Getting a dressing off a graze

Jay-Jay_4

Yikes!

I'm normally a good first aider but the other day when daughter fell flat on her front and took all the skin off her knee I put a dressing on it because she was screaming the place down and retching (it looked quite nasty). Normally I would have left it to dry up and scab over :rolleyes:

Anyway, I forgot about it as we've all had a tummy bug and today I tried to remove the dressing......nope! It's healed up over the dressing :silenced:

I've cut most of it off and am currently soaking it to get the rest off but the broblem is a 'bandage' type layer which is inside the scab.

Shall I leave it to fall off or is there a way of softening a scab to remove it?

elona

If you have already tried warm water - how about warmed olive oil left to soak in?

Jay-Jay_4

elona wrote:

If you have already tried warm water - how about warmed olive oil left to soak in?

Thanks elona, I've put some olive oil on it.

She's so soft, she can't even look at it and walking is out of the question :rolleyes: ho hum!

quietheart

It's hard to say without seeing it, maybe let her have a good soak in the bath and see how the scab looks then. I had some dressing stuck into the scab after an operation, I got some out in the shower (with the shower head right against the scab) and left some in which came off in time.
It depends on how bad the graze is, it's a mucky business having kids isn't it!

Savvy_Sue

Use melolin faced dressing next time ... non-stick surface! (don't tell me, it was one of those!)

VixxAnn

soaking in the bath as someone said should help.Try adding salt into the bath water as this really helps skin - if you want to just wash the wound, use saline and wipe with some clean gauze. but be gentle as you can damage the new growing tissue.

A good tip for getting rid of debris and old skin is to put on a wet dressing (like gauze soaked in saline) then when its dried you can just pull it off and hopefully remove most of the unwanted "gunk" Obviously I don't know if this is now suitable treatment depends on current state of her knee.

HTH