help quick,,,cut myself in the henhouse

[Deb&Al]

slice/puncture to right handindex finger. bled like a hose. finally stopped. the flap of skin is adhering to the finger.

i'm okay, but worried about germs from henhouse. don't want to get cellulitis like i had twice in june from infected bug bites.

should i soak it in peroxide? aside from running water over it and letting the blood flow should i do anything to disenfect it more?

thanks/debbie

[RedTartan]

My husband got scratch/punctured by the muscovy we just butchered and, even though it hurt terribly, we poured alcohol into the wound. Lots of germs in a coop.

If you don't have alcohol, maybe epsom salt?

RedTartan

[jill.costello]

Iodine and anti-bacterial soap. Betadine scrub if you've got it. The alchohol will probably be very, very caustic to the tissue which means the flap won't grow back together......

[BellsBunnies]

I'd clean it with the iodine or betadine - then find the super-glue If it needed.
You can pour cayenne on it to stop the bleeding.

Lots of good soap and water then some topical antibiotic and a decent bandage. Don't put superglue on it!

.....Alan.

[doodles]

Do not use alcohol or peroxide. SCRUB well with betadine and use an antibiotic ointment if its not too deep. If its very deep do not glue it closed. It will seal in the germs . You can soak in very warm salt water or betadine twice daily. It is warm and moist outside(DOG DAYS) so be very careful. You can order almost any oral antibiotics from a a vet supply that is listed as fish biotics if you see infection.
My husband cut his forearm last month with his razor knife and I sutured it up and it did fine.Surgical staples are handy to keep around and much easier that sutures . Be careful

[Country Doc]

Clean it well with soap and lots of water. Put on polysporin cream. Put on bandaid. Go to doc and get a tetnus shot if you haven't had one in 3 years or if the wound gapes or gets red or looks infected.

[suburbanite]

What countrydoc said.

Deb, if you do not have polysporin you can use table honey until you are able to get some polysporin--careful, at body temperature it runs almost like water. Recent studies have found table honey to be as effective as many topical ointments, and it has a different resistance profile than the common antibiotics so may help for some of the resistant bug strains you read about.

If you manage to tack down the skin flap and do not subject it to lateral stress, it may well 'graft' itself back onto the wound.

You might want to take a sharp-ish object like a toothpick and gently touch the skin between the wound and the tip of your finger to see if you can feel it or if you have nicked a superficial nerve. Depending on where you hit your finger, if you have a large area that is numb you might want to seek more urgent help--sensation in your fingers is important and on occasion neurosurgeons can align small cut nerves such that they have a better chance at healing, if they get prompt attention. Otherwise, small peripheral nerves occasionally do regrow but at a snails pace and sometimes with branching effects like a 'witches broom' on a tree, which can cause pain and sensation issues.

If you can bend your finger just slightly without causing the wound to gape you can test to make sure you didn't cut a tendon. You may already have tested this by accident while stopping the bleeding in which case don't try it again because you don't wanna re-open anything.

You may also want to buddy-tape the finger to the next finger over as a reminder not to use or bend it. Don't tape it too tight to hinder circulation though.

If part of your finger downstream of the wound turns grey or dusky purple, that can indicate a circulation problem and you'll need to be seen urgently by a doc.

[GrannyG]

Clean the wound with soap and water, dry well. Tape the skin down with small pieces of tape (butterfly it) and put a dressing over it. Leave the tapes alone, let them stay on the skin to help heal the edges together. Check it, and it is still bleeds and they come loose, retape them to keep them together.

[suburbanite]

Adding to GrannyG, you can use superglue to secure the tapes to the unbroken skin if they keep popping loose, but don't get it into the wound between the layers that must heal together. You are essentially using the tape as 'stitches'.

[Mountaineer]

I did the same- get a tetanus shot, tonight.

[ChickenMom]

Raw honey and wrap it up. Only raw honey works and it's like magic.

[huisjen]

Hmm. Flap of skin is adhering for now, but will it get good enough blood flow to stay alive? I sharpened a finger a while back and didn't get to keep the flap I cut off. If you lose it, soak in warm soapy water a couple times a day, and bandage with some vasaline on the band-aid (actually, I prefer Curad extreme lengths) pad to prevent the bandage from sticking to the wound and re-opening it when you change it.

Dan

[XLT]

amputation is clearly the only option left to you

[Shinsan]

from the shoulder to be sure?

[Deb&Al]

Originally Posted by huisjen

Hmm. Flap of skin is adhering for now, but will it get good enough blood flow to stay alive? I sharpened a finger a while back and didn't get to keep the flap I cut off. If you lose it, soak in warm soapy water a couple times a day, and bandage with some vasaline on the band-aid (actually, I prefer Curad extreme lengths) pad to prevent the bandage from sticking to the wound and re-opening it when you change it.

Dan

i want to thank you all for your quick replies.

i didn't have betadine, and before i read about someone saying not to use peroxide i soaked it in peroxide and it burned-burned-burned. it looked a lot better after i did that though

then, while it was still "wet" from the peroxide, i very carefully did some dishes, with some bleach in the dishwater.

then i put neosporin on it and wrapped it in gause with a bandaid loosly taping it together.

this morning it looks pretty good, considering. what dan said above though is right, about the skin flap not having enough circulation to be "alive". the edges of the flap have all adheared, but there is an oval shaped piece of the flap, at the deepest portion of the flap, that is white. i assume it's dead tissue.

it is just slightly swollen, ever so slightl, slightly pinker/redder than my other
fingers.

----------------------------------

thanks again everybody. i really appreciate all your advice.
debbie

[suburbanite]

Deb, it may alternatively be a fluid pocket, which would tend to prevent that skin from reattaching. Large non-sterile fluid pockets if not drained can become places bacteria hide to become abscesses. If you think its a fluid pocket you have to guess whether you think it is large or whether you think you cleaned it enough that it is mostly sterile. It doesn't have to be completely sterile--there are studies that show washing even deep flesh wounds in emergency rooms with tap water resulted in no difference in infection rate when compared to washing them with sterile saline, so long as large amounts of water are used.

Skin is remarkably resilient to injury, which is why skin grafts work. The keys in skin grafts are to keep fluid pockets from forming (which prevents blood supply to the severed skin) and to avoid any lateral stresses on the skin layer so that the newly forming capillaries going to it dont get destroyed before hardier connective tissue can move in. Well, and avoid infection, hence the neo/polysporin. The other thing these creams do is to provide a moist environment that makes it easier for cells to migrate over and close the injury.

It is normal to have some inflammation around an injury, which will make an area slightly pink or red. There's also something called the 'healing ridge'--you get a collection of cells along the edge of the wound, like soldiers massing along a front, doing various clean-up jobs, and also fluid, and also cells that are dividing to push new cells in to the wound to close it. If there's a chunk missing, you can also see 'granulation tissue' which is a little grainy-looking with a sheen of scant, clear, oozed fluid, and is bright red, like a fresh steak, but without the organized structure. This fills in the defect and may convert to scar tissue after some of it may be replaced with appropriate tissue types, depending on how much of the cellular scaffolding is left in the damaged area.

Signs of infection--pus. increased pain. increasing swelling. very hot to the touch. redness of surrounding tissue, foul odor, dry/woody/beef-jerky-like texture of surrounding tissue (can be a 'flesh eating bacteria' sign--needs immediate assistance! but fortunately so rare most cases make the newspaper), any systemic symptoms--fever, light-headedness, nausea, excess fatigue, muscle spasms.

Anyway, this is all just basic information. Not telling you what to do with it.

[Hammer4]

Neosporin is what I use, keep applying it as the wound heals. The flap of skin may live and reattach, it might turn white and die. I have had it happen both ways on finger and hand slice wounds like that...keep it clean, keep the neosporin on and in the wound, stabilize it with bandaids, gauge and/or adhesive tape best you can to try and let wound heal without pulling it back open...

If it gets red, puffy, swollen, sore, streaks of red coming out, it's infected and you will need antibiotics...so keep it clean and smothered in antibiotic cream.

[MELOC]

i had a similar cut on a finger tip this spring. i was removing soil from a new garden bed and "found" a broken bottle neck. i soaked it for a few minutes in peroxide. i then bandaged it snug with a few adhesive bandages and left it alone for two days. i would gently squeeze it to check for infection, but i left the bandages on for two days so as not to interrupt the "graft". it was a total success. i think the peroxide, and it's bubbles, cleaned the wound well.

i heard that super glue was invented as a surgical aid just for this purpose.