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Mar. 10th, 2006 03:44 pmSome time ago ( more than ten years, less than sixteen) I was merrily hitting away at something with a hammer, when all of a sudden my left hand starts bleeding. Bleeding quite a lot, actually, and stinging to boot.
Naturally I assumed that a bit of thing being hit had broken loose and cut me. I had a bit of a poke at the wound and gave it an exploratory probing with a pointed thing. I couldn't see anything in the hole, but over the ensuing days came to suspect that there might be something lodged in there after all. The wound healed, complete with scar, which being on the web between thumb and forefinger, rubbed annoyiungly on things and became a callous. Life goes on.
Every now and again, over the years I have been tempted to have the matter looked into. Sometimes it would hurt for no reason, sometimes it would hurt because I squeezed it to see if it still felt like there was something in there.
Leaping forward to the almost present day, Tenbears becomes a brave and studly mowing guy. I developed a great many more callouses and the one in question became quite pronounced. And sore. It was in a bit that would have calloused up anyway because it rubs against the mower handle. Squeezing or poking of any kind produced a surprising amount of hurty, but the callous was now too solid to feel anything inside it.
So I took a sharp thing to it. I dug in quite a way, past the unfeeling callous to the soft pink bleedy tender part of the skin. No sign of any foreign objects. Back to Plan A (formulated over a decade ago) of having a doctor or someone x-ray it to establish once and for all if there really is a small piece of hammer (or being hammered thing) stuck in me. Naturally i couldn't go to a quack straight away, what with my hand showing clear evidence of home surgery and all, so I decided to wait until it was all healed and rescarred again. It healed and the problem went onto the back burner again, the way, way back burner.
Last night, however, it was particularly sore. Squeezing made it even sorer. Ouch! Most importantly, though, under strongish light I thought I could make out a tiny dark spot nestled in the centre of the transluscent scar tissue. I decided to go in again.
I got a clean new scalpel blade from the tin ( a No. 26, in case you were wondering), a tissue to tidy the mess up with, checked my e-mail and lj then got down to it.
I was worried the the dark point might just be a blood spot left over from my last attempt, but when I reached it there was quite a solid feel to it. In fact the point of the blade made a noticable metal on metal sound when poking at it. I tried putting the point of the scalpel under it to lever it out but nothing happened.
At this point, some readers might be thinking "isn't this one of those things you're not supposed to try at home?" or maybe "did you wash your hands first?". Both good points.
In gardening, people often have trouble digging trees out because they start the hole too close to the tree. A hole for digging things out of needs to be big enough to manouver in. So i dug a little deeper and a little wider. I could get the scalpel blade under the top of the metal splinter, but I still couldn't lever it out. Giving the area a good squeeze made the splinter more visible but as soon as I stopped squeezing to pick up the scalpel it would recede again. I don't like asking for help, so I was on the verge of going out to the shed to get a clamp. I decided to give it one last squeeze before widening the hole again.
Out popped the splinter, AND IT WAS FUCKING HUGE!!!! It wasn't actually a splinter at all it was a CHUNK OF METAL. Maybe it was the euphoria of a job well done, or possibly the result of blood loss, but my arm felt noticable lighter. I trimmed the ragged edges of the hole and went to show the Noodles my trophy.
=====
Surgery at Home with Tenbears - Your Questions Answered
Yes, it hurt a bit, but not as much as i was expecting.
No, I didn't take any photos of the proceedure.
Yes, I am keeping the chunk. It is currently taped to back of a business card, tacked to my wall. I will build a display cabinet for it after Festival.
Yes,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
splodgenoodles was very proud of me.
No, I was sober.
Naturally I assumed that a bit of thing being hit had broken loose and cut me. I had a bit of a poke at the wound and gave it an exploratory probing with a pointed thing. I couldn't see anything in the hole, but over the ensuing days came to suspect that there might be something lodged in there after all. The wound healed, complete with scar, which being on the web between thumb and forefinger, rubbed annoyiungly on things and became a callous. Life goes on.
Every now and again, over the years I have been tempted to have the matter looked into. Sometimes it would hurt for no reason, sometimes it would hurt because I squeezed it to see if it still felt like there was something in there.
Leaping forward to the almost present day, Tenbears becomes a brave and studly mowing guy. I developed a great many more callouses and the one in question became quite pronounced. And sore. It was in a bit that would have calloused up anyway because it rubs against the mower handle. Squeezing or poking of any kind produced a surprising amount of hurty, but the callous was now too solid to feel anything inside it.
So I took a sharp thing to it. I dug in quite a way, past the unfeeling callous to the soft pink bleedy tender part of the skin. No sign of any foreign objects. Back to Plan A (formulated over a decade ago) of having a doctor or someone x-ray it to establish once and for all if there really is a small piece of hammer (or being hammered thing) stuck in me. Naturally i couldn't go to a quack straight away, what with my hand showing clear evidence of home surgery and all, so I decided to wait until it was all healed and rescarred again. It healed and the problem went onto the back burner again, the way, way back burner.
Last night, however, it was particularly sore. Squeezing made it even sorer. Ouch! Most importantly, though, under strongish light I thought I could make out a tiny dark spot nestled in the centre of the transluscent scar tissue. I decided to go in again.
I got a clean new scalpel blade from the tin ( a No. 26, in case you were wondering), a tissue to tidy the mess up with, checked my e-mail and lj then got down to it.
I was worried the the dark point might just be a blood spot left over from my last attempt, but when I reached it there was quite a solid feel to it. In fact the point of the blade made a noticable metal on metal sound when poking at it. I tried putting the point of the scalpel under it to lever it out but nothing happened.
At this point, some readers might be thinking "isn't this one of those things you're not supposed to try at home?" or maybe "did you wash your hands first?". Both good points.
In gardening, people often have trouble digging trees out because they start the hole too close to the tree. A hole for digging things out of needs to be big enough to manouver in. So i dug a little deeper and a little wider. I could get the scalpel blade under the top of the metal splinter, but I still couldn't lever it out. Giving the area a good squeeze made the splinter more visible but as soon as I stopped squeezing to pick up the scalpel it would recede again. I don't like asking for help, so I was on the verge of going out to the shed to get a clamp. I decided to give it one last squeeze before widening the hole again.
Out popped the splinter, AND IT WAS FUCKING HUGE!!!! It wasn't actually a splinter at all it was a CHUNK OF METAL. Maybe it was the euphoria of a job well done, or possibly the result of blood loss, but my arm felt noticable lighter. I trimmed the ragged edges of the hole and went to show the Noodles my trophy.
=====
Surgery at Home with Tenbears - Your Questions Answered
Yes, it hurt a bit, but not as much as i was expecting.
No, I didn't take any photos of the proceedure.
Yes, I am keeping the chunk. It is currently taped to back of a business card, tacked to my wall. I will build a display cabinet for it after Festival.
Yes,
splodgenoodles was very proud of me.No, I was sober.
