We were visiting with his family in NYC. We had gone out to eat and we walked with them (He got the boot off by the way, the docs say his ulcer is all healed, and now he is wearing the custom made shoes).

So his FEET are okay.

So we say goodbye to his family, they go one way, we go another and Alan goes:'I'm dying for a smoothie".

So we find this place in NYC. I go up the one step, I go in, I hear a THUMP, and Alan is on the floor.

Some guy ran to help him up. We both did.

He gets up and says: "I'm fine" and the guy says: "Buddy, I don't think so, you are bleeding".

It seems that he fell on his elbow and he got a nice scrape. He is on Plavix and aspirin, so that doesn't help, does it.

You would think the owner of the place or SOMEBODY would come over and ask how he is doing? I asked for a napkin and someone produced a first aid kit. So there was Melody, disinfecting, cleaning, putting pressure. We used a lot of napkins.

Alan was so thirsty (it was so hot outside), so I went up to the counter and said: 'can you please give him something to drink, we came in for a smoothie".

They poured him a glass of water.

My god.

We left because he finally seemed to stop bleeding.

We went to go for our pickup for the Access-ride.

We had to wait almost 2 hours in the blazing sun. He had stopped bleeding.

The access-a-ride came, we got on, and while the bus was jostling us about, he must have banged his elbow because he started to bleed through the napkin he was holding on his elbow.

We got home, I disinfected it again, (it's just a piece of skin that's been scraped off, but it's still there.). I didn't pull it off (I once read where you shouldn't pull off a piece of skin, it can be a protection of some kind over the injury site).

So I held his elbow under running water to clean it again. I put some fresh disinfectant, I bandaged it and there have been no further instances.

No bleeding, no leaky anything from the bandage.

So what does one do when one has a cut, you've put a gauze pad over it, it stops bleeding, and you've bandaged the whole elbow.

When do you think it's safe to remove the bandage and gently pull the gauze pad off?? Or do you just unwrap the bandage that's over the gauze pad and let the gauze pad come off by itself?

I don't want to pull off anything because I might rip it open again.

It's been so long since I've had to put something over a cut, I've forgotten.

Thanks much.

P.S. He's a very lucky man. He could have busted up his face and broken his leg. Good Lord.