SusiGo wrote:

Ah, yes, I see. Did not think about that. Now I am trying very hard not to imagine him wandering like that into the restaurant. 

Take slow, calming breaths and look at some of the many thousands of wonderful pictures of Sherlock with his clothes on. Well, it works for me 
 

TeeJay wrote:

I've also been trying to piece this together, and it's really quite the guessing game.

It was mentioned before that in HLV Sherlock says the shooting was "last week" when the paramedics come and get him from Baker Street. In my head canon I made it into five days between the first shooting and that day. It seems reasonable, given the extent of Sherlock's injury and the usage of the phrase "last week".

Let's look at some of what I think we can assume are facts. We discussed this elsewhere already, and I think it's safe to assume that Sherlock's main injury was to his liver. The placement of the bullet seems to suggest that is the most likely scenario, and it also makes sense. There are many large blood vessels in that area, and even if none of those were injured, the liver is still connected to many smaller vessels, so if you have an injury there, you ooze blood internally. Potentially lots of it.

I'm also pretty sure Sherlock had surgery that first time around. If he had enough liver damage to warrant bleeding to death, they must have had to repair that damage. He also has a wound dressing of some sort when you see him in the hospital bed that wound suggest a larger cut they made. Given the amount of pain he was in in those first few hospital scenes, I think the fact that he could get up and walk/climb out of the hospital within five days of surgery is not that unlikely.

What happens afterwards gets a little more sketchy. He's clearly in pain when he's walking around at Leinster Gardens and Baker Street, which is not surprising since he just had surgery a few days ago. When the paramedics come, he says his heartbeat is erratic and he's bleeding internally.

That would suggest he aggravated the damage they repaired and he's bleeding from the liver injury. So that would mean more surgery. As to how much and how severe is anyone's guess. We don't really know how bad the relapse was. Did they have to reanimate him again in the ambulance? How much internal bleeding was there?

In my mind, I find it hard to imagine that, given the indicators we saw, he was in the hospital for more than two months that second time, and even that seems long. At first I was gonna say: It's the UK. They have NHS (National Health System). They would kick you out of there as soon as they think you're halfway fit to leave. But I'm sure that Mycroft would have pulled some strings, so I don't think Sherlock would be getting the NHS treatment. Plus, he seems to be in a private room, which I don't think you'd be as an NHS patient.

But anyway... back to the liver damage. Even if the second surgery was more complicated, he would've had to have major complications to be kept in the hospital for more than two months. Of course post-op infections are a possibility, something that would require monitoring in the ICU for a week or longer. Then of course there are things like sudden blood clots that can cause major problems.

However, I don't think it's very likely that there were major complications, if only for the fact that I presume they would have mentioned that in passing somewhere. Also, I believe some time would have passed between Sherlock's release and Christmas at the parents'. When you see him move around, there is no trace of pain or discomfort or wincing. I'd like to think by that point, he's been out of the hospital for at least a month.

So if the wedding was in May, you could stretch the shooting out to September if we assume that John and Sherlock were in loose contact after the wedding/honeymoon but that they gradually grew further apart in the weeks after. (They mention in HLV that John hadn't talked to Sherlock for a month.) Add two months hospital stay and you're in November, and add another month of recuperation at home until Christmas. Or put the shooting in August and have Sherlock be out of hospital for two months before Christmas.

Does that sound reasonable?

Quite reasonable, and incredibly helpful. Thanks!
 

Another thing I started thinking about today: Sherlock had been held captive and beaten (possibly tortured) at the start of the ep. Do you guys think he was completely recovered by the time he revealed himself to John? Is it possible that he might have had any lingering problems from his time away that made his recovery from gunshot more problematic and prologed? Also, he has a history with drugs, including cocaine, which can cause heart problems. Could that have cause damage that made the problem worse?

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

Willow wrote:

My impression is that Sherlock has only recently stopped driving the nurses insane; that seems to me to be the explanation for why Mrs Holmes says:

'We are here because Sherlock is home from hospital and we are all very happy.'

I don't see a problem with a few months in hospital; the longest I have been incarcerated is nine weeks and I hadn't even been shot. As Belis has pointed out there are a million and one things which could keep him in hospital a lot longer than that, and it's difficult to imagine Sherlock being prepared to wait until Christmas for his deal with CAM if he were able to act more quickly.

After all, his client Lady Smallwood was going through hell at CAM's hands; from all we know of Sherlock's character he would have wanted to try and help her quickly, and the only reasonable explanation for him not doing so is because he couldn't....

I was actually hospitalized for more than a month with pneumonia and a lung infection.( I *should* have been in the hospital almost two-three weeks prior to that, but didn't think I could get medical care, and waited till I had to be taken to emergency)-- it takes a while to get over, and I undertand that's a serios risk from injuries such as Sherlocks?
 

Well, as you experienced for yourself, pneumonia really is not a fun way of spending a few weeks, and the problem with any major trauma- and a bullet to the chest is a major trauma- is that people get all sorts of things as a knock on effect. Pneumonia is one of the most likely because the injury immobilises you and the pain prevents you from breathing properly; Sherlock's morphine drip was absolutely vital because without it he would have died. Anaesthetists are very pragmatic people, in my experience, and are very well aware that the first need is to keep the patient alive; addiction as a result of analgesia for severe pain is extremely rare.

This is one of the reasons why I do not regard Janine's behaviour with the drip as a piece of mild revenge; inflicting severe pain on someone because your ego has been mildly bruised is not normal behaviour for anyone other than a sadist.

I very much doubt that Sherlock's previous drug use made any difference apart from the smoking which is definitely not a good idea; I suspect that nicotine patches may have been hard to come by whilst he was working undercover, and, whilst we did not see him smoking in TEH or TSOT, he was having a surreptitious cigarette in HLV. We will have to hope that Dr Watson gets him back on the straight and narrow path 
 

Janine might not have known what she was doing. We can't really say Moffat doesn't know, given that he had him die of pain previously. 

silverblaze wrote:

Janine might not have known what she was doing. We can't really say Moffat doesn't know, given that he had him die of pain previously. 

If she really didn't know what that infusion was for then it's another reason for her not to mess with it. Good job there was just morphine running through this drip. If he was more unstable and realying on inotropes for examples to keep his BP up switching the infusion like that would couse no end of trouble.

From what she said it was clear that she knew that stopping the infusion will couse pain. She probably didn't realise the full scale of potential complications but I think she knew perfectly that she will couse a lot of pain. Pretty mean thing to do.

miriel68 wrote:

I doubt such an in-depth analysis will lead us anywhere: her action was clearly intented to remind the public that she is not exactly a poor girl with a broken heart, as the original maid from Milverton adventure may be (have always felt a bit uneasy with original Holmes for doing this stunt) and therefore prevent the viewers from the feeling too outraged with Sherlock's behaviour. It also served the purpose to add a new element to the running issue of Sherlock-and-drugs in the episode.

Well, the in-depth analysis may give us a handle on what Janine will do in the future; I doubt that we have seen the last of her, so it's useful to clear the ground, so to speak. Given that Janine seems remarkably incurious about who zapped her on the head, and that she apparently sold her stories to the media before she had any conversation with Sherlock, I think there is a lot of stuff which fits into the future story lines.

I agree that it's also part of the Sherlock and drugs theme, but that is tied very tightly into the pain theme. I'm also sure that one of the things Mofftiss were saying is that morphine, in itself, is neither good nor bad. It saves lives, but it also kills people; it's all about context, a point which is often lost sight of in 'The War on Drugs'. One of the lives it saved was Sherlock's, and I'm sure we all agree that this is good 


 

besleybean wrote:

Sorry, how does it save lives? Dos it stop shock/reduce swelling or something? Or just by easing pain?

It just eases the pain. Being in severe pain considerably increased the mortality  in various ways so by extension you could say that morphine and related pain killers do save lives.

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

belis wrote:

besleybean wrote:

Sorry, how does it save lives? Dos it stop shock/reduce swelling or something? Or just by easing pain?

It just eases the pain. Being in severe pain considerably increased the mortality  in various ways so by extension you could say that morphine and related pain killers do save lives.

This is why I've always looked askance at fics that have Sherlock badly wounded, (like having a leg amputated) and then have the doctors denying him morphine (or any other painkiller) other than Paracetemol, because he'd been an addict. It's just cruel. 

And ignorant. Sherlock would hate the second almost as much as the first
 

Swanpride wrote:

Just for the record, in Germany morphine is prescribed way less than in other countries. There are alternatives, after all.

And to speak from my own experience - I got morphine after an operation and I realised how dangerous the stuff is. I felt great, like floating in my bed, not a care in the world. Then I asked what they gave me and they said it was morphine. They changed the medication as soon as possible because of its addictive effects (at least I suppose that was the reason).