Sometimes the right solution is just a shoehorn and a bigger Band-Aid

A more thoughtful person wouldn’t post something this personal and embarrassing. I am not that person. Hey, we’re friends here, right?

Last week, my dermatologist performed a small biopsy of a mole in the center of my back about eight inches below the bottom of my neck, removing the top layer of skin and the area around it. This is no big deal; she’s done that several times over the years, and nothing of too much concern has shown up, but we continue to be careful because my father died of melanoma.

As a result of this procedure, there was a spot about the size of your fingernail with no skin on it. My instructions were to keep it clean, keep it covered with a Band-Aid with some Vaseline on it, and change the dressing regularly to promote quick, safe healing. This, too, I took seriously, because infection in an inaccessible spot is not my idea of a good time.

And that was fine until Monday morning, when my wife left for a week away as an artist in residence in Central Massachusetts, three hours from our home in Portland, Maine. Just before she left, I showered and asked her to replace the Band-Aid, since, of course, I cannot even come close to reaching that spot on my back. (That’s why villains in movies stab their adversaries in that spot, since it’s amusing and terrifying to see the hero unable to reach the knife to pull it out.)

So now I was faced with two choices: find somebody else to change my bandage, or figure out some way to apply a bandage myself to a spot I couldn’t reach.

I don’t have that many close friends in Maine, yet, and those I do are not “Hey, let me take my clothes off and show you my wound” kind of friends.

Even so, I do have a personal trainer who is at least familiar with the limitations and capabilities of my so-called body. She’s a very nice, upbeat, friendly, and diligent person. So a day and a half after my wife left, at the start of our training session, I told her I would completely understand if she felt this was an imposition on our relationship and I wouldn’t hold it against her if she objected, but would she do me a favor and change my Band-Aid? She smiled and said “Sure,” and that was that . . . for a little while.

But no, I wasn’t going to go back to my trainer every day for Band-Aid replacement, because that seemed like an imposition. So who else could help? My neighbors are people I greet and smile at, not people I would ask to nurse my wounds. My kids are hours away in Massachusetts, as are my close friends. My barber is a woman with whom I’d prefer not to expand our relationship to include taking my shirt off. My doctor’s office would likely have to charge lots of money to do this, and Urgent Care, even more, not to mention the embarrassment of wasting hours at Urgent Care just to change a Band-Aid.

So I determined that, in the tradition my grandfather and my father, the inveterate tinkerers in my family, I needed to find some way to MacGyver myself into a new dressing.

The first step was to see the problem. I could just barely make it out in the bathroom mirror if I twisted my head around as far as I could, but unlike an owl, I couldn’t really see my own back except at an oblique angle. I needed a better view than that. So I held up a handheld mirror over my shoulder with my back to the bathroom mirror and sure enough, looking at a reflection of a reflection, I could get a pretty good look.

With the mirror in one hand and a yardstick in the other, I pried the old Band-Aid off and finally got a peek at the spot in question. It didn’t look too bad. But definitely not ready to go without being covered.

A short shower later I thoroughly dried myself and gave the matter careful thought.

A key insight: there is no requirement to cover a small wound with a small Band-Aid. If I used a large adhesive bandage, I didn’t need to apply it to a precise spot, it could be off by an inch or two and still do the job. Sure, it would look stupid, but hey, who’s going to know (except, now, the thousands of you who read my blog every day).

So I had reduced my problem to: How do you apply a large bandage to an approximate spot on your back that you still can’t reach?

The yardstick wasn’t easy to maneuver, and it kept bumping into the low ceiling in my bathroom. But I did have a long shoehorn, like this:

I flipped the shoehorn over and applied a loop of tape to the back of it, at the bottom. I carefully peeled the coverings off the large adhesive bandage and applied the Vaseline, then stuck the non-sterile side of the bandage to the tape loop. (The shoehorn wasn’t sterile, of course, but only the sterile side of the bandage would end up touching the wound.) Having prepared my makeshift bandage application device appropriately, I stood as erect as possible with my back to the bathroom mirror, holding the hand mirror in my left hand and the shoehorn in the right. I then extremely carefully positioned the bandage into a location just above the affected spot and gently but firmly cantilevered the shoehorn flat against my back. The bandage tentatively stuck in what I hoped was the right spot. I then slid the shoehorn downward, hoping that the tape loop would peel off before the bandage adhesive, which it thankfully did.

Finally, I pressed my back against the curved outside wall of my shower to more firmly adhere all parts of the bandage adhesive to the skin of my back.

The result looked like this in my mirror (this is in the running for the stupidest selfie ever taken):

Yeah, there are a lot of moles there. Hey, that’s why I see a dermatologist.

Any nurse who applied a dressing that sloppy would be fired. It may have been an absurdly large bandage, but it was sealed and doing its job . . . at least until I have to take it off and change it again, which is going to be fun, but hey, now I have the benefit of experience.

And who’s going to see it? Nobody needs to know I have a huge poorly applied bandage over a tiny boo-boo on my back.

Except for all of you dear readers, of course.

Thankfully, my wife is returning in a few days.

Lessons from this incident

Seriously, I’m just posting this because I wanted you to have the chance to see me as a fallible human being willing to embarrass himself solely for your amusement. I may be a talented writer and editor, but when it comes to my body I am basically a clown.

I am asking myself why I am too shy to ask an acquaintance to change my Band-Aid, but not too shy to post it publicly online. There’s something distinctly millennial in that attitude, but I’m two generations older than that. Maturity is an enigma.

Given the choice between paying lots of money for something routine, embarrassing myself in front of my friends or neighbors, or using my brain to figure out a Rube Goldberg solution, I’ll take the Goldberg variation every time.

I did learn that I’m still resourceful, if not the most mechanically talented individual, and that I take health warnings seriously.

I do not recommend this particular wound care regimen to you. It’s a lot easier to just get somebody to change your Band-Aid for you.

But when left to your own devices in an hour of need, you might be surprised how creative you can be.

Also — keep lots of different-sized bandages handy. You never know when you’re going to need one of the big ones.