Have you noticed that when you have a cold, flu, or other illness, or when you sustain an injury people will be very caring and helpful. Inevitably they all seem to have a home remedy to cure the ailment. Often they work. If you recall all the remedies we were told on how to cure or prevent a mosquito bite itch while we were in Ecuador we heard plenty. In the end though, time was the cure.
The topic sprang to mind this morning as I looked again at the huge burn I got on the weekend, courtesy of my lawnmower. I look like a branded calf with a nice big C on my forearm. At first I didn’t realize how badly I had burned myself but as I continued to feel the throb I went into the house, applied an icecube for several minutes and then put egg white on the burn to prevent scarring. I don’t think I waited more than three minutes before I attended to the burn but that was long enough to cause the burn to run deeper into the skin with the result that I now have a pretty ugly looking scar on my arm. I only added the egg white for 2 days which was my second mistake, I should have continued using the egg until the burn was gone. Now I will end up with a permanent scar on my arm. It will go nicely with the big one on my upper arm which was the result of a scratch from a barbed wire fence.
The story of that scar is quite funny. It happened on the momentous occasion of my mother’s pseudo 75th birthday. Part of the event was raft racing on the creek that runs through my brother’s property. My sister Jeanette and I were partners in one boat and when they said “go” we ran like maniacs to get down to the creek, hauling the stupid raft with us. I hauled the raft over the fence and then climbed through it ripping my arm as I went. I didn’t think much of it because just as that was happening my eyes beheld Jeanette rolling down the hill to the water. It wasn’t a graceful roll. She was bumping and leaping as she rolled (don’t ask me how that is possible but she was). Apparently as I was crawling through I somehow ended up hauling Jeanette over before she was ready with the result that she lost her footing and made this horrific journey down to the creek. Jeanette ended up wrenching her knee but despite the pain both of us scrambled into the raft and made our way down the creek to the finish line, though we hardly got any flags along the way because SOMEONE had cheated and got there first!
Fortunately I had a tetanus shot so I didn’t need to worry too much about not seeing to the scratch right away and quite frankly it didn’t seem that deep to me at the time. I was pretty amazed to discover that I even got a scar and that it has lasted 3 years is even more surprising to me. It’s definitely permanent. To think a grown woman could cause such damage to herself is kind of scary. Can you imagine what I can get up to in the next 30 years? I need a home remedy for caution.
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