Moments of Permanence - An odd question: the colour of bruising

From: qem_chibati Date: April 9th, 2012 03:52 am (UTC) (Link)

Here via network - although I am not black, I can confirm that darker skin can definitely have some spectacular bruises, purple basically stands out on anyone.

IDK really about the milder bruises though. I can't imagine their being significant differences other then skin tone maybe masking or making it harder to stand out since the colours we see are from hemoglobin in your blood breaking down and being cleared out.

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From: sami Date: April 9th, 2012 03:42 pm (UTC) (Link)

Yeah, it's the masking effect I've been wondering about, for the most part. Especially half-healed bruises, where the colouration gets fainter.

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From: trouble Date: April 9th, 2012 06:03 am (UTC) (Link)

If you're up to dealing with it, you can use Google's image search for bruising.

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From: sami Date: April 9th, 2012 03:41 pm (UTC) (Link)

That's the sort of thing I fear, though. I have odd boundaries of squick when it comes to injuries, especially other people's. I'm always fine with my own, possibly because I know exactly how fine it is or isn't. For example, a couple of months ago I posted photos of my post-surgical, stitched-up, rainbow-bruised ankle. I would quite possibly be horrified confronted with otherwise-identical pictures of someone *else*.

Also, I'm not sure that googling for pictures of injured black people wouldn't wind me up on some kind of list.

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From: trouble Date: April 10th, 2012 08:16 pm (UTC) (Link)

Yeah, I can understand that. It was really difficult to scroll through and I don't have those boundaries. :(

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From: sami Date: April 11th, 2012 03:50 am (UTC) (Link)

I can imagine. Perhaps I should post an updated photo - my ankle looks more-or-less fine now. There's still scars, of course, and a bit of scab on the outside line where I had two stitches for the incision to remove the extra screw, but it looks as normal as it's going to for the next few years. (Until the scar fades a bit, I mean. I still have the very pink scar thing going.)

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From: deird1 Date: April 9th, 2012 06:18 am (UTC) (Link)

According to my housemate (a doctor), they'd be dark purple, with reddish bits when new.

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From: willow Date: April 9th, 2012 03:08 pm (UTC) (Link)

Can't help you out directly, I'm lighter skinned and bruise very easily (and tend to bruise red, to yellow, unless it's AWFUL, then it goes black, blue purple). But I've seen maroon stippling, black, purple and various shades of green on dark skinned relatives.

It's an odd thing, that I find myself thinking; how can you never have seen someone w/ darker skin bruise; I know how lighter skin bruises. But socio-economic class racial divides, etc...etc...etc...

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From: sami Date: April 9th, 2012 03:38 pm (UTC) (Link)

I seem to have astonishingly non-injury-prone friends, now that I think about it. I can only remember seeing adult friends bruised a couple of times ever. There was the time velithya had a bicycle accident, and the time flamebyrd had knee surgery, and that's about it apart from myfyr occasionally copping a bump at basketball.

My next-door neighbours when I was a kid were half-Fijian, but they were pretty light-skinned, and at that I can't remember Natalie, at least, getting injured much if at all. And thinking about the black kids in my class in primary school - well, the one actually *in* my class (the school was very mostly white) was Donna, and all the parents called her "the little princess" for a reason, and it's not because she was spoiled, because she wasn't. She was FAR too dignified and graceful ever to do something that would leave her with a bruise. She moved like a ballet dancer. There were other kids in the school, but I didn't know them at all well.

At high school we had a vast number of non-white kids, but they were all from the same Phillipino extended family, and since several of their number were friends with my sister, that more-or-less automatically meant that absolutely none of them were friends with me.

Clearly, I need to grab a couple of my dark-skinned present-day friends and punch them a bit until it leaves a mark.

I can see green making sense, because one of the things I wondered was how that pale yellow effect at the end of a bruise would be affected by darker skin. Ditto maroon stipping - it's red-purple stippling on me. (And generally accompanies something really painful, so: ow, your poor relatives.)

I don't generally bruise super-easily, but my skin temporarily reddens *incredibly* easily, and I can't imagine how an analogous tendency would look on dark skin. I was once accused, at an examination of my chronic shoulder injury set up by the insurance company, of having deliberately aggravated the injury to make it seem worse.

As evidence, the doctor pointed out that the skin on my shoulder was incredibly red, with visible fingermarks and accordant inflammation. I pointed out that *he'd* just been poking it. He said his examination wouldn't cause that... so I stared at him for a moment, then ran the back of my fingernail lightly down the inside of my arm, so he could watch the bright red line flare up behind it.

I have an Indian friend who can blush so hard you can feel the radiant heat from a good two feet away without it making a visible difference, so I'm unsure how that kind of thing would translate.

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From: trialia Date: April 9th, 2012 07:49 pm (UTC) (Link)

For what it's worth, *this* injury-prone dark-for-white girl (Celtic-Iberian complexion) goes from very brief red to gradually-darkening blue to mottled blue-purple to purple to green to yellow-green to yellow to gone. Rainbow, I can has it :P you should see the scary huge bruise on my left thigh right now. Not pretty.

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From: willow Date: April 9th, 2012 08:27 pm (UTC) (Link)

My people that have darker skin, are mostly paternal; and they are/were all farmers or at least living on the mountain. A slight misstep there, and you go tumbling, thus bruises. But also bruises from construction and my cousins and I could get quite rough in play. But I also had a chance to darker skinned friends and opportunities for everything from sea bumps to bicycle falls, and gymnastic failures.

Something to consider? Whether or not the individuals you're writing about welt as WELL as bruise. The severity of injury can also be implicit in the level of visible soreness.

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From: sami Date: April 11th, 2012 03:56 am (UTC) (Link)

Hmm, good point. A break in the skin is going to show pretty clearly on *any* human-range skin tone.

I think part of my problem may just be my very vague memories of childhood, possibly, because it's starting to seem weird to me just how rarely I recall seeing other people's bruises at all.

Or maybe I didn't mark them as memorable, since I *can* remember the time Ryan got stung by a bee and had an allergic reaction, and things like March fly bites happening to people, because those were more interesting, or something.

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From: willow Date: April 11th, 2012 04:05 am (UTC) (Link)

When I say welts, I'm not talking about broken skin. I'm talking about the bruise itself welting up. Welts usually happened with stippling.

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From: sami Date: April 11th, 2012 04:08 am (UTC) (Link)

Hrm. Then I'm not sure what you mean. I only know welt as a term for a sort of lesion.

Is this like what I know as a blood blister - usually caused by pinching, when you get a painful pool of blood under the skin? Or, hm. That thing where you get a sort of sharp *line* of swelling, also super-tender?

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From: willow Date: April 11th, 2012 04:13 am (UTC) (Link)

bossymarmalade has also mentioned welts to you down below. Not necessarily a line of swelling that's super tender, but an area. I believe perhaps you're likely to image it best if I say; a belt given welt, or paddle given welt. Instead it happens for bounces and other things that cause bruising.

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From: sami Date: April 12th, 2012 12:12 am (UTC) (Link)

*nods* Seems I misunderstood her, too.

Imagining belt or paddle-given only helps so much, since I've never actually *seen* either of those things... although now that I think about it, it makes sense for something like getting hit by a cricket ball. (A real one, the leather-over-wood kind.) Also results in mottled, stipply bruising, and hurts quite amazingly lots.

And maybe the massive lump-that-became-spectacular-bruising on my wrist a few weeks ago, when I accidentally whacked it just over bone against the shower tap, and it swelled so much, so fast, and so hurtily that we actually went and got it checked for broken at the ED. Is that the kind of thing as well?

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From: willow Date: April 12th, 2012 12:16 am (UTC) (Link)

Yes. Diversity of body reactions to injury happens no matter skin color or ethnic/genetic heritage. Though closer personal family history might account for some things (depending on your characters).

But I bet your roommates have seen welts, or perhaps remember getting some welts depending on their parentage and corporal punishment in the home.

But bruising incident leading to a very fast tender swelling up, so that the area is slightly raised to the rest of the skin, and warmer and softer - yes.

Perhaps you've been skimming your eyes over other people's injuries? I'm very surprised you've never seen this.

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From: bossymarmalade Date: April 10th, 2012 09:37 pm (UTC) (Link)

I have medium-brown skin and my sister has dark brown, and neither of us bruise very easily. When it's a really bad bruise, there's a dark splotch and not so much purple; yellows show up a bit, but it's mostly reddish-brown on us. Sometimes with welting, as Willow mentions, the area around it is reddened and puffy.

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From: sami Date: April 11th, 2012 04:03 am (UTC) (Link)

*nods, notes* Thank you, because that makes sense, and is also really helpful, because the primary characters I'm thinking of are either Kentish, in my original fic, who's medium-to-dark-brown, and Sazh, for fanfic, who's pretty dark. :D

(Kentish is a multidimensional maths specialist, for purposes of steering a spaceship through the method of FTL transport my universe has, and a secret hero. He travels with someone who's much more obviously heroic than he is, and he's possessed of a natural sense of self-preservation and therefore does not do the ridiculously dangerous things she does, so he thinks of her as a superhero and himself as her sidekick, a little, but Events Shall Prove that Kentish is totally awesome, especially when he saves the world. I'm kind of in love with him. This is a bad thing for characters in my stories, because terrible, terrible things happen to my favourite characters.)

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