Knocked unconcious on a pirate ship

[sunsalute]

Can I pick a medical brain about how you'd care for someone that was knocked unconcious with a blow to the head? If there's experience with how it feels and how to describe waking up, that would also be super amazing. I know it's super dangerous and requires a hospital visit but this is fic-land and historical and they're on a pirate ship so we're ignoring that small tidbit.

Setting: I'm not going to lie, this is pretty vague. Whatever Pirates of the Carribbean is, ish? On a ship belonging to a relatively well-respected naval officer who's just picked up someone with an 'or alive' bounty. As little crew as they can get away with.

The Knockening: poor Character is headbutted into unconciousness. They stay unconcious long enough to be moved to another ship.

The questions:
-how long can they stay unconcious before breaking suspension of disbelief
-how would someone used to dragging unconcious bodies around check up on Character as they wake up
-how does it feel to wake up after such a blow
-assuming no lasting damage, what temporary damage can Character expect?

Thank you so much!

Comments

[dreadlordmrson]

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer!

re: contact sports
Canonically, he's been a martial artist since he was around 6, and he gets into tussles with school bullies regularly, so he's at least used to getting into fights and sometimes roughed up.

I'll definitely be going back and editing to add some fractured memories of him getting moved around between the accident and getting home, then! No more X hours of full unconsciousness for my boy.

He probably should wear a helmet. :p
Though in this case he was on foot and got hit by a car that veered off the road, so he didn't exactly expect to be in a dangerous situation at the time. And he had his fic-magic to keep him from going home in a body bag.

What I know about concussions has been, y'know, what I could scrap together from the internet that wasn't too contradictory. Plus the time when I was young that I only partly remember, when my mother had a very severe concussion that left her emotionally regressed to childhood for... months. And even after recovering she had some permanent cognitive-behavioral effects. Just being a little bit more volatile, a little less emotionally regulated...
And that was just from falling out of her chair at work! ...admittedly, onto a concrete floor.
But I know my personal concussion experience is not super typical and not a great measuring stick for how to handle more minor or moderate cases...

So thanks again for all this information!