Wet to dry bandaging. It sounds so benign.
It isn’t.
Remember when I remarked that this whole thing with my leg wasn’t very painful? Well, the nature of the game has changed. We’re in the process of re-growing skin where, for awhile, there was none. We want to grow new skin from the bottom up and the sides in. We can’t let it just scab over. We need to keep it open.
Wet to dry bandaging involves packing wet gauze into the wound, and wrapping it in place with breathable bandaging. As the gauze dries out, and the wound simultaneously heals, a scab forms. The gauze packed into the wound becomes part of that scab. Then the gauze is ripped out, ripping off any scab, down to the new fresh skin, and new gauze packed in its place. Wet to dry bandaging just doesn’t describe the sensation. Packing and dressing sounds a little more ominous, but still; entirely inadequate. Maybe we should call it ripping and stripping. That comes a little closer to reality.
Have you seen the chest waxing scene in the movie Forty Year Old Virgin? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4UgkNnbNVc. That’s me, twice a day, every day (as I get better).
