Asphalt Disease

I hope you took him to the ER.

Don't kid yourself into thinking the ER is not the place to go if something is not life threatening. Your son's injury could very well be life threatening!!

An open wound that exposes ligaments is extremely serious, now you say it is necrotic.......necrotic means the tissue is dying or already dead. Gangrene is dead toxic tissue. All kinds of infections can occur in a dirty wound, like staph, strep, pseudomonas, MRSA to name a few. People get septic and die from infections.

I had a 15 year old teen patient one time in the hospital who had a wound on his leg, (minor wound to start with), infected with strep and developed necrotizing fasciitis and his leg had to be amputated just below the hip! Amputation to SAVE HIS LIFE!

Untreated or inadequately treated wounds can become deadly, and more and more problems are developing challenges to treat because often antibiotics don't all work, and are becoming "resistant". Go to any hospital and walk down a hall and see isolation carts outside of patient rooms because of infections that don't respond to treatment, must have steps in avoiding spread. Immune system disorders complicate things even further.

I hope your son is ok, and heals without further complications.

While I know you intended to be funny, and my kid had plenty of road rash episodes (another term for Asphalt Disease), I agree with Marilyn S (an RN) who says you don't mess around with infection and necrosis especially.

Yes, teens (not just boys either) make ridiculous decisions sometimes because the part of the brain that predicts consequences isn't fully developed until age 25 or so. Which is why the teen and college years are filled with bonehead decisions, some of them devastating. My son used to ride bikes over "jumps" he made with boards propped up on something else. When it was just a rock, it was fine. When it was a big plastic milk crate and he was jumping over 2 kids lying down next to it, like Evel Knievel jumping over school buses, I was very grateful for a neighbor's call to get me down there to stop the nonsense.

He fell out of a tree once too, and believe me, we went right to the ER via ambulance. Once he was playing touch football with friends, got tackled (so much for "touch", right?), and was knocked unconscious. The entire group of bonehead teens left him there, moved the game 20 yards to the side, and continued playing. Then they let him drive home alone after he eventually regained consciousness. That was another trip to the ER

I work in food science (as does Marilyn S) and we've never heard of honey being used for anything except occasional success with allergies (and only using local honey and only if you're allergic to those plants the bees pollinate). There are some natural things that help with immunity and anti inflammation but none of it is available in health food stores or vitamin aisles, only from food science companies. My husband had a pretty serious fall 2 months ago with a lot of road rash, and he got great results, but he was already doing a lot for his immune system. But we got good advice from trained food scientists and we weren't just doing it because we saw a commercial (we didn't) or because we read an article or saw a health store employee (about the same age as above-mentioned boneheads!) hawking a product.

It's important to find the right balance between medicine and food science, between home bandaging and ERs. It's what I do for a living so I'm not anti-anything, just dedicated to science and facts.

Really, aside from my medically fragile daughter, the visits to the doc for anything accidental have been few and far between.

My second eldest son, when he was around 5 or so, had a wart on his knee. We tried every home remedy we could for a few months. Then took hime to the doc to have it burned of. That sucker just kept coming back. Then one day he had a pretty bad wipe out on his bike. The abrasions on his knee were pretty bad. BUT, after they healed, the wart was gone, and never returned!

**Tis an ill wind that blows no good at all**

Oh, oh, oh, look, look, look! Boy falls down!

At age 4, my grandson tripped over an asphalt speed bump in a dark parking lot, and removed a significant amount of skin from his face. Deep abrasions and a concussion made a trip to ER necessary. Fortunately, kids usually heal quickly, but he still has two visible flecks of asphalt, in his cheek and forehead.

So sorry about the necrosis. An ancient healing substance has recently found its way into my medicine cabinet, and that wound is EXACTLY the kind of injury that it works best on. Manuka honey from New Zealand contains huge amounts of healing compounds directly from a particular species of wild plants that not only fight infection, making this honey a good adjunct to Western medicine, but it also speeds healing by promoting the natural granulation of the tissues, even in necrotic wounds.

I'm sure this must sound like the next "woo-woo" silver bullet, but really, this stuff is so effective that at least one brand is used by prescription in many wound and burn centers and VA hospitals. I learned about it from my daughter, who is in medical sales, and her company uses the Derma Sciences brand called Medi-Honey. You can find some brands in health food stores, too, though I haven't yet checked on the purity or potency of those.

But really, in the two months I've known about it, this one item has become the most used, and most effective, healing product in my medicine cabinet.

With or without the honey, I hope your son's knee recovers well.

Ouch !!! My oldest is 14 and we haven't seen much of this yet. BUT - as a toddler he was the one that kept stubbing his toe and falling so I am just waiting. Maybe he got it all out of his system then LOL. I don't know as far as the thank you gift goes. You might get them a gift card to a restaurant - maybe Chili's or something like that. I am sure they would appreciate it.

omg omg omg, exposed ligaments and necrotic knee!
EEEEEeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeEEEEEEE!!!!!!
road rash was a huge issue at my childhood home of bermuda, where everyone rides scooters and the roads are tiny, windy and full of people who drive too fast. it can turn really nasty.
hope he's okay!
khairete
S.