Let’s say someone shot you through your biceps. There’s a hole now in your huge bicep on your left arm.
How long will healing that wound take?
Will your left arm ever be as strong as it once was?
If not, how strong can you expect it to be? Can you still lift groceries? Do push-ups? Still be a Secret Service agent and kick ass?
Depends on what you mean by “healed” and on the type of bullet and angle of entry amongst other things. IANAD, but I’d figure that for someting like a .22LR with a straight through wound a bare minimum of 8 weeks to be able to use the arm for light work without pain. A large calibre, high velocoity bullet that went through on an angle, I’d expect 3 montsh or more to being pain free for light duties and 12 months for heavy work.
Once again, depends on a lot of factors, but in the best case scenarios, sure. It’s only muscle damage, and muscle grows to accommodate the work you expect it to do. If there’s no tendon damage you can always regain strength. You may not be able to regain co-ordination or be pain free but strength is simple.
I’ve known people who have had muscle hacked out to treat infection, and the regained full strength. The coordination is reduced, there is residual pain and the limb look weird, but strength came back just fine.
Impossible to say. The damage done in the form of the temporary and permanent cavity depend on too many different factors, such as range, stability, type, deformation, and construction of the bullet. A powerful bullet fresh out of the barrel that has not yet stabilized will be hideously destructive, while that same bullet farther down range would produce a modest cavity.
The easy answer is: I know people who have been shot by 7.62 x 39mm in the limbs and have made full recoveries.
The real answer is: It is impossible to categorically predict how or even if a person will recover from gunshot trauma.
MY bicep? Or a normal humans?
A powerful enough round, there won’t be an arm left, let alone a bicep to grow back on it.
Gunshot wounds are extremely variable because of the ballistics, obviously. Some ammunition is designed to create a tremendous amount of collateral damage as the projectile expends its energy.
But if it’s a simple bullet that essentially makes a straight path through muscle and just puts a hole in it, the muscle will heal fine. Normal strength should return.
On average, damage to nerves, vasculature and bone are much more significant things to worry about for extremity gunshot wounds, along with secondary considerations like compartment syndromes and so on.
I agree that a couple or three months and you’d hardly notice it. We don’t even have to always hospitalize GSWs with only a simple extremity injury once we’ve ruled out bony and neurovascular damage (and called the cops, since these are reportable).
I do not recommend proving this to yourself at home.