Burned by Bacon

I love bacon, but bacon doesn't love me.  One time I tried to cook bacon in the oven.   That didn't work out so well - the bacon caught on fire.  Tuesday night I tried to fry bacon on the stove.  And I got splattered on my leg.  Bad.  (Dad, I really like you, so I'm going to post the photo at the very bottom so you don't have to look at it.)

It hurt like crazy!  Part of my skin was brown / black and had peeled back.  I cooled the burn, cut off the dead skin, then put some burn cream on it and put a giant band-aid on it.  And it hurt for the rest of the night.  A lot. I wasn't sure if it was a first or second degree burn (a second degree usually blisters, but I didn't see a blister).

Today the burn still hurt and it was red and bloody splotchy looking.  I already knew from school that burns need to be kept moist and covered and that burns can become infected very easily.  I didn't know what a normal burn was supposed to look like because signs of infection are redness, swelling, and hot, all of which come standard with burns.  I really thought I could take care of this on my own, but we are going on vacation soon and I didn't want this burn to mess that up.  So after calls to my mom, T, and the ask-a-nurse hotline I went to the insta-care.

Good news, it's not infected.  Bad news, it's a big second degree burn.  The blister area was actually pretty well defined once I knew what I was looking for.  Immediately after the grease hit my leg I  automatically tried to use my other foot to brush the grease off and that probably ruptured the blister.  More bad news, the burn is bigger than I originally thought (there was a lot of swelling).  The burn is slightly too large for the largest band-aid so I have to use gauze and an ace bandage (which makes the burn look way worse than it is).  More bad news, I have to keep the burn protected from the sun for about 1.5 months.  The actual skin will heal in 2-3 weeks, but it is very vulnerable to scarring and sunburn for 5-8 weeks.  Even more bad news, I probably can't swim on our vacation!  Booooo.  But they did tell me if I wanted to try it, the best way to do it.  So we will see...

But I'm glad I went to the insta-care.  I got some special cream and told how to care for my burn twice a day and now I don't have to worry about it on vacation.

And now for the photo.  If you don't want to see it, don't scroll down any more...

This is at insta-care before treatment.  You can see where the grease dripped a bit down my leg and the pretty well defined blister area.  The brown isn't dirt, it's dead burnt skin that hasn't fallen off yet.  I was hoping to wear sandals to the weddings, but now it looks like I will be wearing boots (seriously, with the ace bandage it looks like my whole leg is burnt).

This is the burn about 8 hours after treatment.  Look at that lovely color!