Tag Archives: medicine

How to Know if a Cut Needs Stitches


In a quandary about whether or not to head to urgent care? How to know if a cut needs stitches: a helpful guide to help you evaluate the situation. | Health | Parenting | Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

In case you’re new here, an important piece of introductory information is that I have my M.D. I use it for everything . . . except making money. Another important thing to know is that I walked away from the career because it was not a good fit for me; I was not asked to leave. I was actually pretty good. Just ask my friends because they ask me for medical advice ALL OF THE TIME.

I studied and trained at the University of Maryland Medical System giving me extensive surgical, emergency, and Shock Trauma experiences you can only get in Baltimore. The first time I sutured another human being was during my first day in the pediatric emergency room as a third year student. It was a little boy who had a gash on his finger. I actually sweated through my scrubs during the millennium it took me to place the five sutures. There was seriously a puddle on my stainless steel stool. But that sweet boy rewarded me with words I still cherish today: “You’re a really good doctor.” Kids sure can lift you up, that is, when they’re not busy taking you down.

Since that time, I’ve logged in many hours of wound evaluation and care. You get to benefit from this experience to determine if you need to giddy-up to urgent care.

In a quandary about whether or not to head to urgent care? How to know if a cut needs stitches: a helpful guide to help you evaluate the situation. | Health | Parenting | Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

 

Criteria for Stitches

  • The wound will not stop bleeding
  • It is deeper than ¼ inch
  • The edges are ragged
  • The wound is gaping (the edges aren’t together)

Additionally, seek medical attention if . . .

  • The wound  is a puncture deeper than ¼ inch
  • The injury resulted from a rusty or very dirty object
  • All of the debris can’t be removed from the cut or abrasion
  • The wound is on the face or neck
  • There was a blow to the head or any loss of consciousness
  • The wound is an animal or human bite
  • Date of last tetanus shot is unknown
  • You have a history of MRSA
  • Signs of infection develop such as redness and pus

Wound Care  for Treating Minor Cuts

  • To stop bleeding, apply gentle pressure with a clean cloth or bandage for at least 15 minutes. (Maxi pads are excellent for this, by the way.) This will seem like FOREVER, but don’t lift the compress! You’ll really need to time yourself to hold pressure long enough. Trust me. If possible, raise the body part above the level of the heart to slow bleeding. Never apply a tourniquet unless advised by a medical professional.
  • Rinse wound thoroughly with clean water or saline solution to remove dirt and debris. DO NOT use hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol because they are damaging to cells and may increase scarring.
  • Clean area around the wound area with soap and water on a washcloth. Avoid getting soap in wound initially because it will burn. Pat dry with a clean cloth.
  • Apply a thin layer of antibiotic ointment and cover with a clean dressing. Keep the wound covered while healing. Contrary to popular belief, letting a cut “air out” does not promote healing and may increase scarring.

It is always a good idea to have a complete first-aid kit in your car and your home. You may think you don’t need a kit because you have all the supplies in your home, but by having a kit, you can just tell someone where to grab it while you are holding pressure or calling 911. I always like to have instant cold compresses, rolled gauze, and a large absorbent abdominal pad in mine. I like the one pictured below from Amazon because of the organized compartments and the comprehensive inventory of supplies. I just added a small flashlight, a lighted magnifying glass, tick removal tool, and duct tape.

first aid kit amazon

Be Safe Out There Friends!

-Ellen 

*No portion of this article is intended to replace the advice of your medical professional. It is always a good idea to check with your doctor.

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15 Books to Read This Fall

Alas, summer is exiting stage right, but before we all cry a collective tear for the lazy, hazy days we are leaving behind, here is a happy thought: books are always in season. As other delights happily move to the forefront like comfy sweaters, roaring fires, and pumpkin lattes, we don’t have to put our proverbial favorites on the shelf. Heck, no! In fact, here is a list of books that will keep you great company through one of our favorite seasons.  We dug deep for this list of our favorites, so each and every one of these is roaring-fire-latte-and-comfy-sweater-worthy. In fact, every last one of these books might make it on to your own list of favorite reads ever, we promise.

Craving a great book to read? Here is a booklist any mom would love with fiction, non-fiction, and memoir. You need these in your world. | Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

 1. Unbecoming: A Novel by Rebecca Sherm

A book lover’s dream, this first novel has the trifecta for a satisfying read: great well-developed characters, a dynamic and well-paced plot, and some nice curve balls to keep you guessing. Our protagonist Grace looks like a simple girl from Tennessee, but she can’t hide her complex and slippery character for long. You’ll root for her and want to wring her neck in equal measure.  There’s a question that hangs over the novel from the beginning that’s begging to be answered and when Scherm finally gets around to it, you are grateful for the care she took in the build-up as well as the payoff itself. This is a debut that leaves you wanting more.

2. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Moms of daughters, beware: this read will make you want to lock your girls up and throw away the key. But despite the dark cloud that hangs over this novel as a teen girl goes missing, there is so much to enjoy as well. Ng is a writer’s writer and she doesn’t so much document this family’s unraveling as their personal hell unfolds as invite you to pull at the fraying threads with her. At once, a novel about family, the mother/daughter dynamic, and cultural divides, this book is also achingly real and familiar. The truth hurts so bad in this one, but the reader is so grateful for every perfect note Ng hits. If the ship is going down, we might as well learn something from the trip. Ng makes sure she plumbs the depths so well that this is one dark corner now revealed.

3. Rules of Civility: A Novel

rulesFall is the perfect time for a book that begs you to get lost between the pages. Towles evokes a time and place in his portrayal of 1930s Manhattan that would be fun to visit in and of itself, but the plucky, lucky every-girl Katey Content as the protagonist powers this past just another period piece. Katey is trying to make something of herself and we are enchanted by this girl on the edge of metamorphosis. When random events and people like the charismatic Tinker Grey change the course and temper of her future, we recognize Katey and her transparent yearning and root for her. We all have been that girl (or guy) on the cusp of possibility. This is a wonderful, buoyant novel about coming of age in a time and place with an enchantment all its own.

4. Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

seating arrangement A lesser author might have made this story into a tragedy, but this book is laugh out loud funny. Winn’s daughter is getting married at the Kennedy-esque family compound, and his world of privilege is unraveling. He’s a man with everything but true happiness, and the three day extravaganza is primed to turn into a spectacle rather than the refined affair he desires. Even as Shipstead takes on the world of the well-bred with a sharp, biting wit, you will be swayed by her sidesteps into the heart of desire, the obligations of love, and what we must never surrender for fame, fortune, or a seat at the country club. This is funny with a super sized helping of smart, and it goes down smooth.

5.  Beautiful Ruins: A Novel by Jess Walter

beautiful ruins Absorbing, interwoven stories and beautifully drawn characters help you travel back and forth over fifty years in this tale. You won’t mind the trip a bit. In fact, you will be drawn into this world. From the lovely actress to the soulless movie producer, from the novelist to the innkeeper, each character dreams deeply improbable dreams and you can’t help but be carried away with them. This is a book to fall into and lose yourself a little.

6.Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

So this might seem a funny one to suggest for curling up with by a crackling fire. End-of-life issues? Medical research? Um, ladies, you have done lost it this time. Pipe down over there. Gawande is the most gifted of storytellers who just also happens to be a doctor. Every book of his is a gem, but this one might be his best yet. His beautifully drawn anecdotes and stories create a lovely scaffold to hang this question: If medicine has now reached the stage where it can give us a good life, is it ready to give us a good end as well? A surprising page-turner, you’ll not mind the twists and turns and hefty research he sprinkles throughout to answer this question. This is a book you’ll want to share with your friends and loved ones.

7. Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by John Krakauer  

This one might make you want to lock up ALL of your college aged kiddos, but you HAVE to read it. You know how we love to talk to kids about everything from sex to drugs to alcohol. Well, Krakauer lays out why we need to talk to our kids about alcohol and campus rape too. YIKES! But why, you ask? WHY?! We get that this is a tough read in many places, but Krakauer’s firm steady journalistic hand makes this one of the best, most important (but still immensely readable) things you can read this fall, especially if you have kids filling out college applications or even already cozied up in dorm rooms. It is a book that launched a thousand conversations for us. We are sharing it with you in the hopes that it will do the same in your family. A MUST read!

8. The Martian by Andy Weir

Erin has already shoved this book into the hands of every person willing to take a book from a crazy lady. But in all seriousness, this book knocked her socks off. The premise is that Mark Watney is left for dead on Mars after an ill-fated mission. But he is so not dead. Watney’s humor and humanity breathe life into this well-paced and thoughtfully constructed story about a man’s struggle for survival in an unforgiving environment. He makes us laugh, gasp, and root for his plucky ultimate underdog self. Add to this already amazing mix that this is a real science brand of science fiction and the result is unputdownable fiction. You can just thank Erin later or, at the very least, not run from her when she is shoving books at you.

9. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Broken hearts are good for one thing: creating some powerful books. In this case, Helen Macdonald has lost her dad and then her way. So she does what all grieving girls do: she decides to train a goshawk. Weaving together stories of her grief with her experience training the hawk and anecdotes about T.H. White who also trained hawks, Macdonald is spinning a special kind of magic here. Her vulnerability, her bare-faced honesty, and her well-researched and deftly placed bits about White mesh with her rich wells of talent to bring us something far more encompassing and satisfying than a memoir of her grief. This is writing at its highest level with sentences that hold up to re-readings. We are not grateful for her loss so much as deeply affected by it and the lovely piece of writing it spawned.

10. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Erin laughed, cried, and ignored her kids for three days to finish this piece of book crack in the big, sloppy gulps it demands. You know from the beginning that there has been a terrible tragedy at the local school’s Trivia Night, because Moriarty leaves little crumbs at the end of each chapter. But that’s not the story here. This is NOT another legal thriller. A big, sprawling character study of modern moms, it may be. An ironic, funny take on modern parenting, it definitely is! It’s also a rollicking good time. You’ll laugh and cringe at just how right Moriarty gets all the characters hanging out in the school parking lot. A great read for fall while still reminiscent of that last joyful moment of summer indulgence.

11. Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline

Erin gobbled this one right up. She even took it backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. Nothing says “must read” like a willingness to cart those extra ounces up and down a mountain. In any case, the novel opens as stay-at-home mom Allison’s life is about to go off the rails. She goes to her childhood best friend’s book signing one night and has a little too much to drink. Mere hours later, she is involved in a fatal accident in which a child dies. The air you take into your lungs in the big gasp in the beginning takes this whole well-paced novel to be released. This may not be high literature, but it is a captivating read that makes you think. Like we said, you are gonna want to take big bites of this one.

12. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Nothing warms the heart faster than a love story, and this one charmed us both. It’s a story of first love peopled with characters so real they could walk right off the page. Eleanor and Park are high schoolers the way we remember them and know them now. Funny, sweet, vulnerable, flawed, and deeply striving for love, acceptance, and independence, they are characters to cheer for, and you will. Erin walked around like a teen in love while reading it and couldn’t stop shoving it into the hands of any unsuspecting reader she could find. Don’t let the Barnes and Noble sales rack fool you: this is not a teen romance in the same way that War and Peace is not a book that concerns Russia. It IS a 24 hour read. Tops.

13. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

In one sense, you can think of this book as bread crumbs in the forest because essentially that is how this smart novel is written. Bee, the daughter, assembles emails, documents, letters et al after her mother Bernadette disappears in an effort to assemble the clues to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. The structure of the novel is just one intimation that this book is something special. After you read each document in its entirety, the full force and power of this novel is brought to light. Bitterly funny, satirical, and off-kilter in the best sense of the word, this send-up about all the things we mock and fear and revere in our modern society is the equivalent of a literary carnival.

Dork Alert: Fans of Arrested Development won’t be a bit surprised to learn that the author Maria Semple was also a writer for the series .

14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Loss moves us in lots of ways. For Cheryl Strayed, loss meant literally moving. Away from her broken heart after losing her mother, away from the painful detritus of her failed marriage, away from a life veering off the tracks, she needed to get away in the realest sense possible. So she hit the trail. For her, healing meant lacing up her brand spanking new boots and setting her sights on a trip she honestly was unprepared for in every way. Strayed’s recounting of her time on the Pacific Crest Trail is riveting. Not only is she gifted with a steely resolve worthy of wonder and awe, but she has a wordsmith’s touch and a clear-eyed honesty that will captivate you. Can’t-put-down-able.

15. Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love by Anna Whiston-Donaldson

Three years after the loss of her son, Anna Whiston-Donaldson has crafted something beautiful out of the crazy, sad space left behind after the loss of her son. “Rare Bird” is exceptional in its power and inimitable in its voice. It is a rare and beautiful find on a dark road. Anna’s story is also a story of deep faith in the face of that which rocks one to the very core. Her poignant, painful, and sometimes funny anecdotes don’t just paint a picture of grief but gives it clear edges and hard corners. This new framework that grief imposes leaves her struggling to find in this new dark place the God that has always sustained her. But her straightforward open-hearted approach to this journey helps her see the new big God who is walking beside her in this place. A beautiful, big-hearted, clear-eyed, and ultimately hopeful and inspiring read.

There you have it: a big, honking stack of readable, lovable books to keep you warm and in reading all season long. We hope you love them all as much as we do!

Happy Reading!

-Erin and Ellen

 

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Stop Skin Cancer Because You Can

May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month and we are shouting it from the mountaintops or maybe we should say, blogging it from the molehills. Get it? Mole. Hills. While skin cancer is no laughing matter, we are willing to use whatever means necessary to kick you into gear to get your skin checked.

Stop Skin Cancer Because You Can - Early Detection is Key

Prevention + Detection = Health

When it comes to skin cancer, prevention is key: staying covered up with hats, shirts, and sunglasses, slathering on sunscreen, and never using tanning beds. However, the skin cancer you get today is from the exposure you had in your past. Everyone needs a professional skin check. If you are not convinced yet, here are a seven reasons to make that appointment today.

Skin Cancer Sucks - Early Diagnosis is Key

There are free resources in your area. Please take advantage of them.

The Skin Cancer Foundation and Rite Aid are providing free skin screenings in a mobile unit through The Road to Healthy Skin Tour.

The American Academy of Dermatology has a locator for you to find free screenings in your state.

The American Society for Dermatologic Surgery also offers a locator for free screenings.

Check with your local health department, they often have free health screenings.

 

Wishing you health and peace,

Ellen and Erin

 

 

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