Meet Bruce!

Bruises are an interesting occurrence. They are temporary, bring pain, and sometimes just show up without you knowing how they got there in the first place. I never really paid attention to my bruises, they were just small marks on my body, typically due to my clumsy self walking into tables or other things. Up until the fateful, hot summer day when I received my first serious bruise that was both fascinating and painful.

I was at a captains’ practice with a handful of my field hockey teammates, out on the Naperville North turf field, running through drills and shooting on the goal. I was defending my teammate Makenzie (which is ironic because she usually plays defender and I play forward). While I wasn’t directing my full attention to her, she whacked the ball with her stick and accidentally hit me with the ball on the inside of my knee. I instantly collapsed, clutching my knee in pain, swearing profusely (I heard somewhere that swearing helps relieve one’s pain??) The pain was so overwhelming and unbearable that I thought that I had broken my knee or something.

Being the amazing friend and teammate that she is, Makenzie ran to the football coach nearby to get me a bag of ice. At that point, the inside of my knee was starting to swell up but the color was just pinkish. It hurt to walk or put pressure on my left leg but after a few days, I was able to ignore the pain as I played in practices and games.

As I iced and took extra care not to hit my injured knee again, I observed the progression of the swelling and color. I also thought of the name “Bruce” because it sounds like the word “bruise” (haha, get it?) So my teammates and I would literally refer to him as Bruce whenever we discussed how bad he looked. We like to compare our bruises to see whose is worse as we get hit quite frequently in field hockey. Anyways, now that I’m thinking about it, it is kind of weird to name an inanimate object like a bruise. Comment below what you think: is it weird to give your bruise a name?

*Disclaimer: I have included pictures of Bruce at the very bottom of this post, so if you don’t feel comfortable looking at them, then please don’t scroll to the end.*

If you saw the pictures: look how cool Bruce was!!

I was fascinated by the range of colors displayed on my knee and the shapes that constantly changed in the weeks that followed that day. So I started taking a picture of Bruce every couple of days to track the progress of Bruce’s healing.

It looked like a galaxy of some sort, with the dark purple/blue shades and blotchy patches of color. What piqued my interest the most was the dispersion of the pigment from the spot where the field hockey ball had hit me. The spot where the ball had hit me probably had the surface area of a quarter coin, but the bruise grew really big and spread to about nine times that size!

I wondered, why did the color start disappearing from the center of the round spot the ball had hit me? After doing some research online on healthline.com (very credible, I know right?!), I found that bruises are formed when the capillaries, which are tiny blood vessels, around the surface of the skin break. The leaked blood from the burst capillaries is what causes the tenderness and discoloration under the skin. Then the appearance of the bruise will start to change as your body absorbs the leaked blood.

I also discovered a timeline which matches the picture progression of Bruce below. The first stage is immediately after the impact, when the bruise is swollen and the color is pink and red. After about a day, due to the low amount of oxygen and swelling where the bruise is located, the color changes from the typical red of hemoglobin to a dark blue. After about six days – this is when the bruise starts to get a little gross – the color starts turning greenish. Now before you get all disgusted, this phase is actually a good sign because it means that the hemoglobin is breaking down so your bruise is starting to heal. As it continues to heal, it will turn light yellow or brown, which is the last phase of the healing process.

In my humble opinion, this is the coolest part!! In the last stage, the bruise will start to fade away. But it doesn’t just turn lighter in color, parts of it actually start disappearing all at once. For Bruce, he started disappearing from the center of the exact spot where the ball struck me, with the “magic eraser” gradually making its way towards the outermost edges of the bruise until all the color was gone. Most bruises take a week to heal, but I think it took Bruce a bit longer because of the severity.

Ultimately, I never thought that I’d become so fascinated with a bruise and that I’d give it a name too. Although Bruce was very painful at first, I am glad that he happened to me (thanks, Kenzie!) because it was an opportunity to learn firsthand about one of the human body’s natural healing processes, plus I got to show off my “battle scar”!

I hope you weren’t too weirded out by this post. I’m genuinely curious about any major bruises other people have had, so please share your stories with me below!

Photo Gallery of Bruce, who lived from July 24, 2018 – August 3, 2018: