Let this be one of those, " learn from my mistakes" threads.
I cut my elbow -minor-on my boat right before a family vacation. I cleaned it up but not for an hour later then just soap and water no dressing. A week later my arm blows up like a balloon. Im in and out of Kaiser on 3 diff antibiotics ( keflex and Bactrin, then Zyvox) now im in the hospital. The short story is im going to lose 4 days of boredom to fixing this thing because i didnt do the ounce of prevention.
The doc is telling me: scrub with hydrogen peroxide and dress to keep the cooties out. I will from now on i can tell you that. I might add something like keflex to my backcountry kit also.
the body is good at fighting off bacteria ,Bleeding from a cut helps clean the wound . Next best thing is JD dont waste it on the cut drink it! Get well
Scrubbing with Hydrogen Peroxide is actually bad advice and is pretty standard amongst the wound gurus as not a good thing in most cases.
We did this interesting experiment in microbiology where we grew staph colonies, then spooned the colonies into hydrogen peroxide, left them, then took them out and regrew the colonies in a petri dish.
Peroxide is good for dissolving blood out of clothes and that's about it.
It actually dissolves tissue cells and is bad for the wound.
Water right out of your tap is actually better. Your biggest mistake was leaving the wound open. Clean with water, dress with bacitracin or neosporin.
My buddy's mother is having some prolonged challenges trying to clear a serious infection. We really thought that we were going to lose her. The doctors did too.
Make sure to run the full course of antibiotics and keep an eye on things. Get better and have a great season.
I have had life threatening staph infections twice. One kept me out of the woods. I have some advice for those who have not had the experience. 1. If it doesn't feel normal seek help from a doctor. 2. If the Doctor says it is no big deal ask him to be conservative. I Might have avoided two weeks in the hospital if I knew then what I know now.
When we were in Zimbabwe hunting my wife shot at a kudu and accidentally spooked a small herd of elephants we didn't know were there. Unfortunately we were on their trail. They started running toward us and we took off running. I tripped on a root and fell and landed on a rock with my left knee. I got up and kept running, finally we circled around and the elephants kept going . My wife noticed my pants were bloody. I had about a 2 inch gash on my knee. We went back to camp and cleaned it out with water and poured some whiskey on it. Put some gauze on it and pulled it together with duct tape. I started taking keflex that I had with me. We continued to hunt another couple of weeks then went to RSA and hunted a week. After I got home the wound had healed but still kept hunting and finally got an x-ray and I had fractured my knee cap but it was starting to heal. I had made sure my tetnus shot was UTD before we had left.
So, I had an open fracture of my patella but by disinfecting it and starting on antibiotics and keeping it covered I got lucky. It could have been a lot worse.
A word of advice to everyone, unless you are allergic to tetnus vaccine, everyone should make sure your tetnus vaccination is UTD before going on an extended hunting trip. You would hate to lose a day or two of hunting just to go get one for an injury if you even could depending on where you were at.
Good advice gobbler. I'd be pretty willing to bet that everyone on this website is at high risk for tetanus and should have their booster every 10 years.
You really got lucky with your RSA experience. You may have saved yourself a world of trouble doing what you did.
A tetanus shot is suppose to have a "shelf life" of ten years. After talking with an infectious disease specialist the real life is five years at the most. To scotch myself I get a fresh shot every two years.
Some may call it overkill, but I am an avid believer in preventive medical maintenance.
while working on a bull i stabbed my hand! My hands were covered in the elks blood and my own . I thought i was sure going to get blood poisoning or a infection , but nada happened just became blood brothers :> PS my calling improved
A few years back I did a week long ground fighting seminar for work and received plenty of mat burn on my elbows, knees and feet. I cleaned up good everyday but a few days after I woke up in the middle of the night with my arm so swollen I couldn't bend it. An ER visit and some antibiotics and I avoided having to have in drained or be hospitalized.
Some of you older guys remember mercuracrome ? a mercury based antiseptic, I still swear by it. After it was out lawed I obtained a personal supply , Iodine doesn't seem to get the job done, nor does hydrogen peroxide. I think 91% alch. is still the next best thing for miner wounds , get well soon . My cat sent me to hospital a yr ago , for a tiny puncture.
Sounds like you're on the way back, and thanks for posting the reminders.
Some solid information here from others, too.
You're lucky City. I'm Blood Brothers with a feral boar hog, and the jab was low in my abdomen. Not nearly as noble as having that bond with a nice bull elk.
Consider yourself lucky... if you were born 100 years ago you would be dead. I've had infections go septic in the past. Got into my blood. Not fun but could have been much worse.
Shoot I was hoping some of the MD's here would chime in and maybe give some clarification on a bulletproof strategy for avoiding these infections. Seems like there is conflicting info out there. I had no idea Hydrogen peroxide wasn't a good germ fighter.
I'm out now. Some of the 'Flesh eating bacteria' stories I got were a little disheartening...and many seemed to originate from contact with our SJ Delta water here (no more eating those fish for me!)
I have Betadyne cleaning pacs in my backcountry kit I got from my wife (nurse) but is there a better procedure for prevention?
peroxide is for an already infected wound ,neosporin is what you want ...clean water and soap and clean dressing.. the wife is a registered NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) nurse at Tacoma General,I somehow bleed at least once a week with cuts and scraps(Crane maintenance mechanic) and never had any ill affects...lots of neo and clean bandaids is key
You can still buy Mercurochrome and Merthiolate, but the stuff you get now is mercury-free. Soap and water, and then Neosporin seems to be the best defense today for a wound. Although I do still have a small bottle of the real Merthiolate (with mercury)that I will use sparingly if a wound starts feeling sore.
City, My elbow scrap hardly bled at all- just a surface scrape and I didn't even realize it until hours later. Now how it happened might have something to do with it. I was flat on my belly in my boat under my platform changing the batteries on my trolling motor. So my elbow was rubbing on the floor of my boat- and though I've scrubbed it with soap- its a location where many a dead carp has spent some time .....
I am dealing with "just" a cat bite to my hand. Never would of thought, one of our farm cats bit me hard by my knuckle while I was petting him in the middle of my hand, and 9 days in a hospital, two surgeries and I still don't know how it is gonna turn out! I was at the doctors less than 12 hours later and still the infection got into my bone and knuckle. Kinda put a stop to any fun this summer. Bite was over a month ago now. Have a picc line in for daily antibiotics by IV and have to go back on the 7th to have a spacer taken out and get checked again. Just starting to get movement back in my hand, except for the damaged knuckle finger. Hoping I don't have to have knuckle replacement surgery. I thought "just" a cat bite! Glad yours got better! Kevin
I hear similar stories from patients all the time. I'm a PICC-RN and place PICC's in patients every day who have these types of wounds/infections. Picc's are a special long term IV that is required for long term antibiotics, typically 2-8 weeks of treatment. You'd be surprised at how common these infections are. Cat bites are particularly nasty and common.
In general, wash wounds promptly with soap and water. Apply some bacitracin or neosporin and cover. Seek medical attention at the earliest sign of infection.
I was an ER doc. For close to 30 yrs and saw thousands of severe infections from what would seem like minor injuries. Some were in diabetics or people with other vascular issues where blood supply was compromised. Other were puncture wounds that are difficult to clean out. Most just seemed to be bad luck.
Cat bites were some of the worst. A bacteria called Pasteurella is responsible for most cat bite infections. They are usually puncture wounds from the canines. Most MRSA abcesses start from hair follicle infections and people come in complaining of with what they think are spider bites but are actually MRSA abcesses.
Skin infections can go from just a small red spot to cellulitis with red streaks up your arm or leg to blood poision and sepsis within 24 hrs sometimes.
Stay UTD on tetnus shots (every 5 yrs). Clean a wound as quick as you can. If it's an abrasion use neosporin, bacitracin, or a triple antibiotic ointment. If it's an animal bite or puncture wound see a Dr. You still need to be concerned about rabies. If a wound starts oozing pus, getting red, hurting more, see red streaks coming from it, or run a fever get to a Dr. As soon as you can.
Obviously, if it's a laceration you should be seen right away. If you put it off more than 8 hours it might not be able to be sutured because skin bacteria have already migrated into wound and if it's closed tight the bacteria have a warm moist enviroment to grow unless a drain is placed for fluids to drain out. You can usually get by a little longer with head wounds because blood supply is so good but you have a shorter time frame with extremity lacerations because blood supply to fight infection is not as good.
Geez, I'd never really considered any of this skin infection stuff, other than throwing on a little neosporin on every once in a while, from a neosporin tube that is at least 8 years old now. But between this thread and part of a book I just read that covered necrotizing fasciitis, I think I need to be a little more on guard!!
I bring it up as I was always a 'rub dirt in it' kind of guy....but the world has changed. Good article in Consumer reports on how the oversubscribing of antibiotics has created strains of bacteria resistant to treatment- serious stuff.
i do think we have less to worry about in the high country vs. what another friend termed the 'cesspool' of germs where we live.
And thanks to the experts that chimed in especially Idyll for taking the time to explain this stuff to me- good advice.
Bruce,the sad part is educating the medical community on proper use of antibiotics has it's limits as the lions share of antibiotics used annually is by the animal husbandry industry.
Actually, cat scratch fever is a different infection from a Bartonella bacteria. In a normal person it is usually self limiting unlike true cellulitis from a cat bite which can lead to sepsis and death .
Glad to hear that news, infection is serious stuff.
This happened to me a couple of months ago, I was fishing and just stuck the tip of a hook in my finger. No big deal, its happened hundreds of times before. Two days later, I woke up in the middle of the night with pain in my finger and very swollen. I immediately went to urgent care and the lady looked at me like I was dying (my wife did to because I usually don't just run to a doctor). They started me on antibiotic IV right away and made an appointment with a hand specialist. I was told if I waited, it could have entered the tendon resulting in surgery. Lucky for me antibiotics did the trick. Infection is no joke, I think someone said it above, but the hook entered my finger very shallow, but right at the joint.
