When you are working there are all kinds of hazards. Some of them are obvious. You don’t want to fall off a roof. You don’t want to get shocked by electricity. You don’t want to shoot a nail into your foot.

But some of the hazards posed by a hard day’s work are not so obvious. A good example of these not so obvious hazards would be abrasion wounds that your pants can give you. Obviously, such wounds are not a threat to your life. But they can be surprisingly painful and they take forever to heal.

This subject is on my mind because I gave myself one of these wounds a few weeks back and it still is not done healing. Like most injuries, I got it because I was stupid and was not thinking about what I was doing.

It was a long day’s work. I did not even stop for lunch (I subsisted on candy bars and orange juice). I was working in either freezing rain or snow depending on the time of day. But the only concession I made to the weather was a hat and a jacket. This meant that my jeans got soaked.

I did not mind because I was working so hard that I stayed plenty warm. I even managed to work up a sweat in spite of being soaking wet. But as the day went on it became increasing painful to walk, get in a vehicle, or any other action that caused my pants to rub against my inner thigh. Naturally, I ignored this.

As the day turned to night the wind began to pick up. Seeing as I was soaking wet from sweat and the freezing rain this was not a good thing. Eventually my teeth began to chatter and I was faced with the prospect of stopping what I was doing to change into my spare set of clothes or just going home.

I had originally planned on working longer but I knew that once I changed into a spare set of clothes I would no longer feel like working. Sometimes stopping can be deadly to one’s morale. Since I had already worked 16 hours I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and I went home.

Once I got out of the “I am working, don’t bother me” mode, the pain in my leg became more noticeable. When I finally got out of my wet pants and I inspected the damage I was kind of shocked. I figured that rubbed the top layer of skin off or something. I never expected to see the raw flesh with clear liquid oozing from it and the deep black (because it was dried blood) scab that had formed over the widest part of the wound.

The clear oozing liquid was trying to form a scab. Over the coming days and weeks that scab would fall off multiple times and be replaced by a new one. This was painful because every time the scab fell off it would be raw exposed flesh that was sensitive to the slightest bump. Even when the scab was on it was not all peaches and cream because the scab was not as stretchable as healthy skin.

Anything beyond tightly controlled range of movement would stress the scab causing it break up. This is one of the reasons that it kept falling off.

Part of the reason that this wound was as painful as it was is related to fact that the damage is more than skin deep. The first time the deep black scab fell off I was impressed by how deep of a groove my pants had cut into my flesh. Given that it went as deep as it did, I am surprised that bleeding was not more profuse than it was.

I have heard of other people who have had problems similar to this. But most of the time they were wearing coveralls or jeans that were not really suited to work. I thought that because I was wearing a good quality pair of jeans from Duluth Trading Co. that I would be safe. Apparently not.

I think the main problem was that water made my pants heavier. That, combined with the weight of the gear on my belt dragged my pants lower and caused all the damage. Supporting this theory is the fact that it was my left leg that got hit really hard and most of my gear was on my right side. This suggests to me that my pants cocked slightly and caused the abrasion effect.

On the other hand, this happened to my brother once as well. Only he was not carrying the gear that I had on my belt. So maybe I am unfairly blaming my tools. On the other hand, both of us got our injuries while working with wet pants so maybe the weight idea is not completely off.

The obvious moral of this story is to pay attention to your body and don’t always ignore the pain. Plus, always have a dry set of clothes handy. (I did, but I chose not to take advantage of them.)