My Wife had a bike accident. “On your left” does not mean move to the left. Another inexperienced cyclist cut her off because he MOVED to the left :smack:.
She landed on her face on asphault. She is OK. But it required an ER visit. She is now resting at home.
Sorry, I’m still full of adrenaline and nervous energy. Lot’s of blood was involved. She’s on blood thinners.
So the front of her expensive Pearl Izumi jacket has quite a bit of blood on it. Like the title of the OP says, what is best to do? Soak it in cold water and hope for the best. Sould I use any soap initialy?
Yee-ouch, sorry to hear that. My suggestion would be get it soaking in cold water and **WhyNot’s **solution - you need to stay away from hot water and scrubbing because you don’t want to hemolyze the blood cells - once they burst, the stain is never coming out. My experience with blood stains is that I wish you the very best with this - they truly are the worst. And my best wishes for your wife, too.
Not a doctor, so I was wondering why her blood needed to be thinned. I would have thought you’d want it to clot so it’ll stop bleeding and develop some scabs.
I am not kidding. My best friends wife is in a nursing program and she told me about this.
But there is a caveat. The spit has to be provided by the person who bled. It has to do with enzymes in your own spit being able to break down the blood.
I have tried it myself and it worked. I google’d this to see if I could find a scientific cite, but I just found a bunch of self help sites that referenced it. I am not sure how long after the stain sets that the spit works but I know it has worked the few times I cut myself at work.
Ahh. She has been on blood thinners for a few years. It’s to prevent her from getting clots even when no injury is involved.
It can make sports a bit dangerous though. She bleeds real good. She is still bleeding a bit from the inside of her mouth. It could have been much, much worse (it looked it). Three point landing on her nose, upper lip and chin. The helmet was not even scratched. Hands wrists elbows and knees don’t have so much as a scratch. Stunning. Lucky girl.
Got the blood stains off. Thanks all. I ran the jacket under cold cold water and directed the spray at the stains.
Answered already, but I’ll elaborate. “isotonic” is the same level of solutes (salt or other stuff that will dissolve) in the solution as is in the bloodstream. Hypotonic means less solutes than in blood, and hypertonic means more solutes than in blood. You don’t need so much salt that it won’t dissolve, but the water should taste salty.
Blood clotting is good when there’s a hole where blood wants to get out of the body, but it’s not so good when the blood is supposed to be flowing through the vein. Some people have problems with clots forming inside the bloodstream, and those clots can block blood vessels just like a clog in your drain. If you have one of these conditions, medications can be given which reduce the body’s ability to make those clots, and we call them “blood thinners”. They don’t really *thin *the blood literally, but they make clots less likely to form. Good when the blood is all inside where it’s supposed to be, but problematic when there’s an injury.
enipla, I’ve found that the most amazing styptic for patients on blood thinners is the powder of the yarrow plant. I keep a jar in the bathroom near the razors for my warfarin taking significant other. When he gets a cut, he just takes a pinch of the powder and lightly presses it over the wound and it stops the bleeding in short order. Works better for him than styptic pencils ever have.
Thanks, I’ll look into the Yarrow plant. She got sent home from the hospital at about 2pm. It looked like the bleeding had stopped. But it slowly kept seeping. It wasn’t till 9pm that I finally got it to stop.
Since the accident was caused by the other rider failing to follow the rules of the road, just include the cost of a replacement jacket in the bill you give to him.
Yarrow is pretty much a weed, so buy one plant (or go dig some up out of a ditch somewhere) and stick it in your yard, and you should always have a good supply. Make sure the yarrow you buy at a greenhouse is perennial where you are - it’s tough stuff, but you’re up pretty high.
And, call me crazy, but it might already be growing in your yard, probably unnoticed all these years. I keep stumbling on plants right where they’re most needed. I swear, one of these days I’m going to see if I can diagnose a household’s maladies simply by poking around in their gardens!
If you pick it fresh, you’ll want to dry it, either in a food dehydrator or just laid out on some brown grocery bags and flipped once a day. Then give it a whir in your coffee grinder and you’ll have lovely yarrow powder!
sniff