Gravel debrided.

I came across the medical report from the big spill I had a while back. After the run down of the injuries was the term “gravel debrided”. There is something about this phrase that I love. It sounds so clinical and so thorough, almost comforting, yet it involves a fair amount of discomfort. Or in my case, considering I’d slid down the road after being tossed over the bars at 60kph, pain. I happened to have a fair amount of gravel that needed debriding.

Gravel debriding basically involves scrubbing the gravel out of a wound. There has to be care taken not to do too much more damage to the underlying skin and tissue cells. At the same time, you need to get all the foreign matter out of an open wound to reduce the chance of infection and reduce healing times. I had 3 large areas of gravel rash, and even though I had the help of pain killers, this process still hurt.

As part of a massage therapist’s obligation to remain a current member of a professional association (AAMT for me), you must hold and regularly update a first aid certificate. I recently updated my first aid and CPR certificates and we were discussing the difference between first and secondary aid. Generally, this type of care is described as secondary aid, but for a soignie involved with cyclists, it is definitely first aid. Most professional cyclists are pretty adamant that the sooner a wound is clean, the better.

I’ve patched up a few riders, sometimes you get a nice clean environment with good access to a great medical kit, other times you are out on the open road with little on hand and need to make do. I never thought I’d need a scalpel in my kit, but I have seen a racer who was also a doctor neatly trim some dead skin away from around a wound on his own shoulder. Well beyond my skill set, I’ll stick to some basic wound cleaning and sending them off to the doctor. Some riders need convincing that a trip to the hospital or medical centre is really what they need to do, and this can be a major effort in itself.

I can’t recommend the benefits of doing a first aid course highly enough. Anyone of them will do. You just never know when these skills might come in need. As a soignie, most of my first aid is easy stuff, stop the bleeding, immobilise a joint, bit of reassurance and send them off to the race doctor. I’m lucky never to have had to perform CPR, attend a stroke victim or see someone go into anaphylactic shock. But should I be faced with such a situation I’d like to think that I might be able to provide some better odds of a positive outcome. Imagine if something similar happened to a friend or family member. Do you have first aid training? Well, you should.