I thought I would share following story because knowledge is power and this saved us a trip to the E.R.
On Pessach (Yom Tov), one of my boys spilled boiling chicken soup onto his entire hand. It was fatty and oily. (I had not yet skimmed the fat.) This child never yells in pain but seeing what happened, I didn’t need further convincing that this was going to be a serious burn. Within seconds there were already multiple blisters forming, even under the cold running water that I immediately had him do as I quickly got some frozen packs ready. (Later, a nurse and medic agreed it was likely a good second degree burn.)
So how did we treat it? For the first 20 minutes we had his hand sandwiched between two large bags of frozen fruit. (At one point I also smeared lavender essential oil all over his hand and then his hand went back in between the bags of frozen fruit.) We probably could have done less time with the icing but no harmed seemed to be done. After that my husband and I pealed and shredded potatoes. Many potatoes. We covered his entire hand in the shredded potatoes, wrapped that in cheese cloth to make an enormous poultice and then put that whole concoction into a large plastic bag. After about 10 – 15 minutes he would tell us the potatoes were getting hot so we undid everything and applied new shredded potatoes. This continued for about 3 hours. It was pretty amazing seeing the blisters slowly disappear and the color of his hand begin to return to normal. Incredible actually.
After a while he began to get tired of being tethered to potatoes. The intense burning had gone down considerably and was only there if his hand wasn’t submerged in the shredded potatoes, so we began to plan for the second stages of healing. Almost every single blister had disappeared (!) , so after our three hour potato run, we set him up with a new itinerary. He was to sit on his bed and relax and read some good books while he kept his hand in a bowl of cold water. We put a few drops of rescue remedy into the bowl of cold water (suggestion from my sister-in-law), as well as some colloidal silver. In order to keep the stainless steel bowl of water cold, we placed the bowl on top of an ice pack.
I will mention here that throughout this ordeal we also had him take a few rounds of the homeopathic remedy, cantharis and Aconite, including one dose of arnica in the beginning to prevent shock.
By the evening (this had taken place right before lunch), Baruch Hashem, thank G-d his hand was blister free and pain free with the exception of one small area. You literally couldn’t tell anything had happened. (The first hour or so his hand was looking pretty alarming. It looked something like blistered half cooked meat.) Someone asked me if the icing in the beginning was necessary, or could we have just done the potatoes. I will tell you this. The following morning, the only area on his skin which was still hurting (burning) a little, was the small space in between his thumb and pointer finger which didn’t get iced. We didn’t realize this until we started the potato treatment and he would say that he kept getting enormous relief from the potatoes except for one spot. Upon further questioning we all realized why. That day, however, after a few more doses of homeopathy, all was good. Thank G-d for G-d’s medicine.
Matanot Of Eden 