daisyblog

Recently, I had the worst cold sore outbreak since 2011. That time, I was only about 18, and I had mistaken a coldsore for a pimple & attempted to pop it & clean it with alcohol. It.... did not go as hoped lol. Of course, it quickly became a dime-sized patch of dozens of tiny sores, on my face just under the corner of my mouth. It took about 2 weeks to heal, untreated. 

I've gotten a lot better at taking care of cold sores since then, thankfully, and at managing my symptoms so my outbreaks are less frequent and usually less severe now. But sometimes, it seems a mild outbreak just isnt in the cards for whatever reason, so last week I had another large collection of sores, this time not dime-sized but rather pea-sized, but which became a single fucked up blister. 

I've been using medicated ointments on sores for years already, but I wanted to know something else:

Is it advisable to simply place a small bandage over a medicated cold sore?

THE ANSWER MIGHT SHOCK YOU.

.....It might shock me too, but after several attempts and multiple pages of search results clicked through, I'm very disappointed to say that I never actually found ANY RESULT with satisfactory information related to my query. To start with, I never search with Google, as Google search has been absolute ad-laden trash for years, and DuckDuckGo has given me at least marignally better experiences, so that's what I was using. I tried the quotation marks, I tried minusing out terms I didnt want to see, both of which are only VERY loosely respected in DuckDuckGo anyway and all but ignored on Google. I tried some longer, more sentence-like queries, like "Can you put a bandaid bandage on a cold sore?" And short queries like "cold sore bandage healing." 

So what did I find? 

Fucking. Ads.

Ads, product pages, lists of makeup products to cover up a cold sore, and generalized, vague introductory advice for how to manage & care for cold sores, which I'm pretty familiar with by this point. But basically none even addressed the option of placing a bandaid on a cold sore for any amount of time, except that apparently they make a thing called "hydrocolloid bandages" which supposedly speed healing for wounds in general. I cannot emphasize enough that I was not looking for a product, I was looking for facts and information. 

After x amount of time doing this, I simply gave up. Standard internet search engines are simply useless for almost everything, even if you are looking for a product, if you're not trying to simply consume ads and pick something being suggested to you, you're fucked. I had the same experience trying to find a messenger bag that wasn't one of a handful of crappy bags from a sweatshop somewhere while avoiding Amazon. (Spoiler: I spent days doing research & ended up buying some sweatshop bag from Amazon. That's how bad it was.)

I let the hopelessness consume me, and resigned myself to making *gasp* an educated guess based on knowledge I already have. I decided to try putting those little round bandaids over the medicated sore, at least at night or when doing certain activities, with the reasoning that wounds in general need a certain level of moisture to heal quickly and shouldn't get excessively dry or moist. Covering the sores should prevent the ointment from rubbing off on things, prevent the site from getting bumped and injured or irritated, prevent the site from getting fluid anywhere, and keep the site from getting excessively dry and cracking, which is painful and seems to prolong healing (not to mention more risk of leaking blood or fluid). I would change the bandage regularly, both to prevent possible infection or excessive moisture but also because I predicted that the bandage would probably peel itself off pretty quickly & wouldn't attach well to my actual lip area. 

It's been about 7 days of coldsore, and this experiment is going extremely well. Considering this kind of outbreak can last weeks, I'm very pleased with this time table. I wasn't using an actual medicated ointment like Abreva this time unfortunately, which probably would have been even better, but I'm using a generic - i guess herbal? - cold sore ointment containing camphor, menthol, phenol, and petroleum jelly. (I was trying to buy actual medication and bought this by mistake, but this does work better than nothing, so I'm fine with it.) It's just down to the sort of end-stage where it's shedding the filmy skin that had formed and the scab is shrinking, and it bleeds at the slightest provocation, but it'll bleed regardless at this point, as the skin is just very fragile. But there are no sores left, no dry crust, and almost no pain. The sores actually never quite went through that phase where they were crusty and yellow, because the bandage and ointment kept them moist enough that I guess they just healed right through it. I'm extremely relieved that it worked out this way.

So, what else can I say? Search engines are functionally useless for anything except choosing what kinds of ads, ranked lists, and AI verbal diarrhea you want to be shown. They frequently are not a good resource for finding information, simple blogs, etc. I'm already pretty negative about most choices Big Tech is making these days, but this experience left me extremely jaded. I guess at some point I have to start looking for a new search engine. Some people suggest Kagi but they're partnered with Brave (who has been very questionable as well lately which landed me back at Firefox), and Kagi and Brave are all-in with "AI," so, you know... Lol. (Firefox is as well to some capacity, but they lack some of the sketchiness of Brave so ultimately they still win out for now.) So Kagi is probably out, and that just leaves me with... oh, nothing! None that I can think of. I have to actually put time and energy into finding a new thing I don't know anything about yet, for SEARCHING THE INTERNET, and if it actually is good and works well and isnt otherwise evil somehow, I have to just hope it doesnt get enshittified just like the rest. I guess that's just life in the Big Tech city nowadays.