Medical Questions

1. If three limbs (arm and two legs) are ripped (not cut or severed) from a person's body, how long would it take for them to bleed to death?

Irrevresible shock within 3-4 minutes from blood loss, brain dead in 5 minutes.

2. If a person had a condition where they had no sense of touch, if there was an internal injury or had a severed limb, would they still feel it?

Yes ... you feel pressure on internal receptor nerves. "Touch" is usually taken as meaning sensory skin nerves.

3. Is there any chemical or drug that enhances hearing, even temporarily?

Nevre heard of one.

4. How would doctors test for loss of the 5 senses if the person is unconscious/in a coma?
EEG and watch for changes:

Pain: you poke or pinch them
Sound: they test brain waves (EEG) while running sound in their ears
The others (sight, taste, balance, etc aren't testable)

5. Is there any single disease or affliction that can cause the loss of all five senses? If not what combination could?

What are you trying to accomplish in this plot?

For sight they would shine a pen light in the pupils. If they dilate then they should have vision.

A single affliction that could cause the loss of all 5 senses could perhaps be a massive stroke. A brain tumor depending on how advanced it is could as well.

Hollow said:

1. If three limbs (arm and two legs) are ripped (not cut or severed) from a person's body, how long would it take for them to bleed to death?

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Too many variables to say. It could be just a couple minutes, on the other hand, I've taken care of a farmer who had all 4 limbs torn off when his clothes got stuck in a PTO (power take off) It took the paramedecis several hours to extricate him and find his limbs in the pile of manure. Then it was a couple hours to the medical facility and after many surgeries and several (like 6-8 I think) months he went home with 2 of the 4 limbs. Crush injuries activate the clotting system better than clean severings and some people end up not bleeding to death but dieing of sepsis anywhere from 12 hrs to 5 days later, or dieing from congestive heart failure anywhere from 1-7 days in a hospital setting since the body is used to third spacing fluids during times of stress and in multi-amputees, there's a significant volume of tissue that is no longer available for third spacing so they end up in chf

Hollow said:

2. If a person had a condition where they had no sense of touch, if there was an internal injury or had a severed limb, would they still feel it?

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Yes, for internal organs since it's activation of a different nervous system. However they might sense it differently. Quadiplegics can get suddenly high blood pressure from urinary retention or stool impaction (autonomic dysreflexia) and they will usually sweat profusely above the level of the neurologic lesion

Hollow said:

3. Is there any chemical or drug that enhances hearing, even temporarily?

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strychnine, but will usually result ina painful death

Hollow said:

4. How would doctors test for loss of the 5 senses if the person is unconscious/in a coma?

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not EEG, for the peripheral nervous system, but maybe for sight and hearing and maybe smell. EMGs (Electromyelograms) and NCS's (Nerve Conduction Studies) for peripheral stuff like skin touch and motor innervation, however that said, it is unlikely that they would bother. Unless there was something very strange going on, it would be considered a waste of resources. They'd do supportive care and do simple tests like light reflexes for vision, following commands, pain stimulation and wait for signs of conscious movement

Hollow said:

5. Is there any single disease or affliction that can cause the loss of all five senses? If not what combination could?

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and still be conscious? not that I know of, except for extreme dissociative events like a few cocktails of illegal drugs which usually contain pcp among other things, or a rare head injury that would be nearly impossible to deliberately induce

Hollow said:

6. Um... yeah that's all I can remember right now....

I hope I wasn't too vague with my questions, and sorry there are so many. Any responses will be a great help. Thanks in advance!

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Hollow said:

Planning on using a fictional disease that destroys 3-5 of the senses depending on the person. Just wanted to know if anything like that existed already. I doubted it, but had to be sure.

About the limbs: I guess since it's a movie script nobody will care too much about the realistic way, i.e. bleeding to death in minutes. I might be able to stretch it a bit, but no too much I'm sure.

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Everyone who sees it will care about the realism. However, a person's entire life can flash before their eyes in less than 30 seconds, if that helps. Also drugs that can increase hearing ability are LSD and mescaline.

I've been threatened by tons of live beef on the hoof, attacked by a pelvis-cracking battering ram that outweighed me, and pummeled by a few tons of baled hay (not to mention any of the strange stuff), but PTO's are scary.

What's third spacing and chf?

hazellsephine said:

I've been threatened by tons of live beef on the hoof, attacked by a pelvis-cracking battering ram that outweighed me, and pummeled by a few tons of baled hay (not to mention any of the strange stuff), but PTO's are scary.

What's third spacing and chf?

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chf congestive heart failure
thirdspacing is the flux of water from intravascular to extravascular (from the blood into the soft tissues causing visible edema if there is a lot of thirdspacing.

You have sheep too? I make a point of never petting them. That way they give me clear space when I walk in the pasture and don't consider me part of the flock. That way, they don't try to say "hello" by butting.

southernwriter said:

Everyone who sees it will care about the realism. However, a person's entire life can flash before their eyes in less than 30 seconds, if that helps. Also drugs that can increase hearing ability are LSD and mescaline.

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Those just make people think they can hear better. It's an illusion. They also hear things that aren't there. Technically I guess strichnine also doesn't truly improve hearing, but rather makes people more sensitive to its effects, so that soft sounds feel painfully and thunderingly loud and lowers the ability to filter out extraneous noises. It has been used as a form of torture from what I've read, also obviously as a poison. I'm not sure if anyone actually ever tested it to see if it made anyone able to hear true things that would normally be beyond their range

Hollow said:

Planning on using a fictional disease that destroys 3-5 of the senses depending on the person. Just wanted to know if anything like that existed already. I doubted it, but had to be sure.
.

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If it's going to be a fictional disease, it is conceivable that some unknown form of encephalitis might do this and since it is hard for most things (pathogens, both viruses and bacteria) to cross into the brain thanks to the blood/brain barrier you could have it have a low infection rate rather than condemning entire populations in your writings. It could be an STD, or physical contact with a particular animal. If that animal is a non mammal, particularly a non-indigenous one, it could easily lack any human to human transmission if you only want a few people or even just one affected.

Baffled doctors call in an infectious disease specialist after the three day headache turned into loss of senses and partial muscle weakness of 2-4 limbs. "Well, Mr Jones, the spinal tap shows what you are dealing with is some form of viral encephalitis. Have you been out of the country, or come into contact with any animal feces or blood? Have you had any immunosuppressive medications lately?"

"Oh maybe. I got a steroid shot for allergies a couple weeks ago, and last weekend I did trip at the zoo and fell into a puddle after they had cleaned out the exhibit for the Venusian Swallowtailed Puddle-duck."

GeorgeK said:

chf congestive heart failure
thirdspacing is the flux of water from intravascular to extravascular (from the blood into the soft tissues causing visible edema if there is a lot of thirdspacing.

You have sheep too? I make a point of never petting them. That way they give me clear space when I walk in the pasture and don't consider me part of the flock. That way, they don't try to say "hello" by butting.

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Yep, I have sheep. I only got hit that one time, after that the boy kept a respectful distance. I do like the ewes more managable since I'm usually deworming or mid-wifing alone. They only attack when there's food involved, but it's pretty easy to stay in front of the mob most times.

So is excessive third spacing the cause of all edema or only in traumatic cases?

If you lost 3 limbs by traumatic amputation you will bled to death (exsanguinate) in less than five minutes. The arterial blood pressure is enough to send blood spurting from a single limb 3 metres (about 12 feet) so from three it would be Monty Pythonesque.

Paraesthesia is the condition where you loose one or more of your senses.

It is a brain injury usually caused through traumatic injury to the relevant centres of the brain.

There is no drug which enhances hearing. There are drugs such as LSD, Messculin, and other psychotropic drugs which enhance the senses by acting on the perceptual centres of the higher brain.

The Brain Death Tests test all primitive reactions. Touch, pain, babinsky, brain functions at the hypothalamus and hippocampus.
There are various tests to test hearing, done on little ones at a few months old and done on all suspect deaf patients. Any audiology centre will give the exact tests. Sight is similar. Taste is done through various test with different tasting substances and recording the patients reaction. Any hospital will give you these tests they are standardised throughout the world. Same is done for smell but using fragrances.

If you want a mass disease to affect all the senses then you need a small virus which will cross the blood brain barrier, there are several micro-organisms you could use as a starting point
Ebola, Denge Fever, Green Monkey Disease, these are tropical diseases but they all are deadly and highly contagious and pass across the species barrier.

I suggest the Oxford Medical Encyclopaedia available in most good public libraries and all medical libraries.

Just some thoughts. I worked in Contagious Diseases and Critical care as an RN.

You are welcome. I am glad it helps. Just send me a measage if I can help again.