Part I: Gummy Wounds

This portion of the task was made possible by the Evil Human Overlord, who injured most of the gummies,* and Evil Sugar, who tried as hard as is humanly possible to heal them.

Wound 1 - Nomming

(An injury acquired in "1 Blank White Card," "Fun with Food," "Leave Clues," the SFZEROPRACTICAL, and various other tasks)

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Nomming is a fatal wound. There are no documented instances of healing after nomming.

Wound 2 - Hanging
(An injury acquired in "Leave Clues")

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Hanging crushes the gummy's throat and cuts off the bear's ability to breathe. In humans, this would be fatal.

Medical treatment consisted of removing the rope.

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Once the rope was removed, the wound healed remarkably quickly. After only a few (human)** hours, the orange gummy was released back to GummyLand.

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Wound 3 - Bashed in Head with Lead Pipe
(An injury acquired in "Leave Clues")

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This green gummy had significant tearing in the head area, and copious amounts of gummy blood oozing from the wound.

Medical treatment consisted of removing the blood:

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And reshaping the head:

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At this stage, the green gummy appeared to be functional (i.e., could stand upright). However, all scarring had to heal before the bear could be returned to GummyLand.

Evil Sugar decided to apply additional medical treatment:

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Wound 4 - Severe Burns and Melting
(An injury acquired in "Time Heals All Wounds")

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Severe burns and melting are a fatal wound in gummies. This bear was monitored for several (human) days, and there was no improvement.

Evil Sugar learned from this experience that fire is not a viable treatment method for gummies.

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Wound 5 - Amputated Leg
(An injury acquired in "Leave Clues")

While all bears bleed, the red gummies produce the most photographically striking blood, and the Evil Human Overlord has been known to rip limbs from the red bears and use them for dramatic effect. This has earned the Red Team the nickname "Blood Bears."

This fellow lost a leg to produce the additional blood needed for "Leave Clues."

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After the "blood" had been cleaned from the other injured bears, Evil Sugar surgically reattached the limb.

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Unfortunately, even after a few (human) days, the leg remained terribly scarred. Additional medical treatment was needed. Evil Sugar had already ruled out fire, and decided to attempt treatment using warm water.

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At first, it looked as though the warm bath might be helping, but it quickly became obvious that the red gummy was dissolving. Evil Sugar fished the bear out of the water.

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Bathing had made the gummy sticky. The bear had to be pried from the hospital plate.

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Evil Sugar noted that hot water baths were also not a good treatment for gummies. This poor mutilated bear was then put down. (NOM NOM NOM.)

Wound 6 - Beheading
(An injury acquired in "Time Heals All Wounds")

The Evil Human Overlord caught Evil Sugar attempting to heal the bears, and as punishment selected two healthy bears and beheaded them.

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Evil Sugar was allowed to tend to only one of the bears right away, and she promptly reattached the head of the orange bear.

Surprisingly, the bear made a full recovery, with only slight scarring. The head reattached solidly to the body, and even remained attached when the bear was turned upside down.

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The next (human) day, Evil Sugar was allowed to tend to the second beheaded bear. The severed head had not grown a new body, and the body had not grown a new head, leading Evil Sugar to conclude that bears have limited (if any) regenerative power.

With little hope for a good outcome, Evil Sugar reattached the head to the body.

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Evil Sugar was shocked to discover that, like the orange bear, the head stayed firmly in place, even when the bear was turned upside down.

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CONCLUSION: Beheading is not fatal to bears (assuming that the head has not been nommed, of course).

Part II: Human Wounds

The gummies were worried that their wounds, while serious, would be considered 'tiny' (gummies being quite small) and therefore not impressive/interesting enough to be suitable for this task. Therefore, they insisted that Evil Sugar also become injured, and then heal.

Thankfully, the task specified that the injuries could not be caused intentionally -- otherwise the gummies might have attacked. (They probably would have attempted to behead Evil Sugar, based on the recent finding that beheading was a non-fatal injury...FOR GUMMIES.)

Instead, Evil Sugar and the gummies were forced to wait.

Several days passed.

Then Sparrows Fall came to the rescue! Sparrows had (correctly) decided that roller derby was cool, and wouldn't it be fun to join up? As neither Sparrows nor Evil Sugar had skated in quite some time, a necessary prerequisite to becoming derby girls was practicing skating.

They went to a local skating rink. Sparrows skated the entire time without injury. Evil Sugar, however, got winged by another skater and crashed spectacularly into the floor. The floor of the skating rink had many fine features. It was smooth. It was a reasonably pretty pale blue color. It was large enough to hold many skaters at once. Sadly, it was most decidedly NOT SOFT FOR LANDING ON.

Nonetheless, after a short rest period (where Sparrows kindly sat with Evil Sugar on the side of the rink), Evil Sugar went back out and continued skating.

Upon arriving home, Evil Sugar documented the wound.

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The left knee had taken the brunt of the fall, and had two large patches of scraped off skin, and a bit of bruising. The right knee had gotten off relatively easy, with only a small amount of skin-scraping.

At this point, both knees were sore, and starting to get a bit stiff. Evil Sugar noticed that the wounds had denim lint in them (at the time of the injury, Evil Sugar had been wearing jeans), and decided to clean the wounds. This may have been a mistake, because cleaning the wounds caused them to STING.

Healing - Day 1

Evil Sugar woke up the next morning and documented the wounds again.

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The right knee felt pretty good.

The left knee was massively stiff, a bit sore, and still stung a great deal when touched in any way. The main wounds looked darker in color (more magenta than pink), and it looked like there was more bruising of the surrounding area than there had been the previous night.

That afternoon, the wound still had not healed. The gummies were concerned. After all, according to the gummy calendar, over a year had passed since Evil Sugar obtained the wound. Furthermore, Evil Sugar’s skin had been pierced, which (for gummies) generally indicates a fatal wound. They began to suspect that Evil Sugar might actually be a zombie.

Evil Sugar reminded them that human time was different than gummy time, and that the wound was still healing. Just very very slowly. The gummies accepted this explanation. Evil Sugar, though human, was important to the gummies. If not for Evil Sugar, the gummies would have to type up all their praxiorides themselves, which would be time consuming.

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The gummies sent in Doktor Gummy to investigate why the wound was failing to heal properly. Evil Sugar tried to refuse, but the gummies insisted. After all, Evil Sugar had worked hard to heal the injured gummies, it seemed only fair that the gummies should return the favor.

Doktor Gummy: The leg should be amputated.
Evil Sugar: Um, NO.
Doktor Gummy: We can replace it with a new leg.

At this point, Evil Sugar reminded Doktor Gummy that even in gummybears, this treatment did not work very well.

Doktor Gummy: Can we at least use some leeches?
Evil Sugar: Sure, why not.

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The leeches remained in place for several days worth of gummy time (about 5 minutes). The knee did not look any different when they were removed. The gummies started preparing for Evil Sugar’s inevitable funeral.

Healing - Day 2

The knee felt markedly better this morning. There was no pain as long as Evil Sugar refrained from bending (or touching) the knee.

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The skin-scraped-off spots appeared to be darker in color, and there was a fair amount of purplish bruising. The gummies wanted to apply more leeches, but for some reason they could not find any.

Healing - Days 3 and 4

For a while, part of the wound looked heart shaped.

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Other than that, watching the wound heal was like watching grass grow. But scabbier.

Healing - Day 5

(not pictured). The wound continued to look much the same. It didn’t look as heart shaped anymore, and was generally rather boring. Evil Sugar got bored taking pictures of her own knee, so today she tried documenting the wound’s healing using a poke test:

Basically, various portions of the wound were jabbed with one finger, and Evil Sugar documented the amount of pain/discomfort this poking caused.

Left knee, multiple locations - no pain.
Right knee, lightly bruised - no pain.
Right knee, heavily bruised - mild discomfort.
Right knee, scabbed - moderate pain.

Evil Sugar noted that the scabs had a tendency to hurt if they got stretched (e.g., b/c Sugar attempted to bend the knee). The scabs were also mildly itchy.

Healing - Days 6 and 7

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The bruises continued to get darker, and started to shift from purple to yellow. The scabs were still itchy. Evil Sugar resisted the urge to pick at them.

Healing - Day 8

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By day 8, neither knee was painful (as tested with the poke test from day 5). Evil Sugar wanted to declare the knees healed -- they finally had a full range of motion and no pain. The gummies, however, insisted that the knees still looked injured. If Evil Sugar was a gummy, they said, the knees had a lot more healing to do before Sugar could return to GummyLand.

Evil Sugar refused to accept such a superficial definition of healing. Evil Sugar didn't even believe this definition to be true for gummies -- it was the Evil Human Overlord who insisted that gummies must look pretty to be considered fully healed. Besides, surely the people reading this praxis would not want to see five gazillion more pictures of a bruised and scabby knee.

The arguments swayed the gummies. They agreed to a compromise. Evil Sugar could stop the detailed documentation now, and post the praxis -- but when the wound LOOKED fully healed, in accordance with the standards of the Evil Human Overlord, Evil Sugar would take one more photograph and note the total time it took for the wound to heal. Also, as part of the compromise, Evil Sugar had to disclose what happened to the leeches.

Evil Sugar ate the leeches. NOM NOM NOM.




* NOTE: The Evil Human Overlord did injure the gummies intentionally. HOWEVER, the gummies themselves did not wish to be injured, nor did they inflict these injuries on themselves. Therefore these injuries were deemed to be acceptable for the completion of this task.

**Gummy time conversion:
10 gummy years = 1 human week***
4 gummy days = 3.9 human seconds

*** NOTE: The difference between gummy time and human time was initially documented in "Creation Donation," a task which took the gummies 42 years to complete (i.e., slightly over 4 weeks human time). Gummies, however, are relatively slow to heal. Therefore the healing of gummy wounds in this task was documented over the course of several human hours, and in some cases days.