maxi pads. Seriously. they are amazing for road rash.

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Not sure what to do for your palms now but in the future I would wear gloves. I get the no gloves for a race but for training it just isn't worth it.

Good luck on healing, check into using Duoderm, it is used for bed sores and the like, should help with a quick heal.

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Stop getting them wet in a pool. If you infect them, you're going to be really sorry. Use something like Neosporin on the palms then cover with a non-stick telfa pad or Tegaderm. You can hold it in place with Kerlix or tape and then wear fingerless gloves over that to keep them in place (unless it makes them sweat). Don't let them dry or crust over as this will also prolong the healing. Good luck and like the other poster said, next time use gloves.

^^^This.

I tend to use the neosporin/nonstick pads at first, until they stop weeping; then go to tegraderm dry.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Sorry about your crash, but to quote a coach I know...

"Gloves are like helmets for your hands."

It took one crash and a nice set of scars for me to believe it.

-Jot

Iodine. Every road rash i've ever had was kept clean, dried out fast and healed quick with Iodine.

Good advice... Typically you clean with iodine after the crash, and use non-adhesive pads (road rash are burns, not cuts, it is abraision caused by friction with an unclean and irregular surface...). After a day or two, switch to tegaderm, yes it will be gross and weepy, but it will heal faster. As for swimming, I am shocked the pool didn't boot you out. Every pool I've been to have pretty clearly posted policies against swimming with open wounds (firstly, because it's gross, I frankly don't want to swim in water mixed with someone else's weepy wound juice (frankly the urine content is gross enough...), and secondly, because of the high probability of infection of your wounds (not to mention the fact that chlorine tends to dry out your skin, and make it less elastic, which is the last thing you need, when you're trying to heal up)). Get some tubing and practice your swim on dry land, let the wounds heal properly, and you'll be back at it much sooner, than if you try to push it, and infect the road rash...

And yes, wear gloves... Because of the use frequency, and skin characteristics, the palms of your hands typically heal much slower than other areas...

Same thing happened to me last year:(. So sorry. Use an antibiotic ointment and cover lightly with a non-stick pad. Doc said that keeping it moist helps the healing, but you have to clean it and change the dressing frequently in the beginning. You really shouldn't swim until there is a new layer of skin. Hang in there. It will get better!

Palms are tough!

Tegaderm which you used is the absolute best for skin injuries, but as you're finding out, palms are tough since they flex so much and it comes off there.

Otherwise, Tegaderm is amazing - triathletes shouldn't even bother with anything else, as you put it on and then have 7 days of biking/swimming/running with no worries and great healing in a clean, moist ideal environment for the wound. Drying out wounds actually impairs their healing, even if it does reduce the risk of it gettign superinfected.

Interesting and I've been removing the Tegaderm and only using when I'm in the pool or riding my bike. Sounds like I should be just be leaving it on.

Otherwise I'm healing up pretty well. The palms are a tough spot, you don't realize how much you use them until each one of them has a spot on each heel.

Yes, leave it on! It stays cleanest and moistest when you leave it on- you can change it every week if it starts peeling, but the less you mess with it, the better it does. Put some vaseline on top of the wound before you apply the Tegaderm to keep it moist, and it heals super fast. With tegaderm, I heal scrapes in days, usually <7 days, but without it, some of those same scrapes take months to heal because they keep scabbing over and if the scab is deep, that blocks the healing.

Came here to say this. Only time will fix this now. In the future always train in sleeved cycling jersey and with gloves. The thin tri lycra, even if it had sleeves, would rip immediately in a crash like yours. Might as well be topless.

I went boom skiiiiiidd "Oh the humanity!" at about 35 mph last year. Still trying to replace my TT frame but that's another story. Scratched off my palms a bit and now I wear gloves. I used some new skin type stuff. I got the spray on which stings pretty bad for a few seconds, but it's super easy to get some hard to reach areas or cover your non-dominant hand. Those new skin products will protect it and it won't hurt (as much).

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I still lapped everyone on the couch!