I was part of an unfortunate incident this past weekend. You know, one of those incidents when you’re no longer riding your bike upright; starts with a ‘c’ and ends with a ‘rash.’ You got it. Nothing major, just annoying road rash down the left side of my body. So what’s the most effective way to heal road rash? Everyone has their own method of treating and/or healing it. Personally, I use Saran Wrap.
The goal is to keep the wound from scabbing over. While the road rash is still fresh from the wreck, and has already been cleaned sufficiently, I smear Neosporin or some kind of triple antibiotic cream all over it. This helps to accelerate the healing process and keeps it from drying out. Now the Saran Wrap comes into play: cut a piece larger than what is needed to cover the wound in its entirety, place the plastic wrap on the wound (making it stick to the cream/wound), smooth out the surface of the plastic wrap, and finally tape it securely to your skin. You might be wondering why Saran Wrap is used instead of gauze. There are two reasons: 1)Saran Wrap does not stick to the wound. You can peel the plastic wrap away from the wound without pulling any skin or doing any damage to the healing area, and you won’t find face with grimacing wince on it. 2)Saran Wrap is nonabsorbent. This is important because the antibiotic cream that you put on the wound will stay on the wound where it has the most impact of healing; gauze tends to absorb it. I change the Sara Wrap and reapply antibiotic cream 2 times a day: once in the morning when I wake up and once before I go to bed. That’s all there is to it.
Since the Saran Wrap doesn’t offer any padding, I usually put something over it to keep it from getting agitated with the movement of a pedal stroke. I leave the plastic wrap as it is and then add gauze, a paper towel, or whatever else you want to trap between your cycling shorts and the road rash, on top of it.
I can’t offer any predictions on how many days it will take for the Saran Wrap method to heal your road rash, but I have had great success with it and others have as well. Nobody plans on getting road rash, but once you have it, getting rid of it as quickly as possible is of top priority. Now if I could find a way to keep myself from rolling over onto the road rash when I’m sleeping!
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