Simple question. Took a little tumble yesterday off the bike. Acquired some road rash. Now I’m wondering if I should avoid the water until it heals.
Will lifeguards even let me in a pool? And what about open water swims?
I’m about head out on the bike, for a ~80 mile ride. Going to a little lake outside of town, picnic lunch and then back. I had planned to do some fooling around in the water with friends, but now I’m wondering if I should stay dry instead.
thanks.
I know the YMCA will not let you in the pool with road rash. I wrecked about a month ago and had to take 2 weeks off of swimming until the wounds healed. Would you really want to swim in a pool and see a guy with road rash in the water? If you google and read about road rash and swimming, you will of course get many opinions, but I found the standard answer was not to swim at all until the wound was healed or scabbed. The reason was bacteria in the water that chlorine cannot kill can find it’s way into your body via your wounds and then you can get a serious infection. It’s safer for you and everyone else to just stay out of the pool. You won’t lose much swim fitness by waiting.
don’t swim in chlorinated or fresh water until it heals. water in general is pretty disgusting.
it always amazes me that people think just because water is chlorinated there are no bacteria in it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402466
Once the wound stops weeping, cover with tegraderm and swim away.
I hate to disagree here but I am going to have to disagree here.
Road rash is not any more likely to get infected from swimming than not. It’s true that pool and open water can harbor pathogens but the nature of road rash is that it is very superficial and thus unlikely to become infected from exposure to water. Unless the water was really heavily contaminated you really aren’t putting yourself at any more risk.
As for the the risk to other bathers, this is harder to quantitate. It;'s true that some blood borne pathogens can be transmitted to the water from road rash but almost all of them are not viable in water and would die without being able to infect anyone else. There is still some very small theoretical risk though and this might explain the policies of some pools.
I think the best advices is to give it a few days to ‘cool off’ so that the pain diminishes and the amount of discharge diminishes and then you are good to go. The swimming will actually keep it clean in most cases.
One caveat; be very careful to use sun screen on all areas of road rash. As those wounds heal if they are exposed to sunlight they will become tanned permanently. You want to keep the areas covered or at the least covered with sunscreen (those that contain vitamin E will further promote healing).
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Ha, I just had a similar situation as you! Also, the club team I swam with (way back when) had a physician who volunteered as head coach. Plenty of people swam with open wounds (kids do stupid things, like drive riding lawn mowers over cliffs…). I would say swim away as long as it doesn’t bother you. If you’re worried about the rash, just make sure to keep an eye on it and clean regularly (but you should do that even if you don’t swim!). For me, I thought swimming made the rash feel better, for whatever that’s worth.