How many days should you wait for road rash to “set up” before getting in the pool? Other than chlorine’s drying effect, are there any other infection issues or stuff like that?
I don’t think you have to worry about infection issues, as the chlorine will do nothing but clean.
My road rash, on my shoulder, hurt very badly to move and I took three days off from the pool. I tried to get in the fourth, but after 100 yards I got out. It hurt really bad. Fifth day I did about 1000 yards. After 200 it loosened and felt good, but I didn’t want the scab to fall off in the pool. So after about a week of that I was able to swim worry free…actually I still worried about the rest of the scab falling off, but it that point getting in my swimming became more important.
If it’s really bad cover it with Tegaderm and swim with that on it. It’s waterproof and you can just leave it on until the thing heals.
If it isn’t that bad just swim with it open. I swear mine seem to heal faster when they get a regular chlorine bath.
You need to wait 0 (zero) days.
Depends on how deep it is, mine took a week and a half to simmer down,
mainly because I listened to people here and cycled with it, the sweat made
it infected, you can probably search the forum to find that thread.
The pool in our university has a policy that if you have any big scar, you are not allowed to use
the facility. I kind of like the idea actually, so I didn’t swim for a couple of weeks, (I was not able
to find Tegaderm in Canada, people said it does magic though.)
You don’t need to wait, assuming that your pool is clean, which you don’t really know, unless you do an anonymous survey to see how many people pee in your pool.
Also, stay away from my pool because I don’t want to swim through your deteriorating scabs,… and I pee. Thanks.
I’ve heard that chlorine breaks down new skin tissue (ex: http://www.mothernature.com/Library/Bookshelf/Books/16/104.cfm – although I’m not sure if that site is reliable). If there is a lot of that to regrow you might want to be careful with swimming in chlorinated pools (as opposed to salt water ones).