I am guilty for spending hours in bed with my laptop. And pretty often, I fall asleep with my laptop on my bed. Usually, the computer will go into standby mode after 30 minutes of inactivity. When I woke up this morning, I was shocked to see this huge blister on my hand:

I was puzzled…where did this blister come from? It didn’t look like a spider bite.  It didn’t look like any of the crazy skin reactions I get when I’m allergic to something. It looked like a burn…but I didn’t remember burning myself.  I reached over to my laptop to update my Twitter feed with a Twitpic (of course!)

I went to my doctors’ office, and confirmed that it was indeed a 2nd 3rd degree burn. I was told to lance the fluid when the swelling got too intense, slather it often in ointment, and keep it covered. It was so oozy that I went through a box of my Band-aids at home within 2 hours. So I headed to Sam’s Club for a bulk box of Band-aids.In doing more research, I found out that burns and fires from overheated computers are quite common. Particularly from laptops in bed. High functioning processors can clock heats as high as 170 degrees F (80* C). That’s enough to cause a burn!

Moral of the story? Don’t sleep with a laptop, no matter how tempting it might be. You’ll just be burned in the morning.