13 May 2013
Today when I changed our dressings I saw my wound transform before my eyes with the help of pure aloe vera. I have been really amazed at the human body over the past 3 weeks, watching it each day transforming itself magically, from pain, swelling, bruising, shedding skin, and ultimately healing all by itself, just how nature intended. It’s also been really cool to be able to use some natural products to help my body heal itself. Pure aloe vera and pure coconut oil are both helping seemingly more than any of the modern medicine did. I did need pain relief and all of the other medicine that I used helped too, I still think though that nature is amazing and the more of it I can use to help me the better.
Today I managed to walk all the way across the room and back (about 20 metres total) with no crutches. I still can’t quite get the motion of walking right and can’t put my full weight on my left leg, it still felt really good to do my best lopsided walking without crutches though. It did hurt my ankle a little though so I’ve stuck with my crutches for the rest of today.
This morning I took a photo of my upper burn, since I haven’t put that on here for a few days. It is starting to lighten to closer to my normal skin colour and seems to be visibly lessening in redness today.
The lower burn at first I thought I would just clean it and cover it like the other days, so I cleaned it really well with saline and took my daily photo to measure my healing progress:
Then I put on some pure aloe vera goo and left it to air out for just a minute or two. When I looked down again a huge part of the scab had lifted up, ready to come off and expose the lovely healing skin underneath.
It is very purple and red, but it is still a healthy looking layer of sealed skin that appears to be healing very well.
Dre’s wound also lifted more old skin off today after applying the aloe vera.
Throughout the past 3 weeks I have had a lot of time to reflect on the healing process and have learned a lot, both physically and mentally. It’s been an amazing time to watch the power of the human body and also spend time being still and patient, and allowing nature to take care of me. Also of course the doctors to take care of me too, but ultimately the real healer has been my body itself. The physical wounds obviously show progress every day and it’s interesting to observe the different things that the body does to help you – provides pain when it wants you to stop and take time to heal, provides swelling when it wants you to stop moving, provides scabbing to protect the newly forming skin underneath, and ultimately gives you all the right signals at the right times for you to learn what you need to do.
There has also been a lot of emotional healing and growth to learn about my current headspace effecting every single thing in my life.
From now I will only update probably weekly, or when something interesting happens, because the main part of the healing has now been accomplished. It will still be interesting to see over time how the burns end up healing though so I’ll keep putting up photos until it’s all finished. Thank you for reading what Dre calls ‘my heart uncensored’ for the past 3 weeks and I hope that if you have a burn this has helped you in some way.
Click here for the update for the completion of Week 4 – Taking Steps Forwards and Backwards
Click here to read the story from the beginning – healing from second degree burns while living in a third world country.
Catch up on the past few days:
Day 20 – Finally Drug Free and Feeling Awesome
Day 19 – Building Walking Muscles
Day 18 – Celebration!
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