One Month Out: Cat Attack Update

Its been a little over a month since I was attacked by my cat Lunchbox. Overall, things are healing nicely. Obviously the gashes on my face are still pretty visible. I don’t feel like they’re so visible that casual passers-by at stores can see and stare, but a clerk helping me and looking at my face could clearly see.

I can’t feel any scabs on my scalp anymore, which makes brushing my hair normal again and I can likely continue getting my hair colored when its time for a touch up.  So that’s a definite benefit.  I’m still using Cetaphil to wash my face so I don’t aggravate the healing, but I switched back to my usual shampoos awhile back – the baby shampoo was just not cutting it to keep my hair clean and feeling good!  So I tested out a little bit of my normal shampoos and when they didn’t aggravate anything, I abandoned the special hair regimen.

I’m pretty sure that everything is pretty much healed; its all about scar reduction/prevention. My friend’s mom sent me home with some Vitamin E oil she wasn’t using anymore and I ordered some 100% pure aloe vera upon another friend’s suggestion. I was mixing those with some Clean & Clear Morning Burst Hydrating Gel Moisturizer as a base, but after some time staring at the scratches on my face, I decided to add some Mederma Advanced to the regimen. I’m already seeing more progress using this product. Aside from the obvious scars that are heavy and visible on my face, I’m starting to have a harder time finding where all the scratches are on my hands and arms to put the gel.

Thanks to my friends Katie and Rachel, going out to dinner with them the week after actually helped me get over my anxiety about people staring at the wounds. I guess steak heals all wounds!  The funny thing is that we decided to get dinner at the new Black Angus that opened near Katie’s house specifically because most locations have really dim lighting in their booths – and of course they’re super busy and we get seated at a table directly under a light!  So in order to functionally eat my dinner, I had to get past wanting to hold my hand over my healing wounds.

These days, I find myself scratching my forehead or something and then feeling around to feel the scars so I don’t scratch them accidentally or something.  The last thing I need is for a nail to puncture something that’s still kind of healing and make it worse.  As for the mental, I still find myself flinching sometimes when Lunchbox gets too close to my head.  This usually happens if I’m bending over to pick something up, or leaning over the kitchen table to grab something while he’s sitting there (the cats food bowl is on the kitchen table to keep the dog out of it, since we don’t sit at the kitchen table anyway).  Most of the time he’s content to cuddle with me like nothing ever happened.  I do wonder sometimes if the vet I took him to 10 years ago to get neutered didn’t do a complete job because he can be aggressive with the dog and is always trying to mount Muse, so when he’s due for his next shots I think I’ll ask them to take a look down there too to see if there’s not something they might do about that.

It’ll take time, I know.  But I’m impatient!  And I want to be back to normal – I already had issues with my face, I don’t need this one too.  Given the raised quality of at least one of these scratches, I doubt I’ll ever be “normal” again.  But, you never know.  Fingers crossed!