General Cycling Discussion - New treatment for road rash??

I just ran across the following and was wondering if anyone else has tried this? I've always treated road rash the "traditional" way -- clean it, apply antibiotic, bandage it, and endure the pain/discomfort. :(

road rash (http://www.freewheel.com/mvw/cure.htm)

Looks and sounds promising for those serious scrapes. If I can remember the ingredients when at the pharmacy, I'll get some.

But, in my medicine kit, it's still spit and band-aids for the everyday abrasions.

Just reading the cure makes me go ouch!

Getting any foreign bodies out of a wound is essential.

My wife had her foot punctured with a stick once. The doctor couldn't find anything in her foot and for the next nine months she went through hell. She couldn't walk properly and was in a lot of pain.

Her foot kept blowing up and she kept going to doctors and specialists who couldn't find what was causing the problem.

Finally a podiatrist tried one more time to flush the wound and two tiny pieces of wood came out. Her foot was better almost instantly.

My wife came up with the novel idea of covering my not so deep road rash with tupperwear when I go to sleep. It is held on with gaffer tape. The tupperwear leaves room for the wound to breath, and stops it from spreading iodene or sticking to the bedsheets - last mentioned being a particulary painfull....

You look like a fool, but hey, it works great.

I'd love to be at the Tupperware Party where the hostess starts explaining "Now here's a new use for Tupperware .....".

Sounds like a great creative idea.

Except when it's likely to get dirty again I want to let air get to the road rash. I believe it heals faster than with a bandage over it.
Joe

The best thing is antibiotic ointment like Bacitracin. Also, try Vitamin E oil for healing and less scarring. For things like bruises, such as pedal klonks, arnica gel is superb!

thanks for the ideas.. i will be using them tonight.. sigh.. not only got road rash on my hands.. i took off the end of my knee(the bad one..) funny how you can find little bruises and missing hunks of skin after an hour or two... i look like i have fresh strawberries pasted to my knees.. grooosssssssssss.
anyways... worst part of this is not the cuts... they are minor.. its how i got them..lol
hit by a bike cop! now that was interesting.. and i was walking..fast from work.. hurrying to get home and ride....... crap..
oh well.. get out the polysporin.. i am going cycling.

Road rash-- you need to scrub the wounds clean. I don't mean a gently little wipe, I mean get the gauze/water and scrub it clean. Get every bit of dirt out. If you don't have the guts to do it yourself, go to the doctor or get a friend to do it. I had some on my back and having that scrubbed out was the most painful thing in my memory. You know you're in for it when the doctor says, "It's ok to scream."
To heal properly and with the minimum amount of scarring, you must keep the wound moist. To dry it out is to make it more painful, scar and take longer to heal.
Change bandages 2x a day and keep it clean.

Tip from veterinary experience. It is often difficult (sometimes dangerous) to bathe the eyes on animals. We use aerosol contact lens solution without preservatives for sensitive eyes so that we can spray from several inches away. This is sterile normal saline (0.9%). We also use it to flush wounds. So you can see that it didn't take any genius activity for me to automatically use it to clean my road rashes. If you can't get Tegderm or 2nd Skin right away, soak some ordinary sterile sponges with saline, apply them to wound, then top with some dry sponges and Saran wrap in place. This will keep the wound moist until you can get the Tegderm.

Additional vet experience. If you do use DuoDerm, it can be difficult to tell the exudate from pus, it does smell, and can look whitish. You should only use this under a MD's care. However, I have seen animals with degloving wounds (3 corner tears of the skin that completely removes the skin & even some underlying muscle) treated with this that had full wound healing in 4 weeks with normal skin including hair and minimal scar tissue.