Oh, My Aching...

Hands.  Most of us have them, and we use them to hold the handles of the oars.  And I am reminded of my hands much more in the weather we’re currently having in New England than I am in other types of weather. 

 

It’s summer, you see; and that means it’s humid here.  I really, really hate humidity.  It makes me feel like the stick of butter on my kitchen counter looks:  sagging and oily.  Granted, my hair turns nice and curly, but there are products that do that year-round, so it’s not worth enduring the sweaty, sticky, heavy weather we have now just for a good hair day. 

 

It could be worse, I know.  I could live in the Washington, D.C. metro area like I did as a teenager.  Somehow, I managed not to die from it, but now I can’t imagine how not.  I recall leaving a movie theater once on a mid-August afternoon near DuPont Circle, hitting the moist, superheated air, and thinking, “Why did that invisible person just microwave that wet facecloth and then throw it at my face?  Why?” 

 

One of the commenters to this blog, Eugene, lives in the American South – Mississippi.  My witty metaphors fail me here.  I just can’t imagine how people manage in that weather. 

 

Normally, I’m not such a complainer.  It just happens that I had two funny lines about the humidity, and also it made me think of how much worse my hands blister when it’s humid.  Then, during my third shower of the day, I saw the pumice stone I keep in the tub, and it occurred to me I could make all this pointless suffering into a post.  A post on hand hygiene.  [And a disclaimer.  If you usually read this while eating, be warned:  it’s a little gross]. 

Now, even though they don’t much bother him, I would say that my husband's hands crying out for hygiene.  They are covered with old blisters, rough with snagging dead skin, and pocked with blisters in progress.  Your typical rowers' hands.  Nothing’s infected; I don’t mean that.  I just mean that I have a whole regimen for keeping my hands more socially acceptable than his.  Granted, he does work for a living, while I spend my time blogging performing sophisticated, computerized, acoustic analyses on the speech of individuals with neurological disorders. 

 

Let’s start with my theory of blisters.  [I know:  I have a theory for everything.  Talk to my shrink.]  My theory is that blisters form not just because of rubbing.  Instead, it seems like they form on my hands during rowing when the topmost layers of skin stick to the handles, but when there is a shear zone under those layers.  That is, the top layers seem to stick while also pulling back and forth.  The pulling tears the skin a few millimeters under the surface, and voila!  Pillows.  Painful pillows. 

 

Once you’ve got blisters, there’s not too much to be done except wait them out and take care of them.  I know that some people have regimens of caustic chemicals that they swear dry the blisters up and help them go away faster.  If you’re one of these people, please weigh in.  I’m the kind of person who incessantly plays with my blisters, and then they pop (usually in a small seminar, an important business meeting, or a crowded elevator for maximum humiliation).  Then, I’m stuck with the problem of how to deal with a potentially infectable wound on my hand.  The important message here is:  DON’T POP THEM.  Yes, it’s fun, and yes, they hurt when they are puffy, and yes, they will probably pop during tomorrow’s practice anyway.  But really, there’s no sense exchanging a sterile hand injury for a breeding ground for all of the stuff you flush down the bathroom pipes, which is now floating in your home river, before you’re forced to. 

 

If you do have an open wound, keep it clean.  Soap and water, with lots of rubbing, is the best thing to start with.  Purell or other hand cleaners will disinfect but they’ll also hurt like hell because of the alcohol.  If this is your thing, more power to you!  But I like hydrogen peroxide because it is less painful and I like to see the bubbles.  However, this compound does actually destroy skin, so some people don’t like it.  If you can keep the wound covered until it heals over, even better. 

 

There are some methods of wrapping one’s hands with athletic tape that I’ve found, through painful experience, will help reduce blister formation or help preserve the integrity of the ones I have.  I tend to get blisters between the joints of my fingers, usually the index, middle, and ring fingers; and on my palms just below the lowest finger joint.  The finger ones I wrap with a nice wide piece of tape, wide enough so that the tape wads up a little when I bend my fingers.  This isn’t pleasant, and it does leave a sticky residue on the handles, but it generally doesn’t result in the formation of more blisters at the edges of the tape.  And since the tape strips are pretty wide, they still cover the sore parts even when they wad up. 

 

The ones at the roots of my fingers, though, are another matter.  You can’t wrap the tape horizontally around your palm without it really wadding up and creating a whole crop of new, puffy sore spots.  Instead, you have to use a strip of athletic tape that’s at least an inch (~2.5 cm) wide and long enough to go from your wrist up between your fingers and back down to your wrist on the other side.  Then you tear it in half the long way, about halfway down, so it looks like a very skinny Y.  Put your finger between the two halves of the torn tape, near the crotch of the Y, so that the unsplit part of the tape covers the blister on the palm of your hand.  Then, stick the two arms of the Y to the back of your hand.  Do that for all of your blisters.  If you’re worried about the tape peeling back off your sweaty wrist, secure the ends with a bracelet of tape.  

 

Of course, most blisters pop eventually.  And when they do, I think it’s best to remove the dead skin.  Lovely!  You can use nail clippers, though I find that the curved blades of this tool tend to create more little ends that then need trimming, or else they go too deep and hurt.  I use the scissors on my Swiss Army knife, but you could easily use nail scissors or any small cuticle scissors that are flat.  Lay the blades of the scissors flat against your skin, press down slightly so that you can cut to the very bottom of the dead flaps of skin, and trim the excess away.  Don’t just pull the skin away, because your skin has a grain like wood, and you’ll do what I’ve done more times than I care to admit:  pull the dead skin away, then start pulling live skin away, and end up bleeding all over your notebook.  Or your business suit, or the elevator buttons.  Really unsavory. 

 

Of course, once you’ve trimmed most of the dead parts away you’re still left with the little bitty ends, and as they dry out they like to snag on fuzzy clothes, leading to the problem I just described.  My solution here is to use a pumice stone, like the ones they sell at The Body Shop  (This one isn’t actually pumice; it’s polyurethane, so if you’ve got some clean scraps of that you’re in luck).  You can also get actual pumice stones in most health and beauty aid sections in grocery stores or drug stores, like this one they sell at CVS in the US.  Be certain, though, that the implement you use will actually smooth your skin.  As with sanding any other substance, you’ve got to use the right grit, or you’ll end up making the problem worse.  I like a pretty smooth stone for that reason.  Oh – and remember to rinse the dead skin off your smoother each time, or it’ll get really disgusting really quickly. 

 

I use my pumice (or polyurethane) smoother when I shower.  The water helps soften the callouses and dead skin, and giving my hands a minute or two of sanding really helps keep those little snags from happening.  It’s also good callous maintenance to keep them medium-sized, too.  If you don’t, they get too thick, and you’ll develop a shear zone underneath them as you row.  A blister will then form under them, and the whole thing you’ve worked so hard to acquire will peel off.  And then you’ll be rowing on, like, baby hands.  Gotta love the double blisters you get that way. 

 

A final use for those pumice stones:  sanding the scars from boat bite.  I get boat bite like crazy, and I’m way too vain to wear knee socks.  So, the ends of the tracks just rub through that one layer of skin and make a barely visible sore on my calves.  I usually don’t even notice until I’m in the shower, and then YOWEEEEE!  Then, the next day, I have a wicked gross scab forming.  Through diligent experimentation – I am a scientist, after all – I’ve settled on the habit of putting Bag Balm or antibiotic ointment on the sore, then band-aiding it up.  Change the bandage every day or twice a day, and there’s much less scabbing and scarring, and they heal faster too.  Also, your doctor doesn’t look earnestly into your eyes and ask, “Are you safe at home?” 

 

But once the scab is gone you’re left with a very visible purple scar that takes about two years to really disappear.  I’ve found I can reduce this time to, oh, a mere year and a half by gently sanding the scar tissue off.  You can’t do it too much, or you’ll make a new sore and then have to start all over again.  But doing a little home dermabrasion really does help minimize the appearance of these unsightly scars.  [Like that phrasing?  I got it from a cosmetic commercial!]

 

One last comment:  If I have to row on painful blisters, I’ve noticed that they hurt the worst when I first grip the handles.  If I can just manage not to ever take my hands off the handles during a practice, then I won’t have to suffer through pressing all the fluid back into my hands and squeezing the swelling down again.  And then I’m sort of okay. 

 

…Until I need a drink….

Comments

[susan lesburg]

Hiya Karen
Try golf gloves, a size too small, in the fall and early spring. It's another layer of skin that's not yours! Granted, you look like Mickey Mouse, but it promotes hard skin without the preliminary blisters.
Keeping your hands moisturized (Aveeno Intensive Hand Cream) and rubbing off the outermost layers to keep down the excess of dead skin seems to prevent the worst insult... a blister UNDER a callous.
Love the blog!
Susan

[Steve Zimmerman]

Karen,

Great to see you posting on here again! I am grateful for all the knowledge you share, it is very helpful with my technique.

Regarding blisters and athletic tape... I like to fold the first centimeter of tape over to make non-adhesive surface to place on the blisters on my fingers. The key part is putting a dab of Neosporan on the tape surface and blister before wrapping...this method significantly reduces pain.

Cheers,

Steve Zimmerman

[Karen Chenausky]

Steve!

Nice to hear from you. I love your tip about making a little band-aid with your athletic tape. That's especially important if the blister has broken and you don't feature having to pull sticky tape off of a raw wound. I also like the Neosporin or Bacitracin idea, too, especially on those days in Boston when it's recently rained and the fecal coliform levels in the river are high.

Thanks for the comment!