Road rash - treating and minimizing scars

[Susie Derkins]

Last weekend I crashed pretty hard in the bike leg of a tri, and got some major road rash:

I also have it down my right leg.

I was taken off the course to the ER, since it was a pretty bad fall, and there was a lot of gravel in the wounds. Since then, I've been keeping it covered with dressings, covering it with triple antibiotic ointment, and changing dressings daily. Last night we tried Tegamet clear dressings on a few of the small ones, just because the huge bulk of the dressings was making me feel like an invalid. Tegamet works ok, but doesn't stay in a lot of spots (shoulders, knees, ankles, etc). So question 1 is, how do you usually treat road rash?

and 2, since a few of my really shallow ones are at this point, what do you do to keep scabs soft (I simply couldn't cover every single spot, so I have a few scabs), and to prevent scarring? Any suggestions are appreciated - having so much of it is brutal.