I tend to injure myself a lot due to my many hobbies and general poor coordination.  That means I tend to stock a lot of repair items (and keep my several med kits up to date – but that’s another topic).  One of my favorite items are non-typical bandages.  From finger wraps to the Nexcare waterproof bandages (which stick like crazy once you have them on, but if there is water or oil where you put it on it won’t stick at all!) to the liquid bandages, they all have their uses.

On the other hand, good old Crazy Glue has some pretty distinct advantages.

Let’s break down several alternatives for my most recent hard-to-fix problem, a split on the tip of my thumb.  When my skin gets dry and rough, I occasionally get a split on my fingers where the skin just cracks open.  It isn’t a convenient place to bandage, and even if you do any movement causes the crack to flex.  Some choices:

• Bandage.  Comes off, gets wet when you wash you hands, etc.  Not too great.
• New Skin liquid bandage.  What?? No, seriously never buy that stuff.  It smells toxic and burns.  Why would I put that on my skin?  Why do they even sell that stuff anymore?
• Nexcare liquid bandage  – spray.  Too wide of a spray for this application, but great for scrapes.
• Nexcare liquid bandage – drops.  Hard to find; I got it online.  This is basically medical grade Super Glue, and works well anywhere but my hands.  My hands are too high-use I guess.  On my split, this stuff broke apart too quickly and I had to re-apply a few times a day
• Nexcare skin crack care. I haven’t tried it, but it might be a good choice.
• Band-aid single use liquid bandages.  I loved the single applicator packs that I could put in med kits, but they disappeared.  The new ones require the dropper bottle, and aren’t rated as well.
• Crazy Glue.  This was the winner for me this round.  I squeezed the crack together (not wanting the glue to touch my exposed lower layers of skin) and it held it with the plastic-like crustiness I expect from these kind of glues.

Of course, Crazy Glue is what I used last time because it was all I had at work.  I guess I didn’t really need to waste any time with the other alternatives.

By the way, I settled on Crazy Glue rather than Super Glue, because Cody Lundin talked about using it for cracks on his feet (he doesn’t wear shoes) in his book 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your *** Alive. I highly recommend it.  It also talks a lot about building your own survival kit, which is pretty important if you ever need it.

Disclaimer – I haven’t evaluated Crazy Glue for medical safety.