WARNING: If you are old, do not burn yourself while hurrying to remove a metal sheet full of overdone cookies from a 350-degree oven!
Just last week, I read (with slight paraphrasing) that your skin will burn more deeply when you’re old than it would have, if you’d done the same thing when you were thirty years younger. I’m pretty sure that’s right, because I have done the same thing when I was younger, and it definitely did not look this bad—or hurt this much!
HINT: If you’re young, execute all your stupid moves now, while the damage will be less severe.
Day 1: It’s still unclear how I managed to burn the tender underside of my upper arm with an oversized cookie sheet while removing it from the oven, but I think I’ll choose to believe the burn was worse now than when I was younger because I used to burn only the underside of my wrists on the oven rack or door. This was different, so there’s no true basis for comparison.
Day 2: One thing that article didn’t say was not to take a nice, hot bath the morning after you burn yourself. At the very least, do not slide down in the water to soothe your aching back, neck, and shoulders from standing all afternoon making cookies the day before. The burn wasn’t hurting very much when I did that, so it didn’t occur to me to wonder whether that might be a bad idea.
Day 3: What had originally appeared as a small burn, less than the size of a quarter, hardly worth bothering about, now looked—and felt—much, much worse. An area below the burn, about three inches long and two inches wide that had been perfectly fine the day before, had swollen noticeably and become a deep red. The entire area felt burned and was very tender to the touch. Who knew a burn could spread two days later?!
By bedtime (too late to go to an immediate care facility), it was so red and swollen, my husband worried an infection might have set in. I marked the swollen area with a pen, so I would know if it had worsened overnight. That’s when my husband told me he had just read that one should never soak a burn. I hadn’t done it on purpose!
Day 4: The burn still looked bad, but the surrounding swelling and redness had improved significantly. I wish I’d taken a picture to show how frightening it looked on Day 3, but below is a picture of what it looked like on Day 4.
An additional humiliation was that it took more than one picture of the burn to find an arm position and camera angle that showed the burn without also advertising any embarrassing old, wrinkly skin. (Lay arm flat on counter; smash down firmly).
Day 5: The burn has continued to improve, so I shouldn’t need to see a doctor. That’s good, because I probably don’t smell very nice, not having taken a bath since Day 2. I’m not risking a setback!
HINT: If you’re young, take several pictures of your arms now. But if you are young, you probably aren’t reading this because what young person ever really believes they’ll be old someday? I know I’ve never thought I’d be old. I’ll be 74 next month, and I still don’t believe it. But maybe that’s why I’m having trouble.