Word from a now wise one? Beware of very sharp hatchets...

[Lorrie]

I havent been to a doctor and don't plan on it.

I was cutting up some kindling for a fire and I accidently almost chopped a section of my left pointer finger off, but not quite. It went through the fingernail and into the skin but I only just barely tapped it with the hatchet. But since it was so sharp... I could call it a deep cut. I will probably lose part of my fingernail if I don't care for it just so... can't really stich it at all, not that type of cut.

Anyway the reason I am telling you all this, is for some advice on taking care of it by myself tho have least amount of scarring, fastest healing etc.

I have bandaged it, with medicine like antibiotic ointment. since the moment it happened. It did not bleed a whole lot...

How long should I leave it in a bandage with out air?
How long should in between bandage changing be?
How do I take care of it?

I already know I should have been careful, I thought I was, but IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!! The only way I could have prevented it was to not make the kindling...It happend so fast and then there, I was cut. Dang it!

[Braggi]

...It happend so fast and then there, I was cut. Dang it!

Ouch! I hate it when that happens! Keep it clean and dry if you can. Wear a rubber glove if you're going to wash dishes or anything like that. Better to let them pile up for a few days.

Hopefully you have the cut edges lined up nicely under the bandage. It's much more likely to heal with minimal scarring that way. Leave the original bandage on a bare minimum of two days, three better. When you do change it, be super careful that you don't pull the wound apart. I usually cut the bandage pad in half with sharp scissors or scalpel so I can watch the wound as I'm taking off the bandage. You're lucky there wasn't a lot of bleeding.

It sounds like a clean wound so it's unlikely you'll wind up infected. Watch for swelling, redness, terrible itchiness or smelliness. If you get swelling or redness, you might want to get to the emergency room for some antibiotics.

A bit of ointment on the bandage pad when you change it will aid drainage by keeping the wound moist. That's good for avoiding infection. Avoid putting aloe vera on the wound or any other herbal nonsense. Your body will heal quite well without it and the more foreign stuff you put on it the more likely you'll get infected.

Yup, a lot of stuff, but I know about these things. Have the scars to prove it.

Heal well,

-Jeff

["Mad" Miles]

Lorrie,

I have two hatchet scars from "back in the day" Boy Scouts, I was 12 and 15 respectively. The first on my left hand below the thumb joint, while trying to light a match in a pre-Camporee training exercise. The second on the outside of my left calf above the ankle, from pulling a sharp hatchet out of some green wood on a Great Smoky Mountains National Park campout. I was very proud of putting a wadded Kleenex over the second one, pulling my sock over it and walking away. No stitches either time.

Keep it clean. When the wound scabs up, let the air in. Keep it dry and clean. Braggi/Jeff's advice is right on.

To avoid future "accidents", when chopping kindling, make sure your hand, or any other body part, is well out of the line of chop. Do not hold the wood you are chopping! Find some other way to brace it when dividing by axe.

Live and learn.

Everybody knows to cut/chop/slash AWAY from the body, not towards, right?

The paring knife stab scar on the base of my palm, in the meat of my thumb muscle testifies to that lesson. When removing a metal screw-off ring from a glass bottle (recycling separation) DO NOT hold the bottle with the left (or right if you're sinister) while trying to cut the band with a small knife. And if you're dumb enough to even try, PUSH AWAY from the hand, NOT TOWARDS!!!

Still it was a cool, albeit embarrassing, wound. My only stab wound, even if self-inflicted.

"Mad" Miles

[Braggi]

... If you get swelling or redness, you might want to get to the emergency room for some antibiotics. ...

Actually, I overstated the case here. Unless it was getting really ugly I wouldn't go for antibiotics. I'd soak it two or three times a day in warm water and continue to follow with ...

... A bit of ointment on the bandage pad when you change it will aid drainage by keeping the wound moist. ...

It's pretty rare that a wound on the hand gets very infected anyway. Lots of good blood flow in the hand to take away the bad and bring in the good.

I avoid antibiotics if I possibly can.

-Jeff

[Sara S]

Hey, Lorrie: Sorry about your ouchie! But antibiotic ointment, though I used it for years, has pretty much been discredited as an infection preventative; what I always keep and use is Betadine Solution, which is what doctors and hospitals use.

I havent been to a doctor and don't plan on it.

I was cutting up some kindling for a fire and I accidently almost chopped a section of my left pointer finger off, but not quite. It went through the fingernail and into the skin but I only just barely tapped it with the hatchet. But since it was so sharp... I could call it a deep cut. I will probably lose part of my fingernail if I don't care for it just so... can't really stich it at all, not that type of cut.

Anyway the reason I am telling you all this, is for some advice on taking care of it by myself tho have least amount of scarring, fastest healing etc.

I have bandaged it, with medicine like antibiotic ointment. since the moment it happened. It did not bleed a whole lot...

How long should I leave it in a bandage with out air?
How long should in between bandage changing be?
How do I take care of it?

I already know I should have been careful, I thought I was, but IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!! The only way I could have prevented it was to not make the kindling...It happend so fast and then there, I was cut. Dang it!

[Lorrie]

Lorrie,

I have two hatchet scars from "back in the day" Boy Scouts, I was 12 and 15 respectively. The first on my left hand below the thumb joint, while trying to light a match in a pre-Camporee training exercise. How the heck do you get a hatchet cut from lighting a match? The second on the outside of my left calf above the ankle, from pulling a sharp hatchet out of some green wood on a Great Smoky Mountains National Park campout. I was very proud of putting a wadded Kleenex over the second one, pulling my sock over it and walking away. Me Too!! No stitches either time.

Keep it clean. When the wound scabs up, let the air in. Keep it dry and clean. Braggi/Jeff's advice is right on. Okay but I want to know how long to leave the bandage on? I am going on day 5. I have changed the bandage 3x so far... my skin is white around the fingernail... have not yet had time to soak it in epson salt or anything else...

To avoid future "accidents", when chopping kindling, make sure your hand, or any other body part, is well out of the line of chop. Do not hold the wood you are chopping! Find some other way to brace it when dividing by axe. Gee where were you when I was in the process? You sound just like my friend who just before I cut myself, told me to be careful cause the hatchet was very sharp and I might cut myself......actually the hatchet was supposed to be "in" the wood and I was tapping down to make kindling, but it wasn't like I thought and then it was in motion and you know what they say about once in motion... I couldn't stop it.

Live and learn. Yeah...
Everybody knows to cut/chop/slash AWAY from the body, not towards, right?

The paring knife stab scar on the base of my palm, in the meat of my thumb muscle testifies to that lesson. When removing a metal screw-off ring from a glass bottle (recycling separation) DO NOT hold the bottle with the left (or right if you're sinister) while trying to cut the band with a small knife. And if you're dumb enough to even try, PUSH AWAY from the hand, NOT TOWARDS!!!

Still it was a cool, albeit embarrassing, wound. My only stab wound, even if self-inflicted.

"Mad" Miles

I want to thank Jeff, Braggi, Sylph, Sara and Miles for your great advice, but I think I need it 1. 2. 3.'d... I want to make sure I am following correctly... could you do that for me anyone?

[Ronaldo]

There are different schools of thought even among professionals as to whether
it is better to keep a wound sealed from air or to have it exposed to air flow.
I had a bad dog bite on the back of my hand which was not healing very well after various treatments by a number of doctors and nurses, which included antibiotics (both oral and topical) . I finally went to one who used a transparent bandage that completely covered and sealed the wound. It wasn't pretty to look at but this proved quite effective.
(If you hadn't had a tetanus shot in the last five years that is recommended.)
Ron

[Braggi]

There are different schools of thought even among professionals as to whether
it is better to keep a wound sealed from air or to have it exposed to air flow. ...

Ron's experience mirrors mine. Keep it moist. If it dries out you'll have a staph infection within a few days. It needs to be able to drain. Don't go without at least a band-aid on it until it's almost all the way healed up.

That's the real message Lorrie. If you get it dirty, soak it until it's really clean, about 20 minutes in nice warm water, soapy if that's your preference.

As far as antibiotic ointments are concerned, it's not the antibiotics that help, it's the fact that the ointment prevents the wound from drying out. Plain Vaseline will work as well as antibiotic ointment. Whatever's cheap and works is what I use. Usually that means whatever's in the drawer.

Don't worry too much about whether your're doing something right or wrong. You're going to heal OK.

-Jeff

[Sylph]

My impression was that it was a clean, defined wound, that you could think of like an incision. Best to keep it dry under the bandage. There will be a moist enough environment under the bandage as a result of perspiration. If it gets too moist, the skin swells and gets whitish (macerated) and the wound doesn't knit together. After a matter of hours after a cut, if the wound edges don't come together and stay put, they won't heal. If the wound gets too wet and pulls apart, then it will heal by 'secondary intention', that is, from the bottom up, a slower process.
If it did get infected, which is not too likely, then soaking would be helpful.
I'd be interested to hear what one of my wound-care nurse pals would say about antibiotic ointment, etc. I don't think it's necessary.

Ron's experience mirrors mine. Keep it moist. If it dries out you'll have a staph infection within a few days. It needs to be able to drain. Don't go without at least a band-aid on it until it's almost all the way healed up.

That's the real message Lorrie. If you get it dirty, soak it until it's really clean, about 20 minutes in nice warm water, soapy if that's your preference.

As far as antibiotic ointments are concerned, it's not the antibiotics that help, it's the fact that the ointment prevents the wound from drying out. Plain Vaseline will work as well as antibiotic ointment. Whatever's cheap and works is what I use. Usually that means whatever's in the drawer.

Don't worry too much about whether your're doing something right or wrong. You're going to heal OK.

-Jeff

[Braggi]

My impression was that it was a clean, defined wound, that you could think of like an incision. Best to keep it dry under the bandage. There will be a moist enough environment under the bandage as a result of perspiration. ...

Sylph is the medical professional, I'm just the guy with the scars. YMMV.

Letting it dry out is not what works for me.

In either case, watch for that telltale redness. If it starts getting red, you need to soak it a couple of times a day.

-Jeff

[Lorrie]

Okay now I am really confused (most likely before WaccoBB...I digress)

I showed my cut to my coworker Gary on the thought that I should "let it air out"... The skin near the sliced fingernail was really white. At about say noon. Now at 4:24pm it is getting closer to skin tone but the skin did not attach so I guess its going to be a heal from the inside out and I will lose the skin that is what he said... *sigh... I have no bandage on it now and i have taped to my finger a taped up stick to prevent bumping or snaging it on anything.
Super glue would have probably worked great 3-4 days ago but now its probably too late???
I think I will play pool tonight with a bandage on just for protection. Then when I get home tonight I am going to soak it for a while...Probably til my finger pad gets wrinkled????? then what? bandage or no bandage???

[Sylph]

Oh, too bad. It got too moist under the bandage. I can never keep a cut on a finger dry...never!
I don't know about soaking it at this point. Just keep it clean and dry. The stick is a good way to keep you from using the finger too much. It's too late to try to pull it together with glue.
It's good to have steri-strips around in case something like this ever happens again. They keep the wound closed, but they let the skin "breathe"

Okay now I am really confused (most likely before WaccoBB...I digress)

I showed my cut to my coworker Gary on the thought that I should "let it air out"... The skin near the sliced fingernail was really white. At about say noon. Now at 4:24pm it is getting closer to skin tone but the skin did not attach so I guess its going to be a heal from the inside out and I will lose the skin that is what he said... *sigh... I have no bandage on it now and i have taped to my finger a taped up stick to prevent bumping or snaging it on anything.
Super glue would have probably worked great 3-4 days ago but now its probably too late???
I think I will play pool tonight with a bandage on just for protection. Then when I get home tonight I am going to soak it for a while...Probably til my finger pad gets wrinkled????? then what? bandage or no bandage???

[pjpete]

Ouch......

[Lorrie]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that my finger is all better now. Just waiting for the fingernail to grow back.

After the last post, I ended up doing a switch between air out and bandage (so i didn't get it dirty).
Ended up that one morning I just took the cut part of the fingernail off my finger...Didn't hurt or anything at all, so...

Went to sleep one night with no bandage, woke up in the morning and had the skin "cap" of my finger flapping so I ripped that off.

I was wierd cause then it looked like some science project that you could see the different layers of the finger. Like I got to above the last piece of skin that would let the guts come out. Clear skin coating there you could see through. eww
Then layer cut, then layer cut, then layer cut, then fingernail. I thought it was cool.

Well I am back to typing with both hands again. There is still some healing to be done. But it's almost good as n...well used.