How A Pulled Muscle Turned Into Severe Burns

Beth pulled a muscle in her back on Tuesday and was walking v-e-r-y carefully. I use a hot water bottle on my back sometimes so Wednesday morning I filled it up, wrapped it in a towel and put it on her back. She always says, "Ooooh!" and lets out a big sigh. The heat feels so good!

Chuck and I headed out for our Anniversary (celebrating 36 years this week!) and just drove around Kirkland, went out to lunch and shopped at their Farmers Market. It was good to spend time together.

Seattle is surrounded right now by fires in Northern California, Eastern Washington and British Columbia so our air quality has been very poor the last couple of weeks. That's not fog, that's smoke.

I had to buy flowers! It wouldn't have been a Farmers Market if I didn't buy flowers!

We were gone a few hours and when we got home I went downstairs to see how Beth was doing. I saw she had refilled the hot water bottle but I didn't see the towel. She had put it over on her bookcase and said she didn't want to use it.

I should have known better. I should have forced her to use it but I didn't.

The next morning I asked how her back was and she said, "It stings." I wondered how a pulled muscle could sting so I asked her to show me. She pulled down her shorts and Oh. My. Word.

She burned herself with that hot water bottle! I don't know how she didn't feel it and pull the bottle away! I was on my way out the door to go to work, so I cleaned the sores as best I could, put some neosporin on some gauze so it wouldn't stick and then taped it to her. That's all I could think of to do at the time.

As soon as I got home from work I took her to the doctor. The Physicians Assistant was actually grimacing as she looked at the sores. It looks like two giant blisters formed and then popped. I'll spare you pictures but the 2 that broke open are about 3-4 inches in diameter. Plus there are many other smaller blisters that haven't opened yet, some black and blue areas... it looks really bad. 

The PA said all we could do is put on some Lidocaine with Aloe. Everything I found though said 'do not use on raw surfaces or blistered areas'. I ended up just putting it around the blistered area, but man, this is gonna take some time to heal. 

This is my arsenal of things I'm using or thinking of using or wondering if I should use... I honestly don't know what to do. The PA did tell me not to use the neosporin anymore.

Thankfully she isn't in much pain, I hear her downstairs laughing and yelling at the TV. Every time I check on her she says she's doing 'okay'. But this is gonna be a long healing process.