Spur Open Wound - Filled with dirt

To me the yellow is fat, and I would not try to remove it.
View attachment 1889036

Ok. Honestly, I don’t have the stomach to do things like that, so I wouldn’t have removed either way (though I greatly appreciate all of the advice). At this point, it’s looking better, and I will continue to clean and monitor and if it gets worse may need to intervene taking farther measures. For now though, going to continue with all of the advice and see how it goes. :)

Sometimes I think I shouldn’t be a chicken owner because I have a hard time with things like this. :(
 
You guys are so sweet. To add to the mystic of the tale, I moved to Colorado right after the accident, and I was camping out and showering daily at the community center like a homeless person. It was fall, and it got cold fast, and the community center wasn't heated. It was quite an adventure, all in all.

You might also liken it to a chicken living with serious wounds in a filthy environment, and it pointed out the tremendous value of debriding wounds each day to remove all accumulated bacteria. Done correctly, even the worst wound will heal without getting infected.
 
You may not want to talk about it, @azygous, and it is a shameless hijack of OP's thread, but ... do you feel like telling us how this happened? My heart just hurts that you went through this, even though I know you are all better now. Of course if you'd rather not talk about it we'll certainly understand and respect that, but we are here for you. :hugsStefni
 
I'd love to be able to tell you that my legs caught on fire as I was trying to outrun a vicious wild fire as I was saving campers from a burning campground. But the reality is as stupid and senseless as it often is.

Many of you know I was a state park ranger before I retired 25 years ago. It was a remote desert park on the Colorado River in the southeast corner of California. It was late summer, 117 F, I was due to retire in one week. One of my final projects was to burn a brush dump that held the summer's slash from cutting back tamarisk (salt cedar) from the campsites and roads during the off season.

The park maintenance man gave me a can of boat gas that had gone bad to dispose of on the fire. He then proceeded to leave the park on a shopping trip, leaving me completely alone, no campers, no other park employees. Did I mention it was 117?

I had already been working most of the day, and went to torch off the brush at the end of the day when it was hottest. Your brain on that kind of heat isn't working at peak efficiency. I dumped the gas and intended to light the opposite end of the brush pile, which was around at least a thousand square feet.

My brain short circuited and I lit the end where I had just dumped the gas. Yes, I was literally standing in a puddle of five gallons of gas as I lit the fire. I recall the flame on the lighter growing huge and saying, "Uh oh."

It's impossible to describe the sensation of being engulfed in a huge fire ball. My hair was on fire. I threw myself backward out of the inferno, picked my burning self off the ground and ran over to the park porta-potty pumper truck and turned on the spigot to run water over my burning parts to try to halt the cooking process.

I stood back and assessed the damage. My hair was singed and curled into a Brillo Pad, all the fuzz was burned off my cheeks, along with my eyebrows and eye lashes. But my legs were cooked to a medium rare, skin hanging in tatters like long strips of fried bacon. (Smelled like it, too.)

I got into the truck and drove myself to the ER, thirty miles away. That's where I got to experience debriding for the first time. OMG, did that ever hurt. The nurse who did it was practically in tears having to hurt me like that. But I was going to be doing it to myself every day for the next month.

The worst part wasn't the burns, second and third degree over both legs. It was the cooked muscles. No one mentions how much it hurts when your muscles have been barbecued. I continued to go to work for the next week, and when I was talking to park visitors, I would have to sort of run in place to keep from collapsing from my leg muscles cramping up.

And I retired at the end of the week, and you know the rest of the story.
 
I'd love to be able to tell you that my legs caught on fire as I was trying to outrun a vicious wild fire as I was saving campers from a burning campground. But the reality is as stupid and senseless as it often is.

Many of you know I was a state park ranger before I retired 25 years ago. It was a remote desert park on the Colorado River in the southeast corner of California. It was late summer, 117 F, I was due to retire in one week. One of my final projects was to burn a brush dump that held the summer's slash from cutting back tamarisk (salt cedar) from the campsites and roads during the off season.

The park maintenance man gave me a can of boat gas that had gone bad to dispose of on the fire. He then proceeded to leave the park on a shopping trip, leaving me completely alone, no campers, no other park employees. Did I mention it was 117?

I had already been working most of the day, and went to torch off the brush at the end of the day when it was hottest. Your brain on that kind of heat isn't working at peak efficiency. I dumped the gas and intended to light the opposite end of the brush pile, which was around at least a thousand square feet.

My brain short circuited and I lit the end where I had just dumped the gas. Yes, I was literally standing in a puddle of five gallons of gas as I lit the fire. I recall the flame on the lighter growing huge and saying, "Uh oh."

It's impossible to describe the sensation of being engulfed in a huge fire ball. My hair was on fire. I threw myself backward out of the inferno, picked my burning self off the ground and ran over to the park porta-potty pumper truck and turned on the spigot to run water over my burning parts to try to halt the cooking process.

I stood back and assessed the damage. My hair was singed and curled into a Brillo Pad, all the fuzz was burned off my cheeks, along with my eyebrows and eye lashes. But my legs were cooked to a medium rare, skin hanging in tatters like long strips of fried bacon. (Smelled like it, too.)

I got into the truck and drove myself to the ER, thirty miles away. That's where I got to experience debriding for the first time. OMG, did that ever hurt. The nurse who did it was practically in tears having to hurt me like that. But I was going to be doing it to myself every day for the next month.

The worst part wasn't the burns, second and third degree over both legs. It was the cooked muscles. No one mentions how much it hurts when your muscles have been barbecued. I continued to go to work for the next week, and when I was talking to park visitors, I would have to sort of run in place to keep from collapsing from my leg muscles cramping up.

And I retired at the end of the week, and you know the rest of the story.

:eek:

Wow! Glad you are OK. Cant imagine the pain, and the time to heal from burns like that.

A family member was training to be a firefighter years ago...unfortunately the day they were going into the "burn building" - that concrete structure used for things like this - and that person did not properly lace one boot...in the end they got the entire top part of that one foot burned (but not the toes). It took longer than you would think to heal and it was a daily process of care, and that was really just a small area, so I can only imagine the intensity, the pain, and the care involved for your much more extensive burns.

Thanks for sharing.
 
I'd love to be able to tell you that my legs caught on fire as I was trying to outrun a vicious wild fire as I was saving campers from a burning campground. But the reality is as stupid and senseless as it often is.

Many of you know I was a state park ranger before I retired 25 years ago. It was a remote desert park on the Colorado River in the southeast corner of California. It was late summer, 117 F, I was due to retire in one week. One of my final projects was to burn a brush dump that held the summer's slash from cutting back tamarisk (salt cedar) from the campsites and roads during the off season.

The park maintenance man gave me a can of boat gas that had gone bad to dispose of on the fire. He then proceeded to leave the park on a shopping trip, leaving me completely alone, no campers, no other park employees. Did I mention it was 117?

I had already been working most of the day, and went to torch off the brush at the end of the day when it was hottest. Your brain on that kind of heat isn't working at peak efficiency. I dumped the gas and intended to light the opposite end of the brush pile, which was around at least a thousand square feet.

My brain short circuited and I lit the end where I had just dumped the gas. Yes, I was literally standing in a puddle of five gallons of gas as I lit the fire. I recall the flame on the lighter growing huge and saying, "Uh oh."

It's impossible to describe the sensation of being engulfed in a huge fire ball. My hair was on fire. I threw myself backward out of the inferno, picked my burning self off the ground and ran over to the park porta-potty pumper truck and turned on the spigot to run water over my burning parts to try to halt the cooking process.

I stood back and assessed the damage. My hair was singed and curled into a Brillo Pad, all the fuzz was burned off my cheeks, along with my eyebrows and eye lashes. But my legs were cooked to a medium rare, skin hanging in tatters like long strips of fried bacon. (Smelled like it, too.)

I got into the truck and drove myself to the ER, thirty miles away. That's where I got to experience debriding for the first time. OMG, did that ever hurt. The nurse who did it was practically in tears having to hurt me like that. But I was going to be doing it to myself every day for the next month.

The worst part wasn't the burns, second and third degree over both legs. It was the cooked muscles. No one mentions how much it hurts when your muscles have been barbecued. I continued to go to work for the next week, and when I was talking to park visitors, I would have to sort of run in place to keep from collapsing from my leg muscles cramping up.

And I retired at the end of the week, and you know the rest of the story.
Wow Carol :hugs
 

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