Over the weekend my oldest burned his leg on the exhaust of my scooter. Which lead to a trip to the sink – then the shower when the sink proved too small for an 8 year old (what a surprise) then to my personal library and the internet where we tried to figure out what kind of burn it was. In other words do we need to go to the doctor or not?

The burn itself was about the size of the palm of his hand. It was white in one area where the skin had burned and come off and brown in another where the skin was burned and loose but hadn’t come off yet. I thought this meant it had blistered and popped but the argument was made that this didn’t constitute a blister because those come from under the surface (or something like that). The key difference being that blisters mean one degree of burn and no blisters means another degree of burn but I don’t actually think it would have changed our decision about whether or not to take him to the doctor.

I write this just to lament the dearth of good pictures of burns and their associated degree of burn. I suppose it’s just because people have other things to do when dealing with a burn. I think I’ll add that he’s doing fine and it’s starting to itch.