Bruising

What is bruising?

Bruising (in Dutch blauwe plekken, medically a contusion or hematoma) is the scene name for bruises as a wanted result of impact play. On checklists it sits apart from the hitting itself. The act isn’t the point. What’s still visible days later is.

How a bruise works

A bruise is, per the encyclopedia, a form of hematoma in tissue, usually caused when capillaries are damaged by a blow and blood is released locally. Thuisarts.nl puts it more briefly: a blood vessel in your skin has broken, and that’s how blood got into your skin.

The colors come from the breakdown of hemoglobin: red and blue on a fresh bruise, green from biliverdin, yellow from bilirubin, and golden-brown from hemosiderin. Thuisarts.nl lists the same order in Dutch: first blue, red, dark brown or black, and after a day or two the color changes. What people think they can read from that is rarely right. A systematic review by Maguire and colleagues in Archives of Disease in Childhood found that every color can show up on fresh, mid-aged and old bruises, and that estimating a bruise’s age from its color has “no scientific basis.”

On duration both sources agree. Light bruises heal almost completely within two weeks, and after about two weeks the color is usually gone.

What to watch for

Cool the spot as fast as you can once it forms. About fifteen minutes with an ice pack or a cold cloth is what thuisarts.nl advises, and it changes how big the bruise ends up.

Stay off the tailbone and the hip bones. That’s the recommendation that goes with spanking, and it holds here just as well, because a bruise over bone is a different kind of damage than one in fleshy tissue. Blunt objects also reach deeper than sharp ones, so they leave a bruise sooner than a welt.

When do you call a doctor? Make an appointment if the bruise hasn’t gotten smaller after two weeks or the pain hasn’t eased. Call right away if you get several bruises within 24 hours with no clear cause, if there are signs of inflammation, after a hard blow to the head, or with bruises around both eyes.

Sources

• Ik heb een blauwe plek. Thuisarts.nl, Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap. Provides the description of a broken blood vessel in the skin, the color progression, the duration of about two weeks, the cooling advice of about fifteen minutes, and the situations in which you call the doctor.
• Bruise. Wikipedia. Provides the definition as a hematoma in tissue from damaged capillaries, the pigments behind the progression from red and blue to green, yellow and golden-brown, and the healing of light bruises within two weeks.
• Can you age bruises accurately in children? A systematic review. Sabine Maguire, Mala K. Mann, John Sibert & Alison Kemp, Archives of Disease in Childhood 90(2), 187–189, 2005. Provides the finding that every color can occur on fresh, mid-aged and old bruises, and that estimating a bruise’s age from its color has “no scientific basis.”
• Erotic spanking. Wikipedia. Provides the recommendation to avoid the tailbone and the hip bones, and the distinction between sharp and blunt objects, where the blunt ones penetrate deeper into the tissue.

Related terms

• Spanking. The act these marks most often come from, with the safe spots.
• Birch rod. A tool that pricks the surface instead, so it leaves less bruising.
• Bastinado. The opposite: a lot of pain, little to see, and exactly why it’s harder to dose.
• Fire cupping. A mark made by suction instead of a blow.
• Fireplay. Play that’s meant to leave no mark on the skin at all.
• Marking. The mark as a goal in itself, with the agreement about spot and duration that goes with it.
• Nawa-ato. The lightest mark of all: rope impressions that are gone within a day.
• Impact play is where bruises come from, and edgeplay the corner where they form the fastest.