bloody mess

I didn't take any photos of this, but last night, I had a pretty prodigious bleed. It was from my right big toe, but not from the diabetic ulcer. If you've looked carefully at previous recent photos of that toe, you may have noticed a second bandage whose presence I never explained.

Well, it seems the one beauty-salon lady was correct when, years ago, after nicking my earlobe with her scissors and causing a bleed, she said, "You have weak skin." Sure, she was a bitch for blaming me for her mistake, but she may have had a point. My skin might very well be weaker than average. This could be one reason for all my foot problems over the years. Be that as it may, this latest problem was caused by the fact that, since last October, I normally put a bandage on my right big toe about twice a day on average. Every time I rip a bandage off, I'm weakening the skin further, and sometimes, the skin sticks to the bandage and rips open. After one such rip a week or so ago, I bandaged up the bleeder, and the wound began to heal. I thought the healing had gotten to the point where it would be safe to stop using the second bandage, but I was wrong, and I paid the price last night: when I peeled off the bandage covering my ulcer, I also re-ripped the toe wound that sits next to it—only I didn't notice this fact for several minutes, and it wasn't until I randomly looked toward my feet while washing dishes that I saw huge splotches and blotches of blood all over the floor. Then I further realized that I'd been tracking blood everywhere for the past few minutes.

I'm used to bleeding on floors by now, albeit for ulcer-related reasons, so I calmly went over and got my wet-wipe floor sweeper, keeping my bloody toe up off the ground. I cleaned up all my blood on the floor, sat down at my computer desk, took out a regular wet wipe, and cleaned up my foot, the sole of which was covered in blood. The toe continued to bleed, steadily undoing all my wet-wiping. A light bulb went on in my head, and I grabbed my blood-stopper powder after sticking a tissue under my toe. A few shakes of powder later, and the wound was covered. For good measure, I smeared a bit of powder onto my ulcer as well, knowing that that probably wouldn't do anything because the ulcer's opening was now so small. I tamped down the powder on both wounds, then waited for fifteen minutes to allow the powder to work its magic. As predicted, the powder did nothing for the almost-healed ulcer, but it stopped the second wound's bleeding cold. I wiped away the excess powder from around the wound, cleaned the toe, and applied new bandages to both toe wounds. Et voilà.

This morning, the ulcer showed a tiny bit of drippage, as per usual, but the second toe wound showed no further bleeding at all. I was able to remove both of my bandages, shower, and step on the towel that was laid out to absorb any extra moisture from my feet... and my feet left no blood spots on the towel. All clear.

It sucks to spring leaks from different parts of one's body, like a worn and slowly sinking canoe, but for me, at least, that seems to be the reality of getting old.