Crappola 2....

[Fat Tone]

Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery Doc. Who'da thought it?

[Helevitia]

Holy Crap! That is nasty looking! Damn Doc, I hope your recovery is speedy. Best wishes.

[DGhost]

man, i have enough of a hard time giving someone an IV. no chance in hell I am looking at that picture. sounds pretty freaking bad.

best of luck on the recovery though.

[Dr Mordrid]

You think looking at it is/would be bad?

Try having to re-do the dressing twice a day, especially when it means stuffing 8" of 1/2" wide iodized gauze packing all the way into the wound, filling it as much as possible, before putting on the main dressing & elastic bandage.

THAT's tough to do to yourself.

I do it because the wife can't stand to look at it, much less push the packing into the wound with forceps. Takes a bit of prep to do it one-handed though....

Dr. Mordrid

[agallag]

Sounds like a friend of mine who's family owns a cement company. One of the cement trucks was towing something (I forget the details) using a 6" diameter nylon rope (really big frickin' rope). He had his hand on the rope when if failed catastrophically. The rope basically exploded.

The force of the explosion bent his thumb back until it touched his forearm, tearing the skin between the thumb and index finger wide open. He had pictures of it during the healing process, and it looked a lot like your hand there.

The wound was open for several weeks while it was healing, so he was going through the same process as you are now. Very nasty stuff.

I hope you get through it quickly.

[Elie]

Doc, good luck with that!!

I can't believe the way it looks now, I would go to a different doctor if this guy is not good enough for the job.

I just came back from the best hospital in the world for Hernias, yes I'm also recovering from a right hernia surgery at Shouldice Hospital and boy it's painful, it should heal in a couple of weeks.

Regards and all the best!!

Elie

[DGhost]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
You think looking at it is/would be bad?

Try having to re-do the dressing twice a day, especially when it means stuffing 8" of 1/2" wide iodized gauze packing all the way into the wound, filling it as much as possible, before putting on the main dressing & elastic bandage.

THAT's tough to do to yourself.

I do it because the wife can't stand to look at it, much less push the packing into the wound with forceps. Takes a bit of prep to do it one-handed though....

Dr. Mordrid

agreed and understood. i could never be a doctor/medic/nurse/anything releated to medical care. while i am quite capable of doing that (and limited emergency trauma care), i find it incredably hard to stomache and face unless i am having an adrenaline reaction at the same time. since that tends to happen to me when i am near an emergency situation, it helps my ability to perform the skills I have learned.


*ugh*

[Brian R.]

I can do splinters. (Sorry Doc)

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by Elie
Doc, good luck with that!!

I can't believe the way it looks now, I would go to a different doctor if this guy is not good enough for the job....Regards and all the best!!

Elie

Thanks. My Dr. is well up to it and then some. She's one of Henry Ford Hospitals top plastic & hand surgeons with well over 20 years of experience. I know the good ones when I see 'em because of my 25+ years of dealing with surgeons and she fits the bill.

Leaving the wound open with gauze packing is a standard procedure for wounds that have infections, gruesome as it may sound to lay people. It's called healing by the third intention.

The three intentions are;

Primary intention: Wound edges are brought together using sutures, staples or surgical glue.

Secondary intention: The wound is left open and heals by epithelization (self closing).

Third intention: Delayed closure, meaning the wound is identified as potentially infected, is left open until the infection is eliminated through antibiotic treatment. This is me.

Sometimes with severe infections the third intention can include peeling most of the skin like a banana & hanging the extremity to keep swelling down, but this is typically reserved for inpatient care in an isolation unit.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jammrock]

I suddenly remembered why I don't like wood working.

Get better soon Doc!

Jammrock

[Marshmallowman]

Just heard on the radio, some reseachers in OZ have found that natural honey is quite good at killing golden staf.

Does your doc have a opinion on it?

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
Just heard on the radio, some reseachers in OZ have found that natural honey is quite good at killing golden staf.

Does your doc have a opinion on it?

I've read up on this for a while, and have a friend who's done her masters research on the topic.

There's a specific honey, "bush honey" that is amazingly good at this. It even works when diluted.

Here in the states, natural honey seems to work too (unpasteurized is best), but it seems to lose all effectiveness when diluted.

I use honey on my wounds and I'm very impressed at the results.

[Dr Mordrid]

That honey is both bacteriostatic (at 5-11% (v/v)) and bactericidal (at 8-15% (v/v)) is actually VERY old news. The Egyptians, Syrians and others were using honey to heal wounds 5,000 years ago. Some have also reported antifungal activity in honey.

The high acid content of honey can confer antibiotic properties. In addition when honey combines with water the chemical reaction can produce hydrogen peroxide, a well known bactericidal compound.

Research in 1999 found that honey can be effective in preventing the growth of pseudomonas on the surface of a wound, even if the honey is diluted by drainage from the wound. Since pseudomonas is an important pathogen in chronic wounds the use of honey on these wounds has also become an option.

Other treatments used by these cultures were certain muds (known to contain tetracyclines) and moldy bread (known to contain pennicillin), both of which are the basis of many modern antibiotics.

On the other hand honey can also exacerbate an infection under certain conditions because it contains glucose and fructose, which support bacterial growth.

In addition to this many Jews consider honey off limits because its production begins inside of an animal considered non-kosher.

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
In addition to this many Jews consider honey off limits because its production begins inside of an animal considered non-kosher.

I've never heard of Jews who consider honey Tameh.

I asked about this once and was referred to this item from Ask the Rabbi:

"Why did they say that bee-honey is permitted? Because even though they bring it into their bodies, it is not a *product* of their bodies [it is stored there but not produced there]."

(Which is not to say that there might not be some sect that refuses to eat honey. But it would be very small.)

Now what I find really interesting about this (and the real reason why I'm posting this) is the implications to the 'manna from heaven' story. Many researchers believe that the manna referred to in the old testament was an extract from an insect particular to the Sinai region.

IIRC, there's some sort of bug that gorges itself on the sap of some plant in the early morning and then bursts due to heat expansion in the afternoon sun. Similar in characteristic to the biblical manna, the residue that comes out of them is white and tastes sweet and milky. It also goes bad very fast, which agrees with the narrative that manna had to be collected for each day and could not be stored.

[TransformX]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
In addition to this many Jews consider honey off limits because its production begins inside of an animal considered non-kosher.

Dr. Mordrid

Honey is the only 100% cosher product to come from a non-cosher animal.
The other closest thing is gelatine, but it's not 100% accepted (and will probably never be).

The only thing I've heard about honey which are forbidden:
1. Don't give it to babies under a certain age (1 year ?), which has nothing to do with religion.
2. It can not serve as a sacrifice for god.