Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Boy With The Teflon Feet

Sonshine, being a smallish boy, is highly prone to small bleeding injuries on his extremities-- not large enough to be worrisome, but deep enough (and on dirty enough parts of the body) to require bandages to prevent infection. Unfortunately, the same activity that causes the injuries also causes the bandages to fall off quite rapidly after application.

We thought we'd tried everything to keep bandages on this kid, but nothing worked. His skin is just made of Teflon. Brand-name bandages, waterproof bandages, extra-sticky bandages, wrapping in gauze, waterproof tape over bandages, waterproof tape over gauze and bandages, even duct tape-- all of it slides right off of him, especially his feet, in ten minutes or less.

But finally, I've found something that worked.

I was wandering through our local feed store, exploring the shopping here in Tooele, when I came across this stuff called Vetrap. It's sort of a self-sticky elastic wrap. I thought I'd buy a roll and give it a try. Animals, after all, are very active and likely to rub off their bandages, not unlike smallish boys. So I bought a roll.

The other day I had occasion to try it out, when Sonshine injured his toe. I put a bandage on the toe, and then wrapped his entire foot in Vetrap. And the bandage stayed on! For two days! By the time we took the Vetrap off, the wound was sufficiently healed to not require a bandage. Amazing!

I'm now using the Vetrap on myself, because I split open my little toe for the second time in as many weeks. While I can keep a bandage on my toe for about half a day at a time, I thought it would help to keep my toe tucked in to prevent me from re-injuring it before it healed again. I didn't have to wrap my entire foot, though; just the top half. This stuff works!