Unfortunately a lot of people neglect small cuts and scrapes. It’s important to clean any wound no matter how small, even just soap and water if that’s all you have, but as soon as possible administer a germ killer like peroxide and then a dab of triple antibiotic and a bandaid if necessary. In this day of easy travel and the presence of third worlders and nasty germs you cannot be too careful.
We were faced with a hard decision at the time. It was additional stress in a time when we were both stressed to the max. I caught a lot of grief because our oncologist told us we had one of two options. We could get rid of our cats or we could declaw them. My cats weren't kittens (9 yrs and 7 yrs old) and were just like the hundreds of unwanted cats one sees at the local adoption center. There was nothing special about our cats other than they were loved. I'd had the older one before my husband and I married. He gave me the youngest one as a peace offering after we'd had a few heated words. The cat he gave me was part of a group of feral cats his Mom had living on her property.
Off and on I was the main bread earner (actually more on). My ex was one of those truck drivers no one likes to be behind. Usually he was carrying equipment to different build sites. Many is the time he'd be hauling mining equipment whose tires were taller than he was. It was extremely rare for him to be routed on the highways because his load would be too high to make it under the overpasses.
Your advice is sound up until you mention using a dab of a triple antibiotic. The first time his arm developed staph, he had no bleeding and the scuff just looked like a small area where he'd scuffed his hand. Heck, he pulled off the little bit of skin where he'd scuffed it. The skin was about like what would happen after you'd get a sunburn and start to peel.
The second time was when he got a small scratch, something you and I would think nothing of. He was on the road and so he washed his hands washed pretty regularly. Even though it wasn't a deep scratch it was one that was in a place where it irritated him.
His oncologist told him to never use the triple antibiotic because it would hasten healing on the top layer of skin but the underlying skin had no way to drain off any of the clear liquid or blood cells. The underlying wound would wind up getting infected because the neosoporin worked so well curing up the top layers of skin and the underlying scratch had no place to go so would get infected.
It's not much fun to be called in the middle of the night and asked for my permission to amputate his arm because he was too delirious to make sense. Thankfully I opted to take a wait and see option.
Warning to all:
ALL:
Please be careful when using triple antibiotics especially on a puncture type wound.