On Sunday I had the great fortune to spill boiling water over my right hand while cooking. I ran it under the tap for a good half hour, and have kept it wrapped up. Yesterday the burn had the look of being a particularly bad sun burn. Today is looking a little more sickly- it’s taken on a deep red-purple color. Is this normal? Should I take my hand to a doctor?
IANAD I was just an EMT
Liquid burns can be deceptive in the amount of actual damage they have done because of the lack of surface injury that flame type burns tend to do. The coloration is probably your body increasing blood flow to the area to try and heal the damaged area. It may also be a little swollen.
How large of an affected area are we talking? Is it blistered?
If you have anything more than redness you should probably get it looked at when you can get an appt or the neighborhood urgent care clinic. No need to run to ER unless you see a little more obvious signs of deeper injury like large blisters or chunks of skin sloughing off and such . Its probably gonna look unhappy for a while either way. Keep it clean/covered to minimize risk of it getting infected.
There’s no blistering, which was the biggest factor for me deciding to tough it out. Just the deep coloration since this morning. The burn covers most of the back of my hand from the big joints of my fingers to my wrist. It’s pretty sore also.
The purple is not a good sign. I would have expected it to start clearing up the next day. Strangely enough, you don’t talk about pain. If you are having no pain issues, I guess you could wait. If it hurts bad and is changing color like you say, get thee to a doctor pronto.