Ohhh, the itching - steri strips, healing and opiates, oh my!

I have taken benedryl when the itching got too bad with my plastics.  I, too am allergic to the adhesives.  I will get blisters under the tape.  I also used the benedryl gel.  I would put it on before changing my dressings.  But I also itched in places there was no dressing so I think a certain amount of itching is related to healing.  About the steri-stripes I was always told to wait and either let them fall off by themselves or wait and let the surgeon decide when it was time to remove them.  But generally mine fell off about a week later.  Now with the breasts I had a couple that hung on for a couple of weeks.

Red

Thank you Jodie and Red!  Good info and I'm sorry you both had the itchies!

Hey there!  Dr B says those strips will not generally all fall off on their own.  I was itchy and sick of them at about one and half weeks out, so I pulled them all off.  It felt great to have them off. After I had them off I put some calming lotion on as everything was really dry, and haven't had a bit of trouble with my incision.  It healed AMAZING!  Just thought I would pass that on to you...I was so itchy too.

Jennifer 

Oh, so good to know, Jennifer.

I think I'm gonna take the plunge and pull these sonofaguns right off.  They are driving me nucking futs.  My skin underneath looks OK so i wanna keep it that way!  And I am surprised at how nice my incision looks too - my c-sec one looks awful -but this one is quite presentable!  LOL.

Most of my steristrips were still in place at my first postop visit to the surgeon, which was ten days out. He removed them at that time, along with the staples.

Are you cleared to take showers? I've found that just letting warm water run over my belly is soothing.

I had a bad allergic reaction this past spring to something and broke out in hives all over my body, they itched like crazy.  Ended up in ER and he told me to take Zantac 150mg 2 times per day used as a histamine blocker.  Never knew that it would do that, but he was right.  Took the itching completely away.  Thank God!