Edema in a cast… Jesus H. Christ on a rotisserie spit. Really Bad Idea™: something goes wrong and you can’t see it happening.
Okay so at least you ain’t got no inflammation. And your implant is still in. Good news!
I’d suggest doing what I did some weeks ago: take a few days off and stay lying down until it all clears.
That’s a shame, but not unexpected, sometimes drs can be the worst people to deal with
I really hope it calms down soon! That does not look at all comfortable.
I would love to know what caused this though… so if you do get it removed (and I hope that never has to happen), please please please keep it as others have said - preferably mostly intact / undamaged (might be a consideration if the removal is in… less than perfect conditions).
Wishing you and your implant good luck!
Good Luck!! 
Wish you the best! 
Did you do anything exhaustive with your hand or hit it somewhere last night?
At least that.
But I doubt they would risk anything to keep it in you (and not so sure you would want it right now)…
Heal first so you can experiment again later. 
Most likely, it did help, yes…
a dermal anchor space not only helps secure the implant. but it also improves circulation and re-absorption of liquid.
On regular haworths or microdermals, adding holes over large surfaces has exactly that behaviour as the desired effect.
That can happen to an overly flat implant in bad cases. Most likely the skin in the center might not have popped, but just bloated more because it was reabsorbing liquid.
If there was trauma then it’s very possible it actually popped, though…
The two main causes here might be a bad healing process, aided by a sudden dietary change… or trauma. Given the location of @anon3825968’s implant I would bet on trauma (you have no idea how many times we hit our wrists on things and don’t even register).
This action, though, is probably what helped the most.
Not only for clearing the edema, but it also helps dry out… and mostly reduces mechanical stress over the implant area. By keeping a member elevated we also tend to stop using it, which reduces movement, which reduces internal micro movements from the implant under the skin, which allow for a better healing.
I would say @anon3825968 got 3 factors in his favour, in this order imho:
To be honest, I’m not fully convinced a flat disc shape on the back of the hand could ever settle 100%.
The haworths we see on the back of hands all have shapes which raise and lower the skin around it… leveraging multiple anchor points. and that actually helps them to stabilise, even if the total area is bigger than the NExT.
I’m pretty sure what triggered the fluid buildup was my resuming cycling. Elevated blood pressure probably did it. I had quit riding for a week after the implant job, but I was getting restless. So I commuted to work by bike, and it happened quickly afterwards.
And then all kinds of hell broke loose 
The edema was the least of my problems, since I took care of it promptly. But it’s all in the past now - knock on wood.
Yeah, this does sound like the villain to me!
For an implant that big I would recommend at least 2-3 weeks of topic rest, + a full month without strenuous physical activity…
I wonder if a dermal anchor could still be made with a “regular” FlexNExT (one that still utilizes both chips of the NExT)
Not sure how much excess space could be cut out of the flex, if any at all, without removing the chips or blinkies.
Even the blinkies go on top of other solid parts of it…
Maybe Amal comes with a clever Idea, but I can’t see much difference unless it’s as @anon3825968 went.
Also, despite me thinking that the dermal anchor helps a lot for a healthy implant in this case… I still see his case as a triad of factors.
I also wanted a FlexNExT on the back of my hand for flash… but I gave up on that Idea exactly because it is a place with far too many unstable variables…
Not saying it won’t work. It sure can!
I mean… even hand webbing piercings have been registered that healed properly!
But then…, if a nipple piercing takes 6m to 1yr to heal… a hand webbing takes 1-2 years…
it has a lot less blood/glands/stuff pierced, yet takes far longer… just because we move/bump our hands far too much! now immagine something right on top of of the tendons?
I mean… I am all up for experimenting with placements, but we’ll only get a clear picture of the hand placement for NExT’s after 1-1.5 years of people with them there…
First of all, @Coma glad to hear that you
I’m also happy you keep us updated. I’m very interested in this type of topics because I’m planning on getting myself a custom flexNExT implant with LED, so everything what happens here might be useful for my future implant, and especially for the possible implant locations…
Most definitely he was!!! Sorry to hear that this guy just confirmed what you already said somewhere else. The problem is that most surgeons (especially in Germany) are acting like idiots when it comes to topics like such implants… I know that because my husband is
surgeon (most definitely not one of the idiots 
) but I know how hard he is trying already for years now to close the gap between his surgeon friends and his DIY bodyhacking friends. The past months he was busy working on different self development things and in his clinic (within the next days he is just about to start his annual holidays) so he had no time to visit the forum here, but I always keep him updated what he’s missing. I told him about what happened to you, and he has a idea what might caused your strange implant reaction. He said that he will write something to this topic very soon. (Hope you still want to hear a surgeons opinion, after all what happened today… But trust me, my husband is a different type of surgeon 
he is really more similar to all the people here in this awesome forum)
Until then, the best advice is really
Take good care of your hand! Best wishes for a speedy recovery. 
The idea you’re circling around is: do you want to be an early adopter or not?
If you want to know exactly where you’re going, you’ll have to wait for other people to play guinea pigs. If you don’t want to wait, you’re the guinea pig.
Normally I’m not an early adopter. But in the case of the doNExT, I figured I’d give it a shot. So far so good I guess, but the road has been rocky. Now if you want the same sort of implant at the same location, you know what to expect.
Not exactly.
I mean, you do have a point:
Ultimately, these are Dangerous Things. We Know that, despite that we also have @amal’s superb support and customer service, and a whole wonderful community around us.
I that sense I’m all up for being an early adopter…
But one thing is to do something for the sake of doing it (i.e. implanting a magnet on my forehead, or testing out is a 5mm needle can pocket a 10mm implant, etc…)
Yet another thing is to do something which, for my particular use-case, has a huge chance of going wrong.
Then it’s no longer a question about “do I want to be an early adopter?”… and it becomes “do I really want this thing exactly in that place? enough to go through a risky and lengthy process?”
It’s like implanting a magnet on the palm of my hand.
The way I see it:
Implanting a VivoKey = Early Adopter risks
Implanting a Flex NExT on the hand = Experimental and bold risk.
When we implanted ours, we knew nothing of the risks. Or rather, we knew there might be stuff that could go wrong, but we didn’t know what - and we hoped for the best.
You’re seeing implanting the flexNExT as risky now because some of us experienced early failure, and some of us experienced (and still experience) difficult healing. This is not early adopter or experimental stuff anymore: you know the risks because others did the guinea pig work. If I was in your place, I’d be asking myself searching questions too before whipping out the ole credit card.
Nothing coming out now (placement-wise) that I hadn’t previously guessed from my body-artist experience.
(if you search around the forum you’ll find many times I mentioned these risks before the first issue popped up)
anyway, previously I was only explaining my statements.
As I said, you do have a point.
The connection failures (assuming that’s the issue) are a risk associated to the “early adopter” stage.
But the way the body responds to it, such as inflammation and fluid buildup, just as much as the manifold increased risks for mechanical trauma… those are risks associated to the placement choice.
I can’t place those in the same category of early adoption issues.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have it on your hand. of course you can!
But then it’s a choice of battling far higher rejection risk than if you go for the arm placement.
And that choice is what I said that has nothing to do with being an early adopter.
I think its important that we remember how much damage we are actually causing by putting things like this in and from the get go this is all very experimental
I like to remind myself of that, if it isn’t for people like us we can never hope things like this will go mainstream.
I don’t know the regulations there but maybe the installer would/could either do a video call consult or meet up for an emergency consult in person since the doctors weren’t very useful???
No, really - nothing at all, at least nothing I noticed. Maybe something happened without me noticing it, dunno…
Yes please! I’m still pretty much just guessing what might have caused it, any advice is totally appreciated! And though this one special surgeon I met was an idiot, I don’t tend to generalize - I know lots of them are friendly and helpful, and I’m glad they do their jobs!
This is true. I knew it was risky to implant it on the back of the hand, I knew it was maybe a bit too large to ever be really comfortable, I knew it wasn’t 100% sterile (which didn’t matter at all, obviously), I knew the chip could fail after some time.
To be honest, my first implant (Haworth silicone) just went sooo smooth and easy, that I underestimated the differences between those types of implants.
Still, this can either go bad or good, and I will have made that experience and get to know my body another bit better, no matter what way it finally goes.
Of course I will be sad if I have to take it out finally, but… seeing the experiences here, I kinda got used to the thought that I won’t keep that baby forever, simply because it might ultimately fail. This is sad, but still - at least I tried.
We had a lengthy phone call, pretty much directly after I got out of the hospital, and he was a lot more helpful than the doctors
He took a lot of time for that, asked tons of questions, gave some good advice (like cooling, keeping it up and calm and bandaged, taking some ibuprofen), calmed me down a lot and told me to keep an eye on it for a few more days - if anything goes worse, or if it doesn’t get a lot better until saturday, he said I should visit my usual doc (who is at least a bit more open-minded and knows me well). He didn’t say I was all fine and safe, because that would just be irresponsible without seeing my hand personally, but since there were no inflammation markers in my blood, I might not be in immediate danger
Dunno what happens if my standard doc decides not to do anything… I like the idea of an emergency consult, but it’s a two-hour-drive (one direction), so I’m not sure if my artist would do that - let alone the fact that my home environment is far from being sterile or professional
Current status of my hand: still swollen, slightly but annoyingly painful, maybe a tiny bit better than this morning. Curious on how it will be after the night…
That is a wonderful way to face it.
Might sound cliche but… what really matters is the journey!! and yours is of such beauty that even such bumps can still be cherished.
This is some good news… but sure open up question to wtf could that bloating be…
Obviously not related, but yet one more kick of the dead horse why I never want a lithium battery underneath my skin… I would be constantly paranoid the battery was swelling
So I’m currently planning a standard flex payment implant for the top of my hand L3
Should I rethink that with possible flexing failures or do you think the regular flex have a good enough track record
Speaking from a body-artist point of view… a standard Flex should be ok.
The pocket necessary might be big, but still quite ok even without any dermal hooks.
Also, placing it directly above one of the metacarpals should provide it with enough of a resting bed to lay over, reducing the mechanical stress.
I just recommend to follow on top of a metacarpal, not across them.
All that said… I did design my flex (which is bigger than a regular flex) placement on top of a metacarpal.
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and I almost forgot to say it:
Just don’t forget that these are all Dangerous Things!
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