Indian Burn

A few weeks ago I posted about my love of Mederma, lotion for clumsy people. Well, I've unearthed those photos from the last time I f-ed up this same ankle.

**Insert misty transition to flash-back**

It was senior year of college and I was about to enjoy the most delicious delivery food ever- Indian. Chicken Tikka Masala, to be exact. It's chicken floating in a red yogurt sauce. It's wonderful. It was also exceptionally hot. So hot that if I were an asshole like the McDonald's coffee lady I probably could have sued. The food came in a plastic Chinese soup container. The lids are really sturdy, the bottom not so much. So when I sat cross-legged on a big comfy chair and opened the lid, the boiling hot sauce had melted the soup container. The lid came off and the bottom slipped out of my hand, spilling the sauce all over the cursed ankle. The sauce burned my leg and got all over the chair. I couldn't really get up because I was holding stuff and the hot sauce was everywhere, and in a stupid moment of impulse I swiped the hot sauce off my leg to make the burning stop. This just allowed more burning to happen underneath the previous burn. I managed to get up and stick my leg in the bathroom sink, but the damage had been done.

From here on out we will be pretending I did this in an awesome way, like on a motorcycle or in a welding accident.

Anyway, I attempted to take care of the injury myself for several days. I washed it off with soap and water (horrible!) and then it looked like this:

I kept it antibiotic ointment-ed and wrapped in gauze and an ace bandage for protection from the dirt that seemed very close to the wound. Finally, I decided to go to the Lane Death Health Center at Northeastern for a little professional care. They said, "This is Silvadine. It's for burns. You're allergic to an ingredient, but only orally. It'll be great."

It was not great. It was supposed to be soothing, so when I called my mother to let her know I had followed her advice and gone to a doctor, she was pretty alarmed when I told her it felt like it was burning all over again. Jaxon drove me to the hospital.

At the hospital a doctor basically told me to buck up but listened when I was adamant that I wanted the Silvadine off of me. He then cut away the dead skin on the edges, something I thought I should do but was too grossed out to try. After he worked on it, it looked like this:

At the bottom you can see the note I wrote to the members of the burn unit at the
hospital my parents work for. Remote medicine.

Finally, time passed. I can't for the life of me find the post-mederma photo, but I can show you the most recent one I found. It already looks better.

You'll have to trust me that if you looked at my ankle before I broke it you would never have seen any marks where I burned it. The burn was at least three inches, possibly larger, and yet there is no scarring at all. 

Well, there is now.