re: Doctors of the OT: Incision Care Help

Steri strips not going to do much at this point, needs to granulate in. Strict NWB and elevate the extremity. Air it out of you want to get an infection, otherwise dry sterile dressing would be best (I would have you doing wet to dry dressings FWIW).

quote:

---

I'm keeping it moist with Vaseline

---

You don't need all that. You're not trying to jerk it off.

Soak in mixture of crab boil, ant pile and urine for 45 minutes 7 times a day and you should be good to go by tomorrow.

Agree here. Your wound will not heal if you don't stay off of your foot. Also, your diet is extremely important. You have to be consuming a very high protein diet. Your body won't be able to make tissue to close the wound if there isn't enough protein intake. If you do not have kidney problems you need to boost your protein intake.

Keep your foot elevated as much as you can. Strict non-weight bearing to that foot. Another thing that would help is to get an ace wrap or thigh-high compression hose. These will help keep swelling down, which will speed up healing. Time to heal is dependent on your age, if you smoke or have other vascular disease or diabetes, and your diet. The foot is the farthest thing from the heart, and it can take up to 3 months to heal sometimes (more if you have bad circulation).

Like someone else said, increase your protein intake to something between 1.5-2 grams/kg of body weight (i.e. if you weigh 140 pounds, that is 63kg, so you need 90-130 grams of protein per day). Also start taking a multivitamin twice daily, in addition to 1000-2000mg of Vitamin C and 6600mg of Zinc sulfate a day

Lastly, stop the vaseline and neosporin! These are doing nothing to help and are making it worse. A closed incision should not be kept wet/moist. In this case, the wound needs to dry and scab for proper wound healing to occur. If there is an open portion where you can see the "meat" of the foot (and not just a little slit), then yes, it should be kept moist (not wet). The reason is so the tissue does not dry out. But this is accomplished with saline, not vaseline or neosporin. Both of these are petroleum based, and will not water in the foot escape, which needs to happen.

Someone mentioned wet-to-dry dressings. This is very easy to do. You can buy 500-1000cc of normal saline at CVS/Walgreens, or you can make your own at home ( LINK). Get some 4x4 or 2x2 gauze, cut to the size of the wound, and dampen the gauze with the saline. You don't want the gauze saturated with saline, so squeeze any liquid out until it stops dripping. Then place it into the wound and wrap with a clean dressing.

Duct Tape

quote:

---

Someone mentioned wet-to-dry dressings. This is very easy to do. You can buy 500-1000cc of normal saline at CVS/Walgreens, or you can make your own at home ( LINK). Get some 4x4 or 2x2 gauze, cut to the size of the wound, and dampen the gauze with the saline. You don't want the gauze saturated with saline, so squeeze any liquid out until it stops dripping. Then place it into the wound and wrap with a clean dressing.

---

This is good advice, especially if the wound is large/wide.

I would stop the neosporin, but for a different reason. Some folks-more common in white people-develop a contact allergy to neosporin that can keep the wound from closing.

You can use bacitracin instead (it's over the counter). While yes it is oil based, it will prevent wound desiccation. Plus it's antibacterial. So, it's good for open wounds.

quote:

---

not things I can do different than what the doc says.

---

if your doc reco'd vaseline and neosporin

you need to find a different doc

one without a beak and tailfeathers....