0 comment Friday, April 25, 2014 | admin
... but you need a razor blade, some tweezers and a dental tool to take the Colorado out of the boy.
Karen helped remove this little bit of Colorado granite from my elbow this weekend. I expect it was from this incident, and somehow avoided being excised at the quick-care cleaning. I started noticing something hard at the apex of one of my scars about a month ago. Like anything annoying that's noticeable and won't go away on it's own, sooner or later you are bound to do something about it. So we gathered what we had on hand (assorted dental and jewelry making tools, a razor blade, neosporin) and did some light surgery.
I could feel the hard object underneath the scar, and figured since it was through scar tissue, there wouldn't be too many nerves to fire off, or any important blood vessels in the way. With an aim to educate, here's my step by step procedure on how to remove an object from under your skin:
1) Scrub the area for at least 30 seconds with soap, rinse clean.
2) Sterilize your instruments, we used nail polish remover, then a rinse with water. Isopropyl will work too.
3) Get someone steady handed to make the incision. Karen is very skilled with small tools, having spent a lot of time making jewelry. She is also very stoic around bloody things, so I wasn't worried about squeamishness. The incision was about 1/8th of an inch long, just over the top of the area where the object could be felt.
4) Have something to dig around with, I used a dental scraper tool. Needle tool or sterilized paper clip can work too. I had to really get in there with the tool, but as soon as I did, the unmistakable clink clink sound of steel on stone was audible.
5) Dig out the foreign object. Once I got the point underneath the pebble, I just kept pulling up until we could see it and remove it from above. (there was a bit of puss surrounding it). This didn't hurt as much as you would think, probably because of the absence of nerves in the scar itself.
6) Disinfect. We used pain relieving triple antibiotic, aka neosporin. Everything seems to be healing up nicely.
So there you have it, quick and easy surgery for amateurs. And now I have another little memento from Colorado to remind me just how much fun it is out there.
Remember, clean your wounds thoroughly when you crash, although even the professionals seem to miss things sometimes.
Karen helped remove this little bit of Colorado granite from my elbow this weekend. I expect it was from this incident, and somehow avoided being excised at the quick-care cleaning. I started noticing something hard at the apex of one of my scars about a month ago. Like anything annoying that's noticeable and won't go away on it's own, sooner or later you are bound to do something about it. So we gathered what we had on hand (assorted dental and jewelry making tools, a razor blade, neosporin) and did some light surgery.
I could feel the hard object underneath the scar, and figured since it was through scar tissue, there wouldn't be too many nerves to fire off, or any important blood vessels in the way. With an aim to educate, here's my step by step procedure on how to remove an object from under your skin:
1) Scrub the area for at least 30 seconds with soap, rinse clean.
2) Sterilize your instruments, we used nail polish remover, then a rinse with water. Isopropyl will work too.
3) Get someone steady handed to make the incision. Karen is very skilled with small tools, having spent a lot of time making jewelry. She is also very stoic around bloody things, so I wasn't worried about squeamishness. The incision was about 1/8th of an inch long, just over the top of the area where the object could be felt.
4) Have something to dig around with, I used a dental scraper tool. Needle tool or sterilized paper clip can work too. I had to really get in there with the tool, but as soon as I did, the unmistakable clink clink sound of steel on stone was audible.
5) Dig out the foreign object. Once I got the point underneath the pebble, I just kept pulling up until we could see it and remove it from above. (there was a bit of puss surrounding it). This didn't hurt as much as you would think, probably because of the absence of nerves in the scar itself.
6) Disinfect. We used pain relieving triple antibiotic, aka neosporin. Everything seems to be healing up nicely.
So there you have it, quick and easy surgery for amateurs. And now I have another little memento from Colorado to remind me just how much fun it is out there.
Remember, clean your wounds thoroughly when you crash, although even the professionals seem to miss things sometimes.