I was making mashed potatoes and a bit of it splashed up and landed on my arm burning me. My skin bubbled up, filled with puss and hurt. I peeled off the “bubbled skin” and it left me with a pink spot where my burn was. Ever since that happened it keeps oozing some clear liquid. Should I be worried or is this normal?
Normal to keep oozing, but I usually try to avoid popping the bubble. If you don’t pop it, you’ll notice the bubble will keep filling with pus and get firm. Eventually the pus will stop building up in the bubble, and the bubble will decrease in size and open on it’s own.
Then you will see new skin and no pus, but you’ll have a scar.
A second degree burn will ooze liquid for up to 2 weeks. Excessive oozing or pus could be a sign of infection, which is the chief concern with this type of injury. Be sure to keep the wound clean - use bandages and avoid creams or lotions. You really shouldn’t pop burn blisters, but that ship may have sailed.
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/blister/page.html
eta: I’m not a doctor, and you should see a doctor if think you have complications
If it’s clear, we don’t call it pus, it’s serous fluid (blood without the larger cells). The integrity of you skin is impaired enough to let water, some plasma proteins (a bit like egg whites), and other small stuff to leak through the sieve that once was your intact skin, but not larger things like red blood cells. Some of it is probably stuff that leaked out of cells that died in the fire and then broke open, but most of it is probably blood componets. And yes, it’s fertile ground for infection, if it turns the color of the stuff that comes out of a zit, you have a problem.
Partial thickness burns tend to ooze a bit. Typically the fluid is yellowish or slightly cloudy and dries to form a crust. Sunburn or other minor burns such as the one you describe are good examples. We usually reserve the term “pus” for grossly infected fluid filled with bacteria and white cells. That wouldn’t be the case immediately, as there has not been time to establish an infection.
Partial thickness burns rarely result in deep infections, although in one sense they are all superficially infected since the integrity of the skin has been broken. If redness and swelling don’t extend beyond the margin of the burn, we don’t usually worry too much.
It’s also known as tissue fluid, isn’t it, or am I thinking of something else?