DESCRIPTION:
UPDATE NOV 2017 This was fun, but after two years the coating of the magnet eroded off, and I used an exacto knife to remove it.
- If your magnet area has gone blackened, get it removed. (I chilled my hand with ice for 20 mins, then did two cuts in a V shape, lifted the flap, and carefully cut above and below the magnet to free it.
- If you do that, take care not to damage the magnet, because I'm told it can break into fragments. Mine came out fine in one piece, bled a bit (cleaning it well), I washed it, put elastoplast on, and it is comfy and okay now, the day after.
- Beware SHOCK. Your body will be traumatized even though there is no pain. Expect abdominal 'grip' inside, and tendency to faint. To beat the faint, I exerted all my major body muscles strongly, which 'pulled me out of the fainting dive'. I slept well after, feel good today.
- If your implant has blackened, that apparently means the covering has come off and the neodymium is polluting your body. If you can't face cutting yourself, get a friend or a doctor to do it.
----------------------------------- Original description of the implanting
- Today my friend, John Abraham, agreed to surgically implant a tiny, but powerful magnet into my left ring finger, to enable me to pick up things like dropped nails, or to detect whether electrical equipment is 'live'.
- Although the Imla local anaesthetic I'd ordered online didn't work at all, I successfully used ice instead to numb the area.
- To do that, I scraped ice off the freezer int a bowl. Then tipped the fine ice shavings into a ziplock bag, and put the entire finger into that for about 15 minutes until it went entirely numb.
- For extra avoidance of pain, I also put a rubbery tourniquet around my wrist about where my watch goes, also for about 15 minutes.
- The result was very good: Absolutely numb finger (I couldn't even tell whether John was cutting or not. Utterly dead. And almost zero bleeding too, because of the ice and the tourniquet.
- The tourniquet made my wrist ache unpleasantly, but I was quite okay with that. As soon as the op was over, that ache changed to a pleasant tingling and normal warm feeling.
- At this time of writing the only questions are whether the magnet will get infected or somehow work it's way out.
- I've bound the end of the puncture pretty firmly and it feels as if there's no injury, so it seems 'happy)
- I did sterilize the magnet a bit in the fluid provided, but our imperfect sterilization of the tiny wooden poker for pushing in the magnet might start an infection. I very much doubt it, as (a) I've had countless very dirty splinters while renovating my house and they never get infected (b) the wound bled copiously afterwards, cleaning the wound. Blood is deadly to bacteria.
- I'll report back if anything goes wrong or if it's working fine in about mid-May after healing.