsen through a library of classical literature.
Granted, it IS silly…but stranger things HAVE happened. A properly motivated mind can do some amazing things sometimes.
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Off topic, but to me the most ridiculous things on SVU are when the characters say “Well he passed the polygraph, that means he can’t be the killer!” (Polygraphs don’t work. Also, we use 100% of our brains. lol)
Just *please* tell us that you’re not going to try any kind of gamma-based treatment to get your strength back. That kind of thing can only lead to misery. And sales. Lots of sales.
After my valve surgery it was a good six months till I felt healed, but about a year before I was really 100%.
Peter, I thought the episode after the premiere spanned about 4-6 months and Josh still wasn’t 100%
Yeah, that’s what I recall. He was staying at home for a portion of that episode, and annoying the hëll out of everyone (via phone) with this crap he’d been reading about string theory.
That was my understanding- the season premiere picked up immediately after the season one finale, but the next episode or two spanned several months until Josh was eventually up to sitting on the porch steps of his building in badly fitting pajamas.
PAD don’t know if you read any of the avengers books, but Gage paraphrased your X-factor work.
Documentary on Quicksilver had Samson repeating the bit about having to stand behind someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Made me smile that scene still is being used to help define Quicksilver.
I recall that in the first 007 movie, Dr. No, M chided Bond for spending “six months in hospital” due to his Baretta misfiring at a crucial moment. When you consider the assortment of beatings, shootings, stabbings, and various other physical indignities 007 has endured, it’s small wonder he changes his look every few years.
Can’t speak about Nancy Drew, but some real life doctors had fun diagnosing the Belgian comic book character Tintin and came to the conclusion that the reason he never grew any taller nor seemed to age enough to need to shave over the decades was due to an after effect of the repeated concussions he’d received over the years. Or, as they put it: “Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma.” (I wonder if these are the same guys who once diagnosed A CHRISTMAS CAROL’S Tiny Tim character’s condition?)
I’m trying to remember if you’ve ever had any character recovering from injuries ridiculously quickly. I haven’t come up with anything yet. Maybe you’ve always been more careful about such things than other comic-book writers. I do remember that when Spider-Man had a concussion, he just stood by while Felicia pulverised Sabretooth, although the concussion wasn’t the only reason he stayed out of the fight. And of course, Stan Carter never recovered from his injuries.
(Whenever later writers tried to make Sabretooth unbeatable, I always thought about how easily the Black Cat defeated him. And it seemed completely believable when she did so.)
I hope you recover as quickly as possible in real life, and with a minimum of pain.
Only the Hulk, once in #340 vs. Wolverine, and once vs. the U-Foes in #398, that Ican remember
1.)In comics, characters like the Hulk have extreme “healing factors”, etc. Every so often, someone will try to use the realistic effect such injuries would have as a plot point like Mark Waid’s story in “Amazing Spider-Man” #600, in which Doc Ock is supposedly going to slowly die to the cumulative effect of all the concussions and other things he has suffered through the years in various battles. However, such developments are quickly reversed or forgotten.
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Tom DeFalco talked about this once in an interview. He said despite their strength, skills, powers, if superheroes really existed and they endured the abuse we see them all take on a regular basis, they would be crippled like many football players. heck, if Larry Bird’s back can give out from enduring battles under the basket in the NBA, how would Daredevil and even Spider-man fare at middle age.
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As for “Law and Order: SVU” it is entertaining – Mariska Hargitay is a great actress and an absolute stunner and is alone worth watching – bot it and “Criminal Intent” pale in comparison to the original at it’s best in terms of realistic investigations, courtroom proceedings, etc.
SVU’s existence can almost be justified – mediocre though the show is relative to the original, as you’ve pointed out – by one line spoken by Belzer’s character, John Munch. This was some years ago and the parents among the detectives were standing around discussing what more they could do to essentially wrap their kids in secure cocoons to prevent a tragedy such as they’d just been investigating. Munch is sitting quietly but there’s an odd expression on his face. One of the detectives asks what is he thinking about. Munch replies matter-of-fact “I’m thinking it’s a great way to raise a bunch of perfectly safe little neurotics.”
Spider-Man has superhuman endurance, so that could be used to explain any ridiculously abbreviated recovery times.
Batman and Daredevil, on the other hand…
But hey, if you’re going to accept that they travel everywhere by jumping from huge heights and swinging from cables without ripping their arms off their sockets (or even hurting their arms, period)…
In the wonderfully twisted satire/parody of superheroes MARSHAL LAW from Epic Comics, the Daredevil-type character is always walking into walls. As he and the other heroes are plummeting to their doom, “Daredevil” is thrilled that his hyper-senses work and he detects a convenient flagpole to grab! He reaches out — and the next panel shows his arms holding onto the flagpole, while the rest of him continues falling…
Rene – The Batman does take longer to heal. He just ignores it. As for the hurting their arms bit, ever see the pilot episode of the very amusing THE BIG BANG THEORY series? The four uber fan types are discussing some comic book trivia when their non-fan neighbour shows up enquiring as to what they’re talking about. One of the leads comments about how silly and unrealistic the bit is in the first Superman movie when he flies up to catch the falling Lois. “Gee, even I know that. A man can’t really fly” the neighbour replies. To which the exasperated fan corrects her. “No, no, not that. Superman is called the Man of Steel. His arms are like I-beams. She should have been sliced into three equal parts when she hit.” Which is why I liked Byrne’s idea that many (most?) of Supe’s powers are PSI based. Otherwise it’s Mission Impossible trying to get the physics to work.
I didn’t watch BIG BANG THEORY, but I remember that panel in MARSHAL LAW. Loved that comic.
Superstrength and invulnerability don’t really work if you think too much about them, for various reasons. The idea that it’s all specialized forms of telekinesis really seems the only work-around the many issues.
Was Byrne the first to posit it? I remember it was also a feature on MIRACLEMAN and WILD CARDS.
Are you really taking the word of a man who sold his soul to the devil?
I’m just picturing someone else slinking in and saying, “Dr. Faust says it’ll be six months — but I think we can run a deal that’ll have you back to your old self in one…”
And now I’m picturing an evil Howie Mandel describing the deal the banker is offering. Thanks for that lovely image, Tim.
The other thing about Josh was, even though physically he recovered, mentally and emotionally it took a hëll of a lot longer, as was shown in the Christmas episode later in that season.
I know. That’s why I said there was much exploration of his psychological trauma.
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PAD
I guess you’re no Jack Bauer…
Good luck with the continued recovery.
Will you still be doing DragonCon?
Kath here for Peter.
Current plans are that both Peter and I will be at DragonCon.
I remember an issue of Erik Larsen’s “Savage Dragon” that had a fiarly intersting take on healing factors. The villain beat SD to bloody heck and back and stuffed him somewhere, (a chimney stack, I think). As a result, his body and bones mended improperly and in comically incorrect positions. He had to get another hero that was strong enough to break all his bones again so that a doctor could reset them correctly.
Would you call me obsessed if I said that I’d bid on your MRI? Because I am NOT obsessed. I’m just a fan. lol
The Starwolf,
I wouldn’t exactly call “SVU” mediocre. The main difference is that in “SVU”, Hargitay and Meloni are clearly the stars, with belzer and Ice-T a few steps behind. The beauty about “Law and Order” is that the stories were always the star of the show, which is why characters could be replaced and the show would never miss a beat and in many cases(no pun intended) explored new possibilities – whether it be Carey Lowell’s constant clashes with “Hang ‘Em High McCoy” or Angie Harmon’s character, who was not only stunning but may have been the one character who was more of a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” type than Waterston’s McCoy. I find “Criminal Intent” to be brilliantly written at times and felt D’Onofrio’s character was never given his due by the network, Emy awards or audiences. he was like Sherlock Holmes and batman rolled into one!
The best West Wing one I can think of is when Donna is near fatally injured in the car accident that kills the general and is recovered enough to fly home within days.
Here’s hoping the six months go quick and we see a post saying, “Well, the six months are up, as are my bowling scores, and I’m ready to go climb Mount McKinley.” Or some other physical activity. Or mountain. Your choice, of course.
The ones that always get me are the car accidents, since that’s where my experience with longish-term healing is. People flip their cars, run them into walls, break through windshields, and then get up and either run or fight or do the Macarena. I look at them and shake my head.
Your doctor is named Dr. Faust? Seriously?
I’d be careful about making any deals if I were you.