I have several projects in the hopper, so the beginning of my adventure has started with the install. I’ll post about it before detailing any projects.
Important information about me, I have a severe needle phobia. This isn’t an “Ewww, needles are gross”. This is full on fetal position with cold sweats medical phobia stemming from a severe car accident when I was 14 resulting in over 100 facial stitches and some minor dental reconstructive surgery. It’s not uncommon for me to use phlebotomists as vomit target practice, but I’ve gotten better over the years.
I show up and tell the piercer I’m terrified, but very excited. So he gives me some time and we bullshit for a while. He’s extremely interested in the tech and had been doing a lot of research since I spoke to him and wants to become a partner when his studio reopens post covid. I hand him the NeXT kit to get setup, and he comments on the impressive professionalism of DT as everything he needs is included. He gets everything sketched out on my hand and his communication is amazing.
I meditate for about a minute and give him the nod. Breath in, breath out, POP. Slight sting, but the intense burning sensation was definitely uncomfortable. I remember thinking it was worse than described on this forum, but not as bad as I feared. Implant is done in about 15 seconds. Feeling a bit nauseous but not bad. And then the phobia has the delayed effect. Blood pressure plummets and my hands start shaking uncontrollably. Piercer places a hand on my chest for support and hands me a bottle of water. I try to drink but my hands are spilling it all over me. I’m frustrated and keep telling myself it’s over, calm down. I break out in a cold sweat, literally dripping off of my face. Took a solid couple of minutes to stop shaking, but my fingers are tingling so he has me hang out a bit until I’m OK to drive. So I take the opportunity to flash the NFC chip with a YouTube link to Mr Roboto and have him test it. Success.
Made it home and everything is fine. No bruising, but some minor swelling. 2 days later, and a tad bit of tenderness around the implant. Proxmark rdv2 reads and programs fine with good positioning. My desire for more implants is still strong, but I don’t know if I can physically take it. Piercer had great bedside manner, so I tipped him 30% for dealing with me. I don’t regret getting it done, but I’m disappointed a magic mifare or spark 2 install are just not in the cards.
But the projects have already begun and will be posted to that category.
wow, that sounds like a wild experience! welcome to the club, and congratulations on doing the install despite your phobia. your piercer sounds like an awesome person.
The piercer was amazing. I didn’t trust anyone in my home town as the most they’ve done is ear gauging. I talked to some work friends, and one of my coworkers has a wife heavily into body mods and has sub dermal facial implants. She hooked me up with her installer. 2 hours drive, but well worth it.
Big respect for getting that done! Must be an amazing feeling that you really did it, that you crossed the border of your comfortzone (don’t know any better wording, I can only imagine how hard that must have been) and made it back alive
First off, great description of your experience. Welcome to the club
If the installer used the chlorhexidine then the burning was the chlorhex being pulled in by the needle… the burning means it’s working!
This is a classic vasovagel reaction… even though I’m not nervous about implants and often do my own little at home surgeries sometimes, I get this reaction about 1 out of 4 times… the nausea, light hotheadedness, and profuse sweating … it’s a built-in reaction. It’s not helped by phobia, but it isn’t directly related to it either. I think knowing that this reaction is autonomic and not necessarily something you can calm your way out of helps understand it and simply be prepared for it.
In contrast, here’s how phobia related reactions go down… my wife was definitely afraid of needles and we had my family doctor install. He first came in with some numbing lidocaine because all doctors love injecting lidocaine, even though the pain from that is about the same as installing the implant… but anyway… she was nervous and not breathing properly for about 5 minutes before he came in the room… then he stands there about 60 seconds carefully explaining what he’s doing, all the while she’s so tense she’s basically not breathing… we didn’t notice this of course, and as soon as he put the needle in and started injecting, stress triggers adrenaline but with basically not enough oxygen in her blood she basically makes this snoring sound and passes straight out… falls off the little doctor exam table and everything. She was only out for 5 seconds … then she had to wake up and get back up on the table and get the actual implant installed hah. We laid her down on her back for that and the install was over and done in seconds… but yeah, no sweating, no nausea, no indications… just out. It’s significantly different.
Oh also, I did have one guy pass out on me as well from stress. This was phobia related too as we did the install, but then about 30 seconds after he decided he really didn’t want anything in his body and wanted it out asap… basically panicking. I didn’t have the tools for that but I said I could maybe probably work it out manually… so I grab his hand and start kneading the skin to try to get it to come out. The whole time he’s getting more and more agitated until finally I look at him and his eyes roll back and he starts going down… I grab him by his arm and others rush to catch him. We just hold him there for what felt like an eternity but must have been only about 10 seconds. He slowly recovers and we lay him down and he’s fine… didn’t get the chip out though. Anyway, again no indications… just a stress reaction and then straight out.
Thanks Amal. That’s great information and makes me feel better about how things went down. It did feel different from past stressed induced reactions I’ve had to things like having several vials of blood drawn or getting my tattoo. While terrified, I was relatively calm, especially after he gave me the minute to center myself before stabbing. It was strange how it came on post procedure and I couldn’t breathe it away as I can normally close my eyes and focus on my breathing to get through phobia induced reactions. The hand shaking was very similar to what happens to my diabetic father when his sugar is way out of wack. I did eat before starting the 2 hours drive, so I’m leaning towards a drop in blood pressure rather than a drop in blood sugar.
Watching the plethora of videos online of installs go so smoothly with a “that’s it?” response gave me a false sense of what to expect. Especially convention install videos. Maybe my experience will help others with expectations and what to be prepared for. But even with my condition, I’m glad I did it and would recommend the procedure to anyone that is considering it. Coming from the biggest wimp with needles, it’s not that bad. Bee sting followed by intense burning(apparently the santizing wipes according to Amal). The burning was FAR worse than the sting.
yeah this part is not common for vasovagel reactions… but it is common for adrenaline response… so it was probably stress from thinking you were stressed haha
Same here actually, mine was delayed enough times that I had a little too much time to think and freak myself out.
I’ve seen it described as like drawing blood but id say it’s maybe 1.5 to 2 times that overall.
I love my implants and am waiting for the pandemic to die down to get more. I’m also not a fan of pain. It’s funny, I’ve had chronic back pain for years and it still gets me. I can do most needles fine, but if I’m doing a self install, you better believe I’m gonna numb myself lol! I’ve done a few without, and numbing just makes it so much easier to do it on yourself. Now, local laws apply, but I made a thread on store bought lido that might help.
To all that pain-related stuff - for me, I realised that it depends a lot on my mindset. I absolutely love all my bodymods. Tattoos, lots of piercings, microdermals, subdermals, everything’s fine. I know it hurts, I expect the pain, and I can absolutely enjoy it all because I am in a safe environment with people I trust completely.
Now, when I go to a dentist… I shake, I sweat, I die a thousand deaths, panicking around - and that although they put a whole lot of (potentially) numbing stuff inside me. Doesn’t really help, just because my mindset is so incredibly different. And though I know it, I can’t change it the least bit.
So I guess it doesn’t help that much to research how painful something is for a different person - your own experience might, and most certainly will, be very different
Actually the alcohol evaporates (dries) but chlorhexidine molecules do not, they are what’s left after the alcohol evaporates away. This is why chlorhexidine continues working up to 30 minutes after treatment on skin.
For me, the pain was not a contributing factor at all. I didn’t even say ouch. I flinched a bit, thought to myself “Damn, this burns. This sucks way more than those BD swinging cyborgs on the forum led me to believe.” And it was over about 10 seconds after. I was kind of prepared for it because I asked him if the pain from the puncture was worse than making the channel, and he said it was about the same, which I think was pretty accurate. Honestly, I don’t think any numbing agent would have helped.
The worst part of the procedure (ignoring how my body responded post procedure) was when he told me to breathe in, then out. There was a 1 second delay when I was breathing out and he didn’t poke immediately. That 1 second felt like an eternity. After it was over, my immediate thought was “That sucked but it wasn’t terrible”. 30 seconds later when I was mentally celebrating, and my hands start twitching like they were jiggling a locked door knob. I’m sure the installer didn’t appreciate keeping the gauze on the wound during this.
In my friend group, I’m known as the adrenaline junkie. In reality, I’m not. It’s just that every time I’ve gone through something that had me terrified, I’ve always been extremely grateful that I went through with it. So I rarely ever say “no” to an adventure.
I bought my first implant last week. I did a self-install on Sunday (much to my wife’s dismay) because the certified company next to me was temporarily closed due to Covid-19. I struggled with it a lot more than I thought I would. I’ve never sweat so much from pure fear and panic. I was shaking all over and had to take a few breaks to just breathe and calm myself down. Getting the tip of the needle hurt a lot more than I expected from everything I’d heard, but I couldn’t feel anything once the tip was in.
It was way scarier than I thought doing it myself and I’d probably have the patience to wait several weeks for an appointment with a body piercer close to me if I was doing it again and I had to wait. I don’t regret it though. If nothing else, I’m really glad I was able to see it through to the end and now I have an awesome implant I can use
Have had it a few times. Blood pressure dropped, I vomited during my Flex install. A kids carton of juice later (the piercer kept it on hand in a fridge behind the reception desk) and I was ok after getting my blood sugars up a bit.
I got it after a self-implantation at home, my helpers bailed on me to vomit, i was there with a big xG3 needle in my arm self-implanting, and once it was over I got it covered, i had my stomach drop and the urge to vomit (but nothing occurred). Laid down for a while, had a drink of water and was okay.
thanks, looking to self install myself, and was originally going to do it with no anesthetic. I now realise that the pain would probably distract me from focusing on doing it properly and calmly.
definitely, if you went the professional route id say don’t bother (and that’s coming from someone who used to have a big phobia of needles (I’m actually about to post about that)) But our bodies are self preservatives creatures and it makes it a lot harder to do on ourselves if we can feel it.
The only times I have ever been able to pierce my own ears or septum was during times of high adrenaline, other than that I could never without numbing.
