Gross out-- Not for the faint of heart

[violinp]

Heh, mine turned out just fine.  I have a scar the size of a green bean, but it stayed stitched.

Her cut was 2" long and 1" deep, and it was across the whole front of her knee, if that makes any difference.

[JoW]

Stitches can make the difference between a SCAR and a scar.  Decades ago I broke a car window with my face.  I have a scar from the corner of my left eye to my hair line.  The plastic surgeon who stitched it made it nearly invisible - no more than 1/16" wide at any point.  Without stitches it would have been an ugly Frankenstein-looking mess. 

[Snooks]

Plastic surgeon stitches are a vastly different thing to nurse in A&E stitches in my (minimal) experience.

[Sirius]

Plastic surgeon stitches are a vastly different thing to nurse in A&E stitches in my (minimal) experience.

A former co-worker told me about the time she had to take her then-6-yo son to the ER for a cut on his forehead.  A plastic surgeon was working that night, and stitched her son up in a fashion that left almost no scar. 

[Kimblee]

I usually get lucky with scars. (I'm clumsy so i get a lot of injuries, just not usually so dramatic) Mine look terrible the first several months, then fade to the point that you have to get close to find them. My big worry with my leg is that its gonna get caught everytime I shave.

[CrochetFanatic]

I got an inch-long cut on my arm when I was 17, and the ER doc did a very bad job of stitching it.  I think he was either an intern, or in a hurry...but I have no way of knowing.  My mom's a nurse, and she was appalled when I got home and she saw it.  Instead of doing individual sutures, he did a continuous whip stitch to sew it shut.  I didn't know any better, so I didn't speak up when he was doing it.  When the stitches came out, the cut opened right back up again on the tenuous seam, and it was leaking clear-ish fluid.    My mom closed it with butterfly tape, and to this day I have an inch-long scar on my arm that's nearly 1/4 inch wide, with little white pinpoint scars all along the edge of it from where the sutures (well, the suture, really...) went in.  Also, the large band-aid type patches I used to cover the cut in the shower took the first two layers of skin off when I removed them, so it looked like I went around the darn thing with sandpaper. 

[jedikaiti]

When I was about 6, I fell into a rose bush. I still have a scar about 3-4" long, and about 1/2" wide across my left calf. Later, my parents realized they probably should have taken me to the hospital for stitches, but at the time thought cleaning & bandaging was sufficient. Once the size of the scar became apparent, Mom asked my doctor about getting it removed, if ever I wanted that done, but really, I'm used to it now. No urge to get rid of it.

I also have a small scar on my right knee, from falling while running in gravel around that same age. Then a year after that, I fell in gravel again, and scraped off half the scar. :-) There's also an elbow scar from a skateboarding accident. I'm lucky I didn't have any scarring from the hot soup incident when I was 5...

It's amazing I never broke a bone as a kid. Well, I kinda did - I wrecked my bike (about the same age as the rosebush incident), and managed to knock out my front teeth as well as a chunk of my upper jaw. But that's the only broken bone to date.

[Elfmama]

Grandson #2 has a scar about an inch long on the top of his head that he received at the hands of a dragon.  One like this:

He keeps his hair on the shaggy side, since the scar is very visible if it's short.  He got mad about something when he was about 7 or 8, slammed the refrigerator door shut, and unbalanced the goblet that was on top of the fridge.   It clonked him on the head hard enough to deform the pewter!

[vorbau]

I usually get lucky with scars. (I'm clumsy so i get a lot of injuries, just not usually so dramatic) Mine look terrible the first several months, then fade to the point that you have to get close to find them. My big worry with my leg is that its gonna get caught everytime I shave.

Kimblee - this is what we do when there's no medic/aid station handy:

- Clean wound and area around it thoroughly
- Shave area around wound if necessary, and dry thoroughly
- put adhesive tape or sticking plasters (bandaids) above and below the wound, parallel with it and almost but not quite touching the edges
- stitch through the tape - NOT the skin - with an overhand stitch, using strong thread, dental floss (unwaxed) or fishing line, making sure the stitches extend a little bit beyond each end of the wound
- cover the entire thing with antibiotic ointment (not cream) and a clean dressing.

Be sure to change the ointment and dressing at least once a day. Keeping the wound covered will help speed healing and minizime scarring as well.

Just another little factoid courtesy of my professional engagements ...

Vorbau, from the field

[diesel_darlin]

I usually get lucky with scars. (I'm clumsy so i get a lot of injuries, just not usually so dramatic) Mine look terrible the first several months, then fade to the point that you have to get close to find them. My big worry with my leg is that its gonna get caught everytime I shave.

Kimblee - this is what we do when there's no medic/aid station handy:

- Clean wound and area around it thoroughly
- Shave area around wound if necessary, and dry thoroughly
- put adhesive tape or sticking plasters (bandaids) above and below the wound, parallel with it and almost but not quite touching the edges
- stitch through the tape - NOT the skin - with an overhand stitch, using strong thread, dental floss (unwaxed) or fishing line, making sure the stitches extend a little bit beyond each end of the wound
- cover the entire thing with antibiotic ointment (not cream) and a clean dressing.

Be sure to change the ointment and dressing at least once a day. Keeping the wound covered will help speed healing and minizime scarring as well.

Just another little factoid courtesy of my professional engagements ...

Vorbau, from the field

Is it bad that out of all of Vorbau's posts on this thread, THIS ONE is the one that made me go BLECHHHHH. 

[White Dragon]

When I read Vorbau's post I thought 'Hey! They really do that?'

30-mumble years ago,  I read a book where they treated a bad cut just that way.
I thought at the time that it made a lot of sense, but I never saw another reference to it and figured it was just an unusually good piece of fiction.

Kind of cool to think it really is true.

[Elfmama]

When I read Vorbau's post I thought 'Hey! They really do that?'

30-mumble years ago,  I read a book where they treated a bad cut just that way.
I thought at the time that it made a lot of sense, but I never saw another reference to it and figured it was just an unusually good piece of fiction.

Kind of cool to think it really is true.

Was that an SF book where there had been a massive die-off from some sort of bio-warfare plague, and the protagonist and his family had escaped it because they were in an isolated fishing camp in Canada?  I think there was such a scene in that book; the son had cut his leg open with an axe, and there was no doctor available.

[vorbau]

I usually get lucky with scars. (I'm clumsy so i get a lot of injuries, just not usually so dramatic) Mine look terrible the first several months, then fade to the point that you have to get close to find them. My big worry with my leg is that its gonna get caught everytime I shave.

Kimblee - this is what we do when there's no medic/aid station handy:

- Clean wound and area around it thoroughly
- Shave area around wound if necessary, and dry thoroughly
- put adhesive tape or sticking plasters (bandaids) above and below the wound, parallel with it and almost but not quite touching the edges
- stitch through the tape - NOT the skin - with an overhand stitch, using strong thread, dental floss (unwaxed) or fishing line, making sure the stitches extend a little bit beyond each end of the wound
- cover the entire thing with antibiotic ointment (not cream) and a clean dressing.

Be sure to change the ointment and dressing at least once a day. Keeping the wound covered will help speed healing and minizime scarring as well.

Just another little factoid courtesy of my professional engagements ...

Vorbau, from the field

Is it bad that out of all of Vorbau's posts on this thread, THIS ONE is the one that made me go BLECHHHHH. 

No, that makes you normal. For Ehell, that is.

For a scalp wound, you can close it temporarily (if the victim has hair long enough) by crossing strands of hair over the wound and tying them in square knots ...

[Outdoor Girl]

My Dad has always done what we call butterfly tapes.  You snip, on an angle, in the middle and wrap around so you have a middle section that doesn't have any glue.  What you have left looks vaguely like a butterfly.  Then you apply these tapes over the wound in such a way that you pull the edges together.  Works like a charm.

Dad was a teacher and had a kid slice his forehead open.  Dad quickly put on a bunch of butterfly tapes while his mother was called to pick him up and take him in for stitches.  He'd used his Swiss Army knife to make the tapes.  The mother stopped in afterwards to talk to my Dad.  She couldn't figure out what her son had been saying.  Something about a MacGyver knife.     The hospital declined to stitch the wound, saying the tapes worked as well as stitches would and would likely leave less of a scar!

He learned how to do this from his Dad, who was a corpsman in the first World War.

[White Dragon]

When I read Vorbau's post I thought 'Hey! They really do that?'

30-mumble years ago,  I read a book where they treated a bad cut just that way.
I thought at the time that it made a lot of sense, but I never saw another reference to it and figured it was just an unusually good piece of fiction.

Kind of cool to think it really is true.

Was that an SF book where there had been a massive die-off from some sort of bio-warfare plague, and the protagonist and his family had escaped it because they were in an isolated fishing camp in Canada?  I think there was such a scene in that book; the son had cut his leg open with an axe, and there was no doctor available.

That is exactly the book! It's called "The Last Canadian" I thought I was the only person on the planet who'd read it!