[pct-l] stitches-don't do it

[Ron Cordell]

This reflects my personal experience:

1. While hiking a couple of years ago on the AT in the Smokies, I managed to
stick my small Victorinix knife blade, quite new and sharp at the time, deep
into the muscle at the base of my thumb, creating a very deep and about 1"
long wound that bled like there was no tomorrow. I cleaned it, filled with
neosporin, and taped it closed with duct tape for over night. I managed to
sleep with my hand up above my heart most of the night, which helped
decrease the bleeding. The next morning, I opened it up, cleaned it out with
water as best I could, filled with neosporin, taped it closed and off I
went. By the time I got off the trail 4 days later, the wound had started
healing nicely and eventually left no scar. It was deep enough that I
considered walking out that evening, but it was OK.

2. While mountain biking many years ago, another biker came around a blind
corner and we crashed head on, and somehow I ended up with his entire brake
lever buried in my arm. Don't ask me how this happened, but there it was. I
got back to the car, cleaned out the wound with water and hydrogen peroxide
that I had in my car med kit, and bandaged it closed. We camped and went
biking the next day, and I kept the would cleaned and filled with neosporin.
It healed just fine, although that one left a scar. I thought about bailing
to a hospital to get stitches, but it didn't seem necessary.

3. In a motorcycle accident where I left a large part of my forearm tissue
on the asphalt down to the bone, the emergency room procedure was to scrub
out the wound and flush it extremely well, then put bandages on it to cover
it. My job was to remove the bandages every day for a week or two, clean it
out, and re-bandage. Everything grew back just fine with nothing more than
topical antibiotics like neosporin (I could see the bones in my arm pretty
clearly - all the tissue was gone). That one left some scars, but healed up
quite well despite being extremely painful to clean out every day.

Bottom line - keeping wounds clean, leaving them open but covered and using
lots of neosporin seems to have worked well for me over a variety of
situations.