Cycling

Dealing with Road Rash

Last night I made my first appearance on the bike in exactly 2 weeks; I’ve been “couched” with road rash and knee pain since my wreck, but I was surprised at how good I felt once I started to ride. I had a small amount of pain in my knee due to a wound stretching as I pedaled, but I was away for too long and the pain was not going to stop me.

Obviously road rash isn’t among the worst things that can happen to you during a bike crash, but it is painful nonetheless. Eager to be back on the bike as quickly as possible, I did plenty of research on healing and learned quite a bit along the way. Here are a few things that I learned during the process.

Please note that I am not a doctor. This is simply what I found out through speaking with a doctor and doing some of my own research. You should do the same.

1) Immediately wash the wound(s) with soap and water. You should do this as quickly as possible. I had lots of dirt and asphalt on my wounds when I crashed and this needs to come off immediately.

2) Once the wound has been cleaned, find a liquid / breathable bandage and apply over the wound. There are plenty of good ideas, but the two that I am most familiar with are tegaderm and Johnson & Johnson’s Advanced Healing. I wasn’t able to find Tegaderm at a nearby drug mart, so I went with the Advanced Healing.

3) Once the bandage is on there, leave it for a few days. I had puss come out of the bandage, but I would just wipe it off in the shower. When the bandage completely fills, take it off, wash the wound again with soap and water, then put a new bandage back on.

This approach goes against my traditional “put alcohol/ peroxide on it and let it dry out” approach. The scabbing actually slows the healing process and can also lead to scarring. Using these “liquid” bandages helps to minimize scarring and the bandage itself acts as a scab, preserving moisture so that new skin can grow.

And that’s it. 2 weeks after the crash I have only one scab - from a wound that required two staples to hold together. Every other wound is without scab and is fresh pink skin.

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