escarpment

So I ate it hard whilst in the first 4 miles of my ride, I was turning left and went over a big patch of seemingly invisible gravel and slid out. Landed on my hip then my hand and elbow, No headshot for me, luckily because I was not wearing a helmet, I know.


My elbow has a long dermal rash and some skin missing. My concern is my hand though. I wont send pics because its gross but I had taken off my gloves, I dont know why. But I took a huge chunk out of the fatty part of my palm. Had I been wearing gloves That probably wouldnt have happened. Basically its the size of a nickle and its down about 1- 2 mm.

Anyways comming to treatment. I bought some tagaderm and put it on my wound as I knew gauze would stick but It kept oozing and the tagaderm was filled with blood after several hours and my skin was white, I figure it was too much moisture to try to contain so I have been letting it dry out for a day but I am very hesitant as weather I should put a dressing on it yet. Any MD;s have any opinions. Im afraid of getting my scab stuck to any gauze I put on and I feel my wound is too deep and broad for the tagaderm.

Your responses are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

SCochiller

"Shut up, road rash!"

longbeachgary

Sorry to hear about your mishap.

carpediemracing 

Not a doc but have had similar wounds. The tegaderm just fills until you get some healing done. I'm guessing on what happens but I'm guessing it's a layer of skin that most normal road rash doesn't damage. Regular road rash heals so quickly it's amazing (6 days is normal, 4 days is quick). Deep road rash takes long and I think it's because there's additional layers of skin that need to be rebuilt.

My experience was that I'd put stuff on the wound (nickel chunk taken out of my ankle in my case, and I did take pictures).

Put gauze etc on top to absorb leakage. Change frequently.

Once you get over the fact that you're going to change that tegaderm a lot, and that it's going to take a lot of tegaderm, you'll be okay. It's when you start skimping on tegaderm that you negate all the good stuff the tegaderm has done. I think I bought, at retail, $200 of tegaderm for that crash in the link. I bought many times more tegaderm when I bought a 100 pack on amazon (I bring it to races I promote - I'd say 1/2 is gone).

In the future I'm sure you'll wear gloves. If you think about it you'll wear long finger gloves all the time, even in the summer.

Heal fast.

sam83

You may want to look into a hydrocolloid bandage. Works like Tegaderm, but is designed to absorb. My SO took a nasty high speed spill and we treated her with Tegaderm and hydrocolloid bandages, depending on the type of wound. Magic. Will never go back to gause and ointment.

Myosmith

If you lost the dermis (got down to the fatty layer) in that nickle sized area, it will have to heal from the edges inward instead of from the bottom up. This takes longer than a more superficial abrasion. Tegaderm should work fine, just plan on changing it frequently until the oozing stops.

JimF22003

This might or might not be relevant, but I recently had abdominal surgery where the incision needed to be reopened for a half-inch section. So the opening went well beneath the top layer of skin, but not down below the fascia.

They had me pack the opening with gauze moistened with sterile water, and then covered with a regular gauze patch. I changed that out a couple of times a day. The damp gauze kept things from sticking, and the wound healed up from the edges in over the course of a couple of weeks.