19 May, 2007

I will never leave the house again...

without marinating in sunblock anyhow. The sunburn I got from the parade blossomed into a bad second degree burn, and the tender skin on my cleavage that doesn't often see sun blistered. After it blistered it ended up cracking open and developing into cellulitis, which is a bad soft tissue infection of the skin at a cellular level. It was spreading and I outlined the red areas with a sharpie to keep track of them. Once it was clear that it was extending beyond the outlining and getting worse, I broke down and went to the doctor. She actually asked if I had gone to the ER for treatment, and made an awful face when she saw it. The best treatment for burns is Silvadene cream which has colloidal silver in it as well as other good things, but since I am deathly allergic to sulfa drugs which are a component of this, I had to use two other creams: a heavy duty antibiotic and a lidocaine ointment to kill the pain. It was actually excruciatingly painful and would keep me awake at night, so I was more than happy to numb the girls. They still ache all the time, but its a constant dull ache instead of a sharp, burning pain, and its very tolerable. What really makes me kick myself is that this was entirely preventable had I just remembered that SPF 60. *sigh*

Oh well. The creams are working their magic, and while there will be scarring, it looks like it'll fade over 6-12 months. I have to debride the dead tissue in the shower and then apply the creams, but it looks SO much better and is no longer splitting and oozing. The cellulitis is almost completely resolved with just one weeks worth of antibiotics, so once I finish the second week I'll be good to go. The new skin will be very delicate however, and will absolutely require tons of sunblock at all times--not a problem as I definitely learned my lesson. I still want a melanin transplant though!

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