When I took the bacon out of the oven, slid it nicely to a plate, and then picked the pan to place it in the kitchen sink, I felt like screaming.
Not because of the pain, though I would've had every reason, but because I felt soo dumb.. I mean, how can you pick up a pan by the handle with BARE hands if it was just removed from a 450 F (250C) oven??
Right? Arrrgggg...
Now add to that the sad fact that there was no burn treating ointment at home except the spray, and I didn't have either the money, nor the willingness to go and get some gel from the pharmacy without knowing what the gel really has..
So, I did what every sensible person would do: cursed one loud and tawdry (trust me, the Hungarian language has some of the most sophisticated curse words :D ), dropped the pan to the wood floor (ouch, now we are both scarred) and rushed for a kitchen towel to get the pan safely in the sink.
Now when all the first seconds were over, it was time to think what to do with the burn. It was my second one for the day, but the other was small, on top of my hand, and I haven't considered it a threat to my everyday tasks, even though that was a 2nd grade burn, too.
Now this one, in my palm, about a 2 square inches, 2nd grade burn, was a threat.
I felt my skin shrinking and in pain, and imagined the blisters that would follow. Yuk!
I had a plan in my mind:
1) Stop the cells from burning by locally cooling them down.
2) Stop/prevent the forming of blisters, because that's gonna look ugly! to say the least.
3) Hydrate an nourish the skin locally to accelerate recovery.
And these were the result of my plans. On the right is my palm in the evening after being treated, with couple of burn zones and prevented blisters.
Untreated burn that I managed to collect earlier with an ugly blister ..
1) I ran over to the sink and let the water pour in my palm. Thanks to living in Poway, and having the pipes in out attic, the water was hot/warm, and didn't ease the burn.
So I ran to the fridge, and filled my palm with ice cubes and squeezed them. Though they say you shouldn't use too cold things, eg. ice, on the burnt surface, I had no choice as the water from the tap would've been too hot for the next couple of minutes..
The ice actually eased both the burning and pain simultaneously. Bingo!!
If you have proper COLD water running from your tap or fridge keep the burnt surface under running cold water.
2) One problem with cooling the burn with ice/water is, that it actually helps forming the blisters, so second step was to get some salt on it.
Yep, you heard right. Salt. It has both a antiseptic and dehydrating effect.. So I poured some salt on a kitchen paper and pressed down my palm..
Well, it was OK, but the burning feeling came back, I wanted both the salt and the coldness.
I picked a soft ice pack from the freezer, place the kitchen paper with the salt on top and pressed my palm against it..
Huhhh... That felt sooo good.... I kept it there for maybe 5 minutes...
3) Nourishing.. Pour some honey on the burnt surface, spread it evenly.
It will feel really good, I felt how the shrinking in the skin eases and feels much more comfortable.
But it wasn't cold, or moist enough. So I picked my natural yogurt from the fridge, spoon out a teaspoonful of yogurt and mixing it with the honey, lightly spread it in my palm.
When it warmed up too much, I wiped it off and spread another layer of honey-yogurt mix.
I probably repeated it 4 times at 30 minute intervals..
By the evening the skin looked a nice light pink, and almost no sign of burning.
Next days I was busy and had no time to further treat my burns, but this is how they looked in 5 days.
On the right the blister. Business as usual: burst, scar formed and I'm going to have a nice mark for the next year or two.And on the left this is my palm, with barely visible burn Signs. The blisters never formed, and expept some dry feeling, it wasn't painful or anything after that
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