Blisters...To Pop or Not To Pop?

So I did an experiment. After breaking in some new shoes a couple weeks ago, I had twin blisters - one on each foot. I've always been told you should never pop a blister (and I'm talking about regular blisters, not blood blisters) because they can get infected. But part of my duties as reigning Queen of Germ Anihilation is to confront germs head on and kill them. When I have an open wound I see it as sort of an aptitude test of anti-infectionness - will it or won't it get infected? Occasionally the delicate skin betwixt my elfen toes splits, why I don't know (perhaps it could be mild athlete's foot, though I've always been adamant about wearing shower shoes in public showers, and peeing in the shower, too - cause, ya know, urine kills the athlete's foot fungi.) Maybe the skin between my toes splits because I'm a klutz and I run into furniture on a regular basis and it bends my toes in a way that does that*. Regardles, on the rare occasion that I have any open wound on my feet, I spray my feet with Lysol. Not just a mist, I mean I douse my feet in it. And oooh it burns real bad, but I've never had any type of infection on my feet. So back to my original topic -- blisters. I ain't afraid of no blister getting infected, which is why I've always been a popper. I hate the feeling of a squishy blister under a band-aid that may or may not pop on its own at any minute. I can't remember a time when I let a blister heal totally on its on clock. Until a couple weeks ago...

I had these two identical blisters - and they were pretty big, maybe dime sized - and one of them popped on its own before I could get home and out of the shoes. So I decided to leave the other blister alone, just to see once and for all if popping is worse than natural healing. Here are the results of my study:

1. Day 1 - I alcoholed the popped blister and applied neosporin and a band-aid to both of them.
2. By day 2, the loose skin of the popped blister had already started growing into the new skin -- no skin was hanging loose. The unpopped blister remained squishy and painful.
3. By like the 4th day, the popped blister was nothing more than slightly reddish skin with mild sensitivity. The unpopped blister was just starting to decrease in size.
4. I lose track of days here. (What, do you think I keep a journal of blister progress? Get a life!) So anyway, eventually the unpopped blister shrinks in size so that it disappears - but the skin where it was is dead and peels off.
5. At this point, it's looking like popping is the right way to go, eh?
6. Finally, a couple weeks later, the unpopped blister spot is completely, utterly, and even entirely healed. And - get this! - just this morning, the still reddish popped blister spot peeled! Can you believe it?

And the verdict is... If you can stand the feeling of the squishiness under the band-aid, leave it alone.

* In reference to my klutziness and running into furniture, during my sophomore year in college I was running across the apartment and ran into a chair. The leg of the chair and the middle toe of my right food collided at high speed, which instantaneously crushed my toe. I went to the campus doctor, and after he glanced down at my blackened and obviously newly shortened toe he said, "Yep, you broke it, there's nothing I can do about it." And so this poor little middle toe healed the way it was crushed, accordioned up with little fat rolls of excess skin around where there used to be bones that were now only fragments of bone compressed together in a new and unnatural union. Can you tell I'm milking this just a little bit? Really, though, my toe is shorter than it was. And it really is accordioned. And whenever my mom sees me barefoot she grabs my toe and yanks on it hoping to pull it back to its original length.