After spending seven and a half hours hiking a mountain at high altitude, my face (and my arms up to about my elbows, where I had my sleeves rolled up) was bright red. Alex and I can barely buy food here, let alone moisturizer, so I basically just decided not to touch my face until it stopped hurting.
Yesterday during lunch I realized that I could do a cool trick. I give you the Sunburned Forehead Trick.
Being a forehead chamelion wasn't the most exciting result, though. Yesterday my face started oozing. At first it was just this orangish crust on the outside of my nose, and after I got it off there was some liquid.
Then my condition progressed to other parts of my face. Alex and I stood in front of the mirror late last night and tried to figure out what was going on. His nose is a little sunburned, but he wore a hood for most of the hike, so he wasn't in very bad of shape. My forehead and cheeks, on the other hand, are bubbly and tinted orange. We determined that our skin was oozing because there was some kind of fluid trapped underneath, and if I smiled too hard (or otherwise compressed my skin), orange fluid would leak out and stream down my face like a bad Gatorade commercial.
I admit that sweating orange was a little disconcerting, but there wasn't anything we could do, so we went to bed. I woke up once or twice to scrape some of my face off my face, and in the morning I looked a little more normal. Alex found some moisturizer and since I've put it on I haven't oozed very much, so it's too bad he didn't know he had some before.
If anyone wants to diagnose me, please do so. I'll just be riding a train for the next 24 hours, and if it's anything like the bus on the way here, I'll be recovering to the sound of Uighur music pumped through the speakers at an unreasonably high volume.
5 comments:
Aaah, the Uighur music ringing in your ears. From the sounds of the severity of the sunburn, you should feel lucky that it is only the music that is the ringing in your ears! When I read your blog about climbing for hours in such high altitude I myself didn't consider that you'd be sunburnt. And anyway, what would you have done- not gone? no way.
You will need to drink a lot of water and watch out for infection of those open sores. If you were in the US, your mom might even want you to go to urgent care and make sure you don't have sun poisoning. They might prescribe an oral steroid to help the skin heal. That's not likely a possibility where you are, is it now? ha, ha. Did you know that Grammie was once hospitalized for sunburn?
As long as you don't have a roaring fever or if the blisters are infected, it sounds like you can avoid any doctors, and that would be a good thing, wouldn't it!
You can take aspirin or ibuprofen for the pain and (I sound like a doofus now) of course, stay out of the sun/ wear a hat/ wear sunscreen/ keep the sunburned areas covered till they can heal. Some people say that every really bad sunburn increases your odds for skin cancer, so please be careful on the upcoming hikes in such amazingly cool places! I just can't believe what you are getting to see and do. You are soooo blessed, boy.
you look good with some color on your face ;)
Just keeping cool wet cloths on your face will help too. Burns continue to burn for up to 24 hour - until they hit bone so the cooler you can keep the skin, the better. What you have is a serious, second to third degree type burn. Do not take it lightly and like you mom said, watch out for infection...and invest in some serious sunscreen!
Mrs. Curti
yo will, i can sympathize with you, i got burnt Vending at Hershey Park, although im not exactly oozing liquids... but Kashgar sounds awesome, other then the obnoxiously loud Uighur music.
Attractive, Will...really. =P
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