Sunday, June 8, 2008

Chilli burn


i bought a bag of bell shaped chillis (dont know which kinda they were, but i do know that the bell shaped round ones are just as hot if not hotter than their skinny looking cousins) at woolies for $1, reduced. By the time i got around to opening the bag up and thinking about cutting them up to freeze.. they were a bit moudly up top near the stem so i decided that fo $1 it was still a bargain for.. what for it.... chilli seeds! (can u see my problem now?)
All along i was thinking, just wait till i tell the world i de-seeded 14 chillis and that i wont be able to pick my nose for a week!!!! ROFL... oh yeah funny... real funny (ok pretty lame)
and why would that be do u think?
was half my brain trying to tell myself, STOP RIGHT NOW!!!!??
anyways, i got the zillions of chilli seeds, scraping them off...
i washed my hands and didnt think more of it.. just 14 chillis, after all...
i put dinner on and within a hour my fingers were starting to prickle, feel really hot and it was pain!! I washed my hands with dish washing concentrate detergent, relief... then pain. I looked up chili burn on google and found this blog post on chili burn
it was somewhat amusing to read all the additions, other remedies.. etc..

So the testing began.. i bathed/soaked my hands in lemon juice which was fine until it got warm and my fingertips burned again.
I tried rubbing my hands with table salt, the exfoliation was great, the rubbing i daresay distracted me from the pain i was getting from the burn for awhile.. and rinsing off in cold water.. ahhhh.
I tried a first aid cream the one with added pain relief stuff.. but it did crap all.
I tried soaking my hands in vegetable oil but that did diddly squat and then hubby tells me the difference between fats and oil.. oh well, no doubt after the salt the oil would be nice for the skin..
i tried soaking my hands in vinegar at dinner time, that was interesting juggling soaking time with eating time. Relief with the vinegar until it warmed (seeing a pattern here?)
I then held the bag of frozen peas and corn in my hands which was heavenly until i couldnt figure what was better, sore hands from extreme cold or sore hands/fingers from chili burn.
I repeated the salt rubbing.

This has me big preggy woman up and down all afternoon, getting pretty tired of it all.. then i soaked my hands in chardonnay.... and then gave up... it had been 3hrs of on/off pain due to 14 chillis... the best thing that worked had been cold. anything cold.. never mind the dissolve acid in fat, remove acid with alcohol, remove acid with exfoliation, go acid for acid or try to neutralize the acid...

I gave up, hubby said it shouldnt have gone on for so long in the first place.. something about it burning itself out... said it could be all in my head... PFFT!!!!! So with the pain now much less intense i let it burn, didnt do anything to stop it.. my fingers felt sooo hot, a few places were bright red on my fingers.. and after about a hour. It just stopped!

My hands today show no signs of what happened...

1 comment:

maria said...

What a terrible experience!

We have a box of disposable latex gloves under the sink (Jenna can't stand dirty dishes residue on her hands) - not exactly environmentally friendly, but it enables her to wash dishes instead of me doing it all the time! (A job she's only just started to do)...

Anyway, the reason I mention that is that if I'm cutting up more than one chilli, I'll put some gloves on (a chef tip I got off the old "What's Cooking" years ago.. which is now "Fresh"?). Chilli's are lethal little suckers. I cringed when I read about the 'fat' application. Anything with fat or sugar would continue the burning process I would have thought.. as with your average burns. When my MIL once told us that putting butter on a burn was standard procedure.. Paul and I recoiled in horror. It was an old remedy that actually did more damage to burns.

When I've had a burning feeling in my joints with Carpal Tunnel.. and my wrists have gone near a cool bench or something.. my hands gravitate to the coolness. It's bliss for anything burning/inflamed .. naturally!

Oh gosh.. I'm so sorry for your suffering! What eventuated with the chilli seeds? Have you dried them? Chilli in food, for me.. can be quite addictive.

p.s. I'm still not seeing any text on your blog unfortunately.. (sniffle)..and there is a black background this end.

Is there any way you could take a screen shot of your blog and email me what it should look like?

Another p.s. So sorry it's taken me this long to get back to your lovely blog xox