Wound Care Question - Butterfly bandaids?

[~invisible~girl~]

So I recently started cutting again (which is great [/sarcasm], but on the bright side I'm drinking less lately), and I cut kinda deep, I'm reasonably certain it didn't need stitches or anything, but pretty bad. I did a few days ago as well, and put some butterfly bandaids on it, which seemed to help a lot (I expected a much worse scar than it looks like I'm going to have, and it healed a lot faster than I expected as well), so I put some on the ones tonight as well. But anyways, what I'm not sure about is how long to leave them on for. I took the old ones off already, cause they were sort of sliding around on my arm, leaving a sticky residue behind, but I'm not sure how long to leave them otherwise.

[trechu]

Whenever I've been to the doctor and gotten them, I've been told they should stay on for about a week. Obviously it will depend on how fast they heal and stuff though, which is why you should ideally see a doctor, but a week is a rough guide.
Hope that helps :)

[~invisible~girl~]

Thanks. I don't think they really need to be looked at by a doctor though, and I don't really have health insurance right now, so I don't want to go to the doctor unless absolutely necessary (basically, my options are to pay out-of-pocket, which would be expensive, to make an appointment at the clinic, which would be free but would probably be for about 6 weeks from now so not much point, or to go to the ER, where probably have to wait at least 8-9 hours even for something much more urgent than this, and since the cuts aren't even bleeding anymore, and aren't infected or anything, I could easily be there upwards of 16 hours). I'll probably end up doing what I did last time and just leaving the butterfly bandaids on until they fall off or become annoying (last time, they hadn't quite fallen off yet, but sort of slid around on the adhesive somehow, so there was an area of adhesive on my skin that wasn't covered by the bandage anymore, and I had to take the bandaids off to get the adhesive off).

[Pi.R^2]

What does it say on the instructions that came with the butterfly bandaids? Do they say how long to leave them on for?

[~invisible~girl~]

The box only has instructions for how to put them on, not what to do after that.

[SavingGrace]

The usual recommendation is to leave them on until they naturally fall of by themselves. =)

[katmum]

Just make sure it's kept clean & covered. Change the dressings regularly. Clean hands first. What are butterfly bandaids? Are they like steri strips?

[Emmabob.]

^ steri strips, butterfly stitches, similar sorta thing, yup.