skin grafts

[Briar]

I have a number of large, ugly-looking skin grafts, the oldest of which is about 6 months old. I'm wondering if they will ever start to look like normal skin. The hospital just told me to put Vitamin E cream on them, which I've been doing every day. They're still purple and bumpy with a raised edge... and also because the burns they came from took out a fair degree of fat tissue, they're also like craters. They look pretty awful. I'm wondering if there's any point in putting something like bio-oil on them, since they're not really scars? Does anyone know? Has anyone been given advice other than Vitamin E cream?

[chinahorse]

They will mellow in colour and if you keep massaging them firmly a few times a day (you want you nail beds to go pale with pressure) they will soften around the edges. However they will never loose the 'shiny' appearance and nor will the craters fill in.

Advice wise due to your location be very very careful with sun care, you ideally want to use total sun block on then- do not let them burn!

[Briar]

Thanks you both. That's really helpful.

[Bellatrix]

I've found cocoa butter on mine has greatly helped scar reduction. One that is like 5(?) years old is faded like a cut would fade, very soft and supple for a scar and has lost a bit of the shiny-ness.

I've also found my most recent graft (approx same age as yours) was healing and fading much quicker when I was using cocoa butter regularly.

Your scar might heal differently if a different technique was used. Some come out shiny, some not so shiny, some go really hard and taught, some end up rather supple.

As for the craters, nothing much you can do there. Sucks.

[chinahorse]

As an aside once they are fully healed a bit of transluscent make up powder on them takes down the shinyness which is what draws most peoples attention to them.

[Bellatrix]

And once fully healed using factor 50+ suncream on them if you absolutly have to get them in the sun. That will reduce any leatheryness

[Briar]

Thanks everyone, that's really helpful. The sun thing doesn't matter so much right now because they're on my thighs and it's coming into winter here and tbh they're too ugly to show in public right now anyway but it sounds like sun-sensitivity is a long term issue?

The oldest one is a lot paler than the newer ones - newer by about 6 weeks and done by a different surgical team - but the edge seems to be getting more raised, like a cutting scar. The newer ones wake me up at night if I lay on them too long, and I need to stand up at work or they get painful where I'm sitting on them. I guess that's not such a big deal though.

[Bellatrix]

Yeah you will always need high factor sunscreen.

The pain will lessen with time.