How Not to Treat a Knee Injury (A “Put Your Glasses on First” Installment)

by Kendel on September 24, 2014

So, about 3 years ago my husband hurt his knee. Many years ago I had taken a couple of massage classes so I worked on his knee. He said it felt better, but it was still hurting. He has a high threshold for pain so I knew that him saying that meant it hurt bad and he probably wouldn’t sleep. So I had him take some over-the-counter pain meds and started looking for the heating pad. I found it and we tried it. But because the injury was on the side of his knee, it was difficult to get the heating pad to stay put. In comes my brilliant idea! By brilliant, I mean, well, you’ll see. I remembered that we had some hand warmers in the bathroom cabinet. I go grab one, and an ACE bandage wrap. I open it up to activate it, hold it on his knee and wrap it up with the bandage. Feeling pretty proud of my brilliance, I got ready for bed while he settled in. A few minutes later, he wakes up and says, “something’s not right”. I go over, take the bandage off, and remove the hand warmer. His skin was bright red and there were blisters forming. Needless to say, I felt terrible! So he ended up having an injured knee and needing burn cream for the skin. I definitely deserved The Dunce Cap on that one. So, by brilliant, I mean not brilliant.