Sandi Asks:
Where can you place a stab wound that wouldn’t instantly kill your character, but keep him around for a few hours?
Jordyn Says:
You have a couple of options here. One would be a stab wound into the right side of the chest. This could partially collapse a lung and cause some bleeding as well. Think of the lung as a balloon. A small nick to the lung could cause it to slowly leak air into the chest, keeping the character alive for a few hours, but killing him in the end if the collapsed lung isn’t treated. The more collapsed the lung is, the less it is able to function. The more air that accumulates in the chest, the more it will push other structures.
We call this a tension pneumothorax.
Imagine the right chest is now full of air. Air will keep building unless it is given a way out (like a chest tube) and can actually squish the heart and lungs on the other side of the chest to the point where the heart may not beat anymore.
If a tension pneumothorax is left untreated, this will cause the patient to die. They may die from blood loss, or low oxygen levels, or from the heart being impinged to the point where it can no longer beat.
Why not a stab wound to the left chest? This has an increased chance to kill instantly because you have the heart and several large blood vessels that come off the heart that sit there. Can anyone say aorta?
Another option would be to have a stab wound to the belly. All sorts of stuff in there. If you wanted the character to die in a few hours, this could happen from untreated bleeding. There are two organs that sit in your abdomen that have a rich blood supply— the spleen and the liver. The medical term is highly vascularized . . . meaning rich with blood supply. You could also have an infection set in and this could keep him alive for a couple of days until he is overwhelmed by sepsis.
What signs and symptoms would a patient with a collapsed lung (pneumothorax) have? What’s the difference between and sign and symptom?
Redwood's Medical Edge 
Without looking up the difference between a sign and a symptom (yet), I would think there would be panic at impaired breathing, abnormal movement of the diaphragm and ribs, possibly the sound of escaping air, the differing sound of fluids present where air should be, a less than pink skin color, and probably other things as well.
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Hi Heidi,
You give some very good signs except one is a symptom— panic.
A symptom is something that only the patient can tell us they are feeling such as nausea. A “sense of impending doom” is a symptom.
A sign is something that is observable and/or measurable such as vital sign readings or other physical findings based on a exam. You listed some very good signs. Strong work!
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