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Thursday, May 23, 2002

Multihop Bandaids

Multihop blacklisting was in effect on my mail server for a short time, which resulted in untold amounts of email being turned away. I'm not sure if proper bounces were sent, so if you sent me any email in the last few days and don't hear back within a reasonable time window, you may want to resend it.

On other fronts, I decided to give Band-Aid's hi tech bandaids a try for my secondary wounds and so far I'm quite pleased. I was having to re-dress them twice daily, and they remained quite tender to the touch all day and night (large raw patches on shoulder, wrist, and knee) not to mention stringing like hell in the shower. But now they're sealed long-term under some weird waterproof gel plastic stuff and I've basically been able to ignore them ever since.

Oh, damn! I spoke too soon. These bandages absorb fluid from the body and swell up like a big white blister over the top of the sore, keeping it all moist and well padded.. normally. But the one on my shoulder has apparently exceeded capacity, the blister having reached the edge of the bandaid, and is now leaking large quantities of goo out the sides. Ick, gross. I wonder what the fluid is by the time its filtered through all that? Wish I had that USB microscope hooked up. I feel like I'm wearing a still-suit (Dune).

Anyway, I'm wondering whether I should try these things out on my nose and forehead (where the skin was completely removed). After reading a long article on wound healing, it seems scarring is inevitable, and about the only positive hint in the whole article was that if it's kept moist and never let dry out, you'll get the most regrowth of normal skin before the fibroplasts fill the hole with randomly oriented collagen fibers (which may or may not be elastic depending on unknown incantations). The only down side I can think of is that it would allow the pit to fill in with gel faster (than if I'm actively washing it daily) which might in turn allow scar tissue to develop faster. I am tempted to run a test by treating my nose one way and my forehead the other, but it would be annoying forever after to have to answer "where'd you get that scar" with "that one was the control". So if anybody knows anything about this, let me know.

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