I once slid down a steep hill with old pavement and took roughly a full square foot of hide off. My left thigh had a 10" by 4" oval abraded off. The left calf was a bit smaller. Left forearm was missing a 5" by 2" oval. Etcetera, etcetera ...

I got home at about 2100 and called my girlfriend, an RN, to tell her not to come over after her shift was over at 2300. She told me to leave the front door unlocked and to get myself into the tub to soak the gravel out.

At about 2320 she showed up, got naked, climbed into the tub with me, and, straddling me, she proceeded to use a plastic comb and nail brush to lovingly scrub and comb the sand and gravel out of my hide. The scrubbing was done with plain soap and warm water. Rinsing as the dirt and blood obscured the action. The last pass was with Betadine. Once cleaned she dried me off, slathered on a layer of Neosporin, bandaged the rough spots with gauze, and put me to bed.

She came back every twenty-four hours to redo the bandages. If any of the raw areas get weepy or the borders are red and swollen it means your fighting an infection. Go back, scrub well with soap and water bebriding the area and follow with a strong scrub with Betadine. Apply more Neosporin and rebandage.

Key there is, once you have the wounds cleaned out, to keep the scabs that form moist and flexible by keeping them covered with Neosporin. After the scabs are covering the wound completely you can substitute Vaseline. OTC pain medications, Tylenol or Ibuprofen help moderate the pain and Benedryl helps with the itch. If during a bandage change the gauze sticks simply soak the area until it loosens up. Use more Neosporin or Vaseline when you rebandage to prevent it happening again.

You can spend a lot to get special gel bandages and various creams, potions and pills but plain gauze pads, roll gauze, Neosporin and Vaseline, and OTC medications work.

A week or ten days later the worse is over and you can look forward to your next round of road rash.

Wow! What kind of insurance are you carrying?

That sounds like service with a smile

Wish I had that service when I removed a nice amount of skin from my shoulder / forearm in a mountain bike skid.

+1 on keeping the wound clean and "hydrated".

Naked or not, girlfriend or not, scrubbing the gravel out hurts like holy hell and took well over an hour to complete. She scrubbed and rinsed. Scrub some more and rinse. Repeat until no more foreign mater was present. She did it very well, and very thoroughly. I mostly just grit my teeth and hung on. After that I was exhausted and slept for over twelve hours.

Having it done after a long soak, and fortified with a stiff drink seemed to dull the pain and allow it to go faster.

Now don't get me wrong, the naked girlfriend aspect tends to be comforting but the pain tends to ruin the mood. As much as I would like to think seeing me prone generally inspires women everywhere to remove their clothing the real reason she stripped was to keep her clothes from getting stained with blood. The straddling part made it possible for a 100 pound woman to hold me down while she held the limb with one hand and scrubbed with the other.

Sitting on a person your treating helps to control the situation and limits wiggling and flinching. Standard practice when treating livestock. If you ever have to provide first-aid to someone while your in a vehicle moving over rough ground, or vessel on rough seas, sitting on them stabilizes your movement to theirs and allows some level of delicacy and precision even as everything around you bucks and heaves.

Yes, I think we realize the reason, but teasing in this case is "fun"

Debriding wounds is NO fun - as a nurse, I'm kinda shocked she didn't have some sort of either topical/logal or general pain killer to give you. I do understand the problem with local lidocaine - for instance the vascularization issue. I'd think a Vicodan ES or HP, wait 45-60 minutes, then the scrub would have hurt a bit less

I realized the comments were in good fun and thought they were LOL funny. I'm sorry if anyone took it that I was trying to minimize the ridiculousness and humor in the situation. I still laugh myself.

I implicitly know it hurt at the time but the memory of actual pain seems distant. The main thing I remember is that this tough and tiny woman did what had to be done and got me through it.

It is a 'Best of times; worse of times' memory. Odd as it sounds I'm happy to have had the experience.

Years ago, there was a bicycling magazine called "winning" (Hint I think it stopped publishing during the Indurain era). They had an end note column called "The Bike Shop" that had some stories stick with me - but one of them was a "you know you're a real rider when..." type list - I still remember one of the list - When you fall and get serious road rash, and your more worried about your shorts/jersey, as they cost MONEY, but you'll heal