Class in Session: Scar-Busters

"Chicks dig scars."
"Her acne's loads better!" ("Her nose is off-center.")

I'd say it started with a super-intense evening of working out at the local community center last week, my first visit to their pool, hot tub and weight room. But really, it started before that . . . with all the sugar and fat I'd been eating.

My first warnings were the nasty little patch of broken-out skin on my jaw, which I took to be pimples at first, and a couple of swollen lymph nodes. I covered the nasty pimple patch with a simple bandage (tape and toilet paper; ghetto potist, here) to hold in an ointment. The lymph business suggested to me I'd compromised my immune system, so my first internal cure was a no-brainer: I reached for the garlic, and also turneric as an antiinflammatory.

The "Four Golden Ingredients" potion above contains: raw garlic, turmeric, ginger and honey. Under the bandage I tried Prid, a powerful drawing salve that can take a pimple from "well-up" stage to a head overnight (available at Walgreens):

But the pimples didn't come to a head, rather they stayed swollen and also opened into painful sores. Was I in for a nasty surprise: I had shingles! Thankfully, a mild case --- a severe case can hospitalize someone. But all the signs were there, from the oozing sores to multiple swollen lymph nodes only on one side of the body. Shingles stems from the chickenpox virus, which never leaves you once you've had it (it goes dormant in the base of your spine, how sodding weird is that?). If you tax your immune system to an insane degree, it can re-erupt . . . which I apparently did!

My next major step, keeping the sores covered, was to make a remedy to minimize the potential for scarring. I had chickenpox and thus know it can leave deep, ugly craters if one isn't careful, and craters are definitely not a sexy type of scar, thank you. So I made a scar oil formula (above):

1 dram Base: olive
9 drops Carrot seed
6 drops Helichrysum
3 drops Lavender
3 drops Rosemary

Carrot seed and Helichrysum are the main drivers here, with Lavender a strong second.

Over this oil, I also smeared a store-bought ointment (too unwieldy and short-notice to make it myself, I have no lab and wanted to heal now), containing Comfrey, Calendula, Plaintain and beeswax.


Update, two weeks later:

A darker patch of slightly thicker skin is still there, which I can resume treating with the oil, but I successfully avoided gaping craters, despite the repeated forming of those nasty deep scabs! Removing those, followed by fresh application of both oil and ointment, did the job.