I spilled hot coffee on my lap a week ago, giving me second degree burns on my thigh. I was in a restaurant, so I RAN to the bathroom (10 seconds) while holding my clothes out from my body. Once in the bathroom, the pants came down, and I put sloppy wet cold paper towels on the burn, changing them out as they warmed. The blisters covered an area about two thirds the size of my palm. It's healing well, in part because I did NOT follow all the advice I was given.
1. "You should have sprayed it with Windex; that prevents blisters."
2. "You should have poured ice water over it."
3. "You should have put ice on the blisters; that way, the blisters harden and don't spread."
4. You should have kept ice on it for 24 hours."
5. "You should have gone straight to ER!"
... What "helpful" advice have you heard people give?
We went to Alabama to visit my husband's grandmother, "Grannie", when she was in the hospital, and we stayed with some friends of the family. We bought flowers for Grannie, but she never received them.
The family friends were simply aghast! "Don't you know?", they said, "The flowers will eat up all the oxygen in the room!!"
I would rinse with cool water, and apply a topical numbing spray, provided the skin was intact ..cool compresses would lessen the inflammatory response ...IMHO
The skin was most definitely not intact, but it is healed now.
Be careful with the real advice. I don't want to get the Mods riled.
I started this thread to talk about advice from well-meaning, but medically uneducated people ... the type of advice that I would NOT follow.
We went to Alabama to visit my husband's grandmother, "Grannie", when she was in the hospital, and we stayed with some friends of the family. We bought flowers for Grannie, but she never received them.
The family friends were simply aghast! "Don't you know?", they said, "The flowers will eat up all the oxygen in the room!!"
These friends were also very sure that you couldn't drink milk at the same meal that you ate fish; you might get blood poisoning!
I think they considered me to be a city-girl, and therefore ignorant. It wasn't my fault; I just hadn't been taught properly. I didn't argue the point.
If we're going to throw out random folk cures. . .
My great uncle born in the 1910s had a great treatment for knee pain (arthritis). WD-40. It loosens up mechanical joints, should work well for his right? I will say the man could be seeing riding horseback until his late 80s, so there's that.
coolnurseclub, RN
30 Posts
Aloe Vera gel if not allergic