Stitches

Ooh boo. The babes had to get stitches the other day! She was horse riding and her horse spooked and she fell off. I'm convinced it was her helmet that caused a huge gash right above her eye that require stitches. I'm just about to shoot off a letter to the manufacturer AND inform all horse riders and trainers, that this particular brand of helmet is a hazard!!

See that visor in the front? Well, when the babes fell off her horse, that visor came off on one side and the force of the impact pushed this notch that it has on the bottom of the visor into her forehead with such impact that it made a gash. Faulty design, for sure.

We were so fortunate to have gotten an excellent ophthalmologist who also specializes in eyelid surgery as her surgeon. There were two options - local anesthesia or operation table being put under. We decided to try local and if it doesn't work, ie, the pain was too unbearable we would then go operation. The babes did great. But, I highly DO NOT recommend ever having to go through this. I wanted to die. I sang her through it and I almost cried while singing because she was crying from the pain of the needles.

Uggh. After the surgery, naturally I jumped online to find holistic remedies for recovering after stitches. Wish I had read this before the surgery so I could've fed her some stuff before the surgery. Of course, I have no idea what a lot of those homeopathic medicines are, but I identified with Arnica, both topical and oral and read somewhere that beta-carotene is beneficial as well as Calendula lotion. I remembered my acupuncturist friend talking about the benefits of Vitamin C in healing so I went home and made the baby bone broth soup with spinach and carrots (both for beta carotene) and seaweed. And made some sweet potato (beta carotene again) with turmeric (anti-inflammtory, antioxidant). I also bought extra Vitamin C in liquid form to feed her twice a day. This is also a pretty good article. However, I can't remember where I came across this little tidbit of information that is very important - apparently, calendula cream is good for lessening the effects of scarring AFTER the scar has healed. It is NOT good to use calendula cream on the stitches while they are healing because calendula is so good at healing skin that it may heal the top layer before the bottom layer has a chance to heal and that is not good. So much to learn. But I am so very thankful for the immense amount of information that can be found online as well as from my friends and D's holistic doctor. Good also to learn that if I want to clean the wound, I should get saline solution to clean. Never use water - too much bacteria. So there you have it.