Knife in the back

[snopes]

Comment: Daily mail in 1999 had story about 60 year old woman who was
stabbed in back and did not know it then went shopping and took
"transportation" home. Only when she got home did daughter notice the
knife. Apparently, store video shows the lady shopping with the knife
sticking out and no one told her. I have seen several other "knife in
back" stories on the net where person didn't know they had been stabbed.

Having taken care of a lot of stabbing victims I am not convinced that the
story is all true.

[crocoduck_hunter]

You'd have to have serious loss of feeling before you could legitimately be stabbed so hard that the knife was able to embed itself in your back without falling out for several hours of activity without noticing it once. Not just lack of pain- you'd have to avoid noticing that there was something odd when you moved your spine as the muscles and bones rubbed against the blade.

[Esprise Me]

I suppose if the knife severed the spine, you might not feel it. But you wouldn't be doing much walking around in that case.

[diddy]

I would think that in either scenario of you were stabbed that hard you would either feel it going in or you wouldn't be going through your day.

[A Turtle Named Mack]

Maybe a person could wear a heavy coat and have a knife stuck into that, such that when walking around it would stick out fairly straight, but in the process of sitting in a car or transit, the knife could be pushed sideways.

[crocoduck_hunter]

You'd still have to be pretty insensitive to not notice it.

[mags]

Untold Stories of the ER is not precisely a documentary, but it is doctors telling stories of things they say happened to them, which are then reenacted. One episode did feature a story of a man who was brought into the ER with a knife in his back, but he was adamant he hadn't been stabbed. When they showed him an x-ray of it, he claimed it was made up, so they could charge him money. He even tried to leave.

I would think it would be hard to miss, but maybe a combination of shock and denial can make it possible to evidently be unaware.

Eta: another supposed case: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...nt-notice.html

[Troberg]

There was an incident in my home town, some 25 years ago, when a guy was out partying, and on his way home late at night he thought someone accidentally shoved him. He didn't notice the knife until he got home and took off his jacket, and the knife fell to the floor. The guy had been drinking, but was still more or less sober according to the police report.

So, a sharp knife hitting in the right spot can be pretty painless.

[Mickey Blue]

Yea it doesn't quite compare to the story but we had a similar case in an ER I worked at where a guy thought somebody pushed him and later found that he had been stabbed with a screwdriver.

He was in pain but just thought he got hurt when he was pushed/punched out of the way, it wasn't until he started taking his clothes off at home that noticed he'd been stabbed.