Ok, it’s a chicken.. keep reading.

The hospital visit this morning was not pleasant. There were only two blisters, but they were the entire size of the two biggest burned areas. They removed them. It wasn’t nice. They do it with dry gauze. And friction.

As my son gleefully pointed out on the phone this morning.. from a suitably safe distance, halfway across the world… that makes me a skinned hobbit.

Laying there skinned and wrapped in cling film, I felt more like an oven-ready chicken.

So, home once more,  I am sitting in a house that desperately needs cleaning.. it is a tad awkward with the bandages. With a moulting, bored dog who needs a good grooming and a run I can’t give her and an interesting problem with how on earth to actually dress over all this padding.

That my eyes have taken it upon themselves to swell again just adds insult to injury.

And that the delightful and unusual prospect of an actual holiday may now be up the Swanee for a while makes things even worse.

I am, without a shadow of a doubt, feeling a rather a glum hobbit today.

Still, it could, of course, be worse. Much worse. Only a small area has deteriorated further.

Most of the burns look, apparently, pretty good considering. Though to my untutored eye they looked, shall we say, other than good. Their idea of good and mine, it seems, have little in common. That particular combination of red raw and chargrilled black is not, to my eyes, a good look.

It just goes to show, though, how important it is to have a working knowledge of first-aid. In England, at least, it is not mandatory, which I think is a great shame. Funding, of course, I imagine.

I was lucky enough to have decent, hands on training. Not that it helps much when it is for oneself. The thought processes work rather badly in those moments. At least I remembered the two first critical things with burns.. Stop the burning and get them under cold running water.. or cold wet compresses.. immediately … and keep them there.

There are many old ideas about putting butter or oil on burns. Don’t.. it keeps the heat in, and if you are still cooking, frying isn’t going to help. Ask the chicken.

From personal experience, and daft as it may seem, keep the person warm. Huge quantities of cold water on large areas makes you very, very cold, very quickly and the combination of shock and hypothermia is not a good one.

My younger son, who came to my rescue, trained as a youngster with St John Ambulance. He has also had first aid training for work. It was this that gave him the knowledge to assess and take the appropriate action. For which I am profoundly grateful. Where I was thinking (a misnomer under the circumstances) it was ‘only a scald’ and I couldn’t seek medical help for it, he saw very clearly that it was bad and needed help fast. And organised it. As a rule of thumb, any burn larger than the victim’s hand needs to be seen by a doctor.

So I have spent some of the down-time the past few days revising my first aid. You never know when you may need it. It’s worth a thought.