I was recently asked whether I had ever had decubitus and my initial reply was no, but on careful thought I had to answer yes. Oh, by the way, for any of you that don't know, decubitus is the medical term for bedsores and some of us with spinal cord injuries are very sensitive for sores, me being one of them. So back to the point, about a year and a half ago now, one of the doctors that was treating me for spasms in my legs, accidently dropped my legs after injecting alcohol into the back of my knees and the heels of my feet hit the hard medical examination table, I was lying on, really hard and this caused some very bad bruising which subsequently, after about a month and a half, turned into nasty gaping sores on both heels.

Well the damage was done, it was too late for prevention. My normal preventative measures are the same as most others, sheepskin under my heels at night and under the base of my back when I'm horizontal on the sofa. I was concerned, it was the first time I had had fully blown bed sores and after a couple of weeks treating the sores with water peroxide, I went to the Doctor for advise. The Doctor gave me some ointment to put on the sores and I was on my way, or so I thought, but after a couple of weeks more and regular use of the oinment, the sores weren't going away, if anything they were getting worse!

This was now starting to really worry me and the thought of going in to hospital didn't appeal to me at all. What should I do? was there anything I could do?... Then my girlfriend told me one night that she had read on the internet about some stuff called manuka honey, I had never heard of it and couldn't really see the connection but then she explained that I didn't need to eat it but use it as an ointment on the wounds.

What did I have to loose? Other than the fact that this stuff wasn't cheap, I couldn't see any reason not to try it so we ordered a pot over the internet. When it arrived we were amazed at the size of the pot, it was tiny seeing as we had paid a small fortune for it, but nevertheless we were intrigued to find out more and more to the point, would it cure the gaping holes in my heels. Being experimental from nature, I suggested to Lou that we tried it on one heel and kept treating the other with the ointment from the Doctor. To my amazement, after about three weeks, the hole in my right heel which we had treated with manuka honey was nearly gone and the hole in my left heel was still open so we started treating the hole in my left heel with manuka honey too and sure enough it disappeared.

I am not saying that manuka honeyis a cure all or even the answer to bed sores, but anything is better than a hospital bed. I would like to say a big thankyou to all you bees out there that are producing manuka honey.