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This post is long and contains photoes of wounds that might be hard to watch.
Apologies in advence.
This last September I got a 2rd degree burn from boiling milk+mashed potato on my right wrist.
So the top layers of the skin were seperated from the wrist.
I didn't take any pictures at that point so I goggled a similar wound:
I had just read the Lapodin thread and had it fresh in my mind that it helped with fresh burns - by not allowing inflammation to set in.
So I started using Lapodin plus a Progesterone cream (Natpro) that also has vitamin E in it, maybe that helped too. And the ethanol in the Lapodin may have played a part also.
In the first couple of days I had a regular gauze to protect it:
*** All the pictures from now on are my actual wrist
Dec 17 2018
As You can see there's the main burn in the middle, where the skin really seperated, and 2 smaller burns above it. The orange tinge right around it is from the Lapodin.
Also there's also a big round reddish circle around the whole thing from the roung gauze I was using that was causing irritation that became a little inflamed in itself later on.
As a scab was beginning to form, I remembered Ray Peat's interview where he talks about 2 people who had their finger choppet off at the tip, and that keeping it sealed prevented a scab plus kept CO2 near the wound, and both those things helped healing.
So I took a regular plastic sandwich bag and cleaned it with a couple drops of Lapodin (it has ethanol in it), and put that over the Lapodin+Progesterone cream on the wound.
In the picture below, just 2 days later, you can see the little burns beginning to heal, the big wound's thin scab was peeled off from the moisture so it is kinda raw and sticky in this photo, and the irritation around was becoming little wounds, the redqbrown spots around.
Now, something interesting happened here -
when I took the plastic bag off of it in the morning to see it and to scratch the damn itch, because the skin was still very damp a little bit of it peeled off from the scratching (apologies to the faint of heart).
It didn't seem like a big deal, it didn't bleed or anything, but it came to serve as a kind of control for a wound in the same area, which doesn't get much blood flow and therefore heals slowly.
The yellow arrow points to this new wound:
This is what it looked like with the plastic bag:
And here's how it looked on Dec 25 2018, 10 days after the initial burn.
This one's a little gross, but you can really see all the redness from the irritation, this is how it looked right after removing the plastic bag:
The orange/brown stuff is the dry lapodin that I couldn't scrub off so close to the wound, so the stains stayed for a few days.
The big burn is barely noticable, it's down to a little red circle, but the scratch wound is getting the usual treatment from mother nature - raised scab surrounded by pink inflamed skin.
The next one is Dec 26, 2019, and by now the original burn is basicly healed, only a light pink hue gives you a clue that it was there.
Everything else is a mess created by crappy management, by not bein diligent with replacing the plastic bag often enough and by irritation from the moisture that I wasn't sure what to do about:
I stopped using the plastic bag because the itchiness and inflammation were too much,
This is Dec 29, 2018:
And the next one is Jan 1 ,2019:
Here the burn wound is completely healed, the stains from the Lapodin still make the skin look kinda dirty, and the scratching wound has no scab on it but is still raised and inflamed.
And the last one is from Jan 23,2019, about a month and a half after the burn.
The burn is gone with the faintest pinkish scar, which I don't think would be there if I had been more religious in maintaining the wound, and if I had figuered out a way to keep it moist under the plastic bag for another day or two.
The scratching wound is healing very very slowly and I still have a little purple scar there now.
So lessons learned:
1) Lapodin+Progesterone+vitamin E+ sealing the wound healed it far more fully and quickly that it would naturally. I would definitely use it again if I injure my skin anyway' nit just burn it.
Maybe next time i'll add some T3 to the mix.
2) DON'T SCRATCH the damp skin right after exposing it, even though I really really want to.
3) Re-wrap the wound several times a day,even if it gets on my nerves.
4) Figure out a way to handle the inflammation in the healthy skin around the wound. I think it's just caused from the moisture, and i'm not quite sure what to do about it if I have to do this again. Maybe i'll have to just ride out the iritation.
Apologies in advence.
This last September I got a 2rd degree burn from boiling milk+mashed potato on my right wrist.
So the top layers of the skin were seperated from the wrist.
I didn't take any pictures at that point so I goggled a similar wound:
I had just read the Lapodin thread and had it fresh in my mind that it helped with fresh burns - by not allowing inflammation to set in.
So I started using Lapodin plus a Progesterone cream (Natpro) that also has vitamin E in it, maybe that helped too. And the ethanol in the Lapodin may have played a part also.
In the first couple of days I had a regular gauze to protect it:
*** All the pictures from now on are my actual wrist
Dec 17 2018
As You can see there's the main burn in the middle, where the skin really seperated, and 2 smaller burns above it. The orange tinge right around it is from the Lapodin.
Also there's also a big round reddish circle around the whole thing from the roung gauze I was using that was causing irritation that became a little inflamed in itself later on.
As a scab was beginning to form, I remembered Ray Peat's interview where he talks about 2 people who had their finger choppet off at the tip, and that keeping it sealed prevented a scab plus kept CO2 near the wound, and both those things helped healing.
So I took a regular plastic sandwich bag and cleaned it with a couple drops of Lapodin (it has ethanol in it), and put that over the Lapodin+Progesterone cream on the wound.
In the picture below, just 2 days later, you can see the little burns beginning to heal, the big wound's thin scab was peeled off from the moisture so it is kinda raw and sticky in this photo, and the irritation around was becoming little wounds, the redqbrown spots around.
Now, something interesting happened here -
when I took the plastic bag off of it in the morning to see it and to scratch the damn itch, because the skin was still very damp a little bit of it peeled off from the scratching (apologies to the faint of heart).
It didn't seem like a big deal, it didn't bleed or anything, but it came to serve as a kind of control for a wound in the same area, which doesn't get much blood flow and therefore heals slowly.
The yellow arrow points to this new wound:
This is what it looked like with the plastic bag:
And here's how it looked on Dec 25 2018, 10 days after the initial burn.
This one's a little gross, but you can really see all the redness from the irritation, this is how it looked right after removing the plastic bag:
The orange/brown stuff is the dry lapodin that I couldn't scrub off so close to the wound, so the stains stayed for a few days.
The big burn is barely noticable, it's down to a little red circle, but the scratch wound is getting the usual treatment from mother nature - raised scab surrounded by pink inflamed skin.
The next one is Dec 26, 2019, and by now the original burn is basicly healed, only a light pink hue gives you a clue that it was there.
Everything else is a mess created by crappy management, by not bein diligent with replacing the plastic bag often enough and by irritation from the moisture that I wasn't sure what to do about:
I stopped using the plastic bag because the itchiness and inflammation were too much,
This is Dec 29, 2018:
And the next one is Jan 1 ,2019:
Here the burn wound is completely healed, the stains from the Lapodin still make the skin look kinda dirty, and the scratching wound has no scab on it but is still raised and inflamed.
And the last one is from Jan 23,2019, about a month and a half after the burn.
The burn is gone with the faintest pinkish scar, which I don't think would be there if I had been more religious in maintaining the wound, and if I had figuered out a way to keep it moist under the plastic bag for another day or two.
The scratching wound is healing very very slowly and I still have a little purple scar there now.
So lessons learned:
1) Lapodin+Progesterone+vitamin E+ sealing the wound healed it far more fully and quickly that it would naturally. I would definitely use it again if I injure my skin anyway' nit just burn it.
Maybe next time i'll add some T3 to the mix.
2) DON'T SCRATCH the damp skin right after exposing it, even though I really really want to.
3) Re-wrap the wound several times a day,even if it gets on my nerves.
4) Figure out a way to handle the inflammation in the healthy skin around the wound. I think it's just caused from the moisture, and i'm not quite sure what to do about it if I have to do this again. Maybe i'll have to just ride out the iritation.