Hospital Again

A month ago, I decided to burn my hand off with hot wax.

I was going to wax my eyebrow (it was getting to the point of being just one eyebrow). I followed the directions. Put it in the center of the microwave and heat for 30 seconds. Too bad my microwave sucks. It was hard on top, so I tried to stir it a bit. However, there was a boiling pit of magma wax in the center that sprayed out like a volcano across my left hand. We found wax on our kitchen table and the carpet about three feet away from where it happened. I am glad it didn't get my face.

After watching most of Men in Black with my hand in ice water and it still killing, we decided to go to the hospital. I had about seven blisters across the knuckles of my left hand. It hurt unless it was in the ice water. Also, my eyebrows were still hairy.

By the way, how stupid is it to "rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10"? Yes, this hurts, but there are things that hurt WAY more and in different ways.

Back to the story.

They bandaged me up and sent me home with a prescription for Vicadin. Too bad that the next day while trying to change my bandage, the wax that was still stuck to my skin pulled my skin off. So we went bad to the hospital and they soaked it in a saline solution and tried to get some more of the wax off.

On Monday I moped around and slept. On Tuesday we went to a burn center in Seattle. There, they purposefully cut my skin off, put tiny bandaging on, gave me some physical therapy exercises to maintain mobility in my hand, and wished me luck.

At home, I had to change it once a day and scrub all dead skin and scabbing off. I am may have sworn. Once. Or twice. After a few days it seemed pretty healed and I only took the Vicadin for four or five days.

Andrew refused to take any pictures because it was so disgusting. But here is my almost-healed hand.



You can see that it was all the way across my knuckles and up my finger joints.

And here is Andrew being a good nurse:



And here is the bandaging:



I went to the burn center a week ago and the nurse and doctor told me that my hand was healed! It shouldn't scar, and if it does, it should be minimal. I need to continue the stretches and do things like play the cello and piano. I need to treat it like baby skin for a year.

So it has worked out pretty well. I'm glad it healed well and wasn't too painful over the long term. I'm also grateful that I didn't have to take care of an infant with one hand.

I waxed my eyebrows this weekend. Waxing is like riding a bike--you just have to get back on and not follow the directions on the wax.