Hi, catra121:
Quote: "Clean it out using alcohol (rubbing alcohol that you can get in the pharmacy)."
The pharmacies in French Polynesia sell different kinds of rubbing alcohol. How many degrees should the rubbing alcohol mentioned by your boyfriend have? 40°? 50°? 60°? 70°? More? Or does it not matter how many degrees this rubbing alcohol has? The pharmacies in French Polynesia also sell non-stinging rubbing alcohol, which smells a lot like mentholatum. I do not know if this is a good idea to use non-stinging rubbing alcohol or if it is better to use stinging rubbing alcohol. I understand it will be painful to use stinging rubbing alcohol on my scraped knee wound, but the most important thing to me is that my wound heals, no matter how much pain I have to endure with the stinging rubbing alcohol.
Quote: "Do this several times a day...as often as the gauze is full."
First, I disinfect my scraped knee wound: I will, from now on, use the rubbing alcohol your boyfriend talked about. By the way, I do not know if this is a good idea to wash my wound with some soap and rinse it well, before I start disinfecting it.
Second, I apply on my wound the Flammazine cream (a white hydrophilic cream, containing silver sulphadiazine) the Emergency Room doctor prescribed for me. I use a thick layer of cream, just like this doctor did.
Third, I apply six 10 centimeters X 10 centimeters non-woven gauze pads on my wound, just like the Emergency Room doctor did. I guess she decided to use that many gauze pads to try preventing or avoiding the pus crossing all the layers of gauze pads (if there are too few of them) and staining my clothes or bed sheets.
Fourth, I use two small pieces of tape to keep the first two gauze pads in place. Then I can put the four other gauze pads on top of the first two.
Fifth, I use a gauze bandage, to wrap around my knee and over the six gauze pads, including the first two that are taped to my skin.
Sixth, I use another type of bandage (not an ACE bandage; I do not know the name of this bandage in English).
Seventh, I use a kind of "net", whose exact name I do not know, to hold the dressing in place.
Last, I put on my functional knee brace, whose bending is locked at 40°. It hurts my unhealed and infected scraped knee wound, when I bend my knee more then 40°.
These are the problems with my scraped knee wound at the present time:
-Redness around my scraped knee wound
-Large amount of pus, thick and yellowish, coming out of my wound (this amount of pus is so large it sometimes crosses most, if not all, the six gauze pads of my dressing; this amount of pus also happens to cross the gauze bandage and the other bandage from time to time)
-Foul odor, like that of a dirty baby diaper, coming out of my wound
-Burning and throbbing pain in my wound
-Small amount of liquid, with the consistency and color of cooking oil, leaking from my wound after its disinfection, after my wound is left uncovered at night for an hour or two, before I make a new dressing for my wound
-No new skin or scab growing or even starting to grow over my wound
-The time that has gone by since my knee got scraped on February 10, 2012
All these problems make me fear it is not an "ordinary infection". It might very well be (and I believe it is) a MRSA infection. Of course, I have yet to find a doctor who will believe me. Hard, very hard task! These doctors would believe me first if I told them the sky is green, before even thinking of believing I have an infection in my scraped knee wound.
No wonder I have lost trust in all doctors!
Quote: "He said to try to pack the wound if it's deep to draw out more of the pus."
Under my scraped knee wound, there might be a large "pocket" of pus, for all I know. There is no way for me to tell for sure. I think it is quite likely, however, because one of the last times I had a bad wound on this knee (post-operative wound from my November 2004 Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction), this wound leaked pus for months, even though this wound
seemed to be closed and even though the amount of pus that leaked from this surgical wound was less than the amount of pus that is leaking from my scraped knee wound.
Quote: "He said you can use neosporin on it...but the alcohol should be sufficient in most cases and may make it easier to gauge how much pus there is vs cream."
Can I not use rubbing alcohol first, to disinfect my wound, and then neosporin, once the rubbing alcohol had dried?
Thank you for your information and thank your boyfriend also for me for the information he provided. It gives me back hope and I do not have to spend my time crying a lot anymore.
