FlexNExT not reading - Excess liquid above it?

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The body artist who installed mine - someone very competent with decades of experience - dropped interesting tidbits of information as we were chatting. Things like “if you implant things here in your arm, I wouldn’t recommend it because some people who did ended up with intractable pain further up, because this or that nerve gets irritated” or “Implants of this or that shape in very fleshy bits have a chance to dive down and disappear in fat tissue”.

Obviously he knows his stuff, but here’s the thing: professionals in the alternative and somewhat shady world of body modifications know these things. But ordinary shmucks like us never get to find out because body artists typically don’t write reports about them.

In the ultra-stuffy medical world, everything is documented. Even a non-medical professional can find just about any information about any odd procedure and its outcome if they look hard enough. Other medical specialists in the same field are quickly made aware of something that happened to one of their colleague’s patients if they bother to stay abreast of things.

But body artists? Not so much: at best it’s word of mouth between them, or hearsay based on their patrons who report on their experience in their own non-professional words - and few of us outside of that little circle get to know the gems of information that would allow us to make an informed decision before visiting a body modification parlor.

Case in point: I chose my body artist solely based on my wacky piercer friend’s opinion of him, who told me “Yeah, that guy’s good!”. And after chatting with him some, I realized he was right - as my arm was open and his finger was inside it. As opposed to me gobbling up medical research papers before visiting a hospital and meeting a surgeon who I know isn’t allowed anywhere near a scalpel before going to medical school for many years and taking stringent exams. I can tell you, that ain’t me at all normally.

I’ll say this freely: the way the world of body modification operates doesn’t sit right with me. If I wasn’t forced to resort to body artists by unwilling doctors, I never would. I know most of them are competent and knowledgeable, and I’m glad I get to meet interesting “alternative lifestyle” people my 9-to-5 boring ass would never meet otherwise, but the entire profession is way too informal for me.

You say you knew what happens when this-or-that implant is implanted in the hand or in the arm, and it’s not early adopter stuff. Well, it’s not for you but it was for me and for most of us implantees here, because we didn’t know. And no amount of pre-visit research would have revealed that precious hidden body artist knowledge.

Do you see where I’m coming from?

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No inflammation markers and contaminants on the flex lead me to believe this is the cause. The type of contaminants are guar gums, soy, and other elements that will likely need to be worked on quite a lot by the body to break down when sitting in interstitial tissue. Encapsulation processes will be in play. Maybe the body is vacillating between trying to cover it up (encapsulation) and break it down. The only fluid buildup like this that I’ve ever seen have been the flex shipped with adhesive contaminants on them. All others have been ok, including the very large 38mm prototype VivoKey Flex Ones that went into myself and a few other people a very long time ago now.

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there is also the possibility that a sudden change in diet or stress can accelerate an allergic reaction.

a possible scenario could be that you had a very mild allergic reaction which was contained under the flex, inside your skin pocket.
A sudden change in conditions flared up a more aggressive reaction, which might have caused it to burst through your pocket.

Not the only option, but does make the most sense so far.

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They don’t, but the ones I met were very open with informations - I always had all possible (and impossible) questions answered.
Thing is, if you get an implant or anything special, you should have some baseline knowledge about anatomy - and that should lead to a lot of interesting questions on your side. I had a pre-install briefing with my artist, where he explained a lot of things to me and answered all questions I had - including risks of different placements, possible removal of the implant, side-effects, the anaesthetic and tools he was going to use etc. - I can say I was very well informed before he could stick his finger in me :wink:

I strongly disagree on that - the bodymod-network is strong and very talkative, so to say. Since it is a small industry, a lot of people, even internationally, know each other. There are regular meetings (well, not during this Covid-fuckup…) where there is a lot of exchange - in Germany, there is the annual BMXnet meeting with tons of courses and a lot of time to chat about experiences, in the US there are/were several events hosted by BME, and both are visited by tons of international artists.
Additionally, bodymod artists tend to travel a lot, and tend to learn a lot from other artists they work with - my artist worked in the UK for some time, learned from really great people in the US and France, and knows basically every “big name” in the industry. And all those people exchange informations a lot, so in a way a customer here in Germany can profit from an experience someone in the US made.
It’s far from being as “official” as in the medical scene, but the exchange is definitely there.

You know I don’t agree with you, and on that point most certainly never will :wink: But this very case of my hand is a perfect example - the docs at the hospital, who spend years of studying and practicing and whatever, made a possibly very dangerous decision (edema in a plaster…) and finally sent me away without helping me at all.
My artist helped me on the phone, shortly after, and he even called again last night to see how things were developing - he didn’t do anything wrong with the implant, so it wasn’t his responsibility at all, and he is currently not able to help me in taking the implant out because his studio is closed, but he is there and helps in all way he is able to. He’s got decades of experience with implants (on himself as well as on others^^), while the people at the hospital saw something like that for the first time - dunno why I should trust them more, just because they have a bigger “theoretical background”…

And to that one - it is not hidden at all :wink: You just have to ask… :slight_smile:
Adding to that, there are several big bodymod sites on the web, with forums and all that - this knowledge is hidden the same way like knowledge about implantable NFC chips :wink: You just have to look at the right place, and suddenly, a whole new world of information opens up.

So there were similar cases? I saw several cases with fluid buildup here, yep, but the stuff in my hand is definitely no fluid. I had that before, it was always on top of the implant, and it was soft and wobbly (unless it was really much fluid, of course). The buildup I experience is hard, and it is below the implant - I can still see and feel the implant directly under my skin.
My artist (who doesn’t know about that adhesive problem yet, I’ll ask him about that later) came to the conclusion that I might have made some bad movement, possibly while sleeping, and the rim has cut a bit into the pocket, creating an injury on the inside, in a way. This might lead to those symptoms as well - and should go away relatively fast. If it stays longer, it’s something else…

Stress is totally possible currently, but there was no change in diet. I have at least no known allergies, except for nickel, and especially I’m not (yet…) allergic to soy - if I was, I would have removed the flexy immedieately after the information with the adhesive came up :wink:

Oh, and a little update after the night (kept my arm elevated even while sleeping^^): Still looks and feels the same. sigh…

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Yeah but… That’s my point: you’re deep into that scene. You go to conventions, you know people. You entire post shows that much.

You know whom to ask. You know what to ask. I don’t :slight_smile: Well, perhaps a little now…

When a random dude like me who’s never set foot in a body modification parlor wants a big implant, where does he go for information? And for impartial, verified, reliable information at that? If you look things up on the internet having to do with body modification, you find all kinds of horrors, stupid stories and sensationalist shit. You don’t find nice writeups entitled “Implantation of a flat biocompatible implant atop digit extensors - a case study and long term followup”.

Hell, when I implanted my first glassie, I went to the first piercer in town because even for simple jobs like that, what you find on the internet can be rather useless and confusing if you’ve never approached that little world, and I ended up regretting it.

I’m not saying what body artists do isn’t cool, or even that they’re not trying to do their best and share the knowledge. I’m saying, for better or worse, you have to be a bit of an insider to know where you’re going, avoid problems, and know what to expect.

Well, there are always exceptions to the rule. Nobody said all doctors are great. Also, you probably met with a lowly doctor doing the ER shift, not with a brain surgeon in his cozy office.

EDIT: before anybody points out that not all ER doctors are shit, I know: some of my best fixups were done at the ER. Sometimes gems of a doctor work there. But oftentimes they’re too busy and not always terribly competent.

Is that a bicycle thing? :slight_smile:

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Yep, that’s the main thing… You say yourself that this “scene” isn’t something you feel really comfortable with (totally okay^^), and so I can understand that you don’t spend that much time diving around and separating all the stupid stuff you definitely find on the web from the good and valuable information - which is there as well, but less obvious :wink:
Adding to that, I know from many artists that most of their customers aren’t interested in all the background stuff. They want to get their piercing, their mod, whatever, and go out of the studio again, and everything’s fine. I tend to ask a lot more questions, and both my piercer and my bodmod artist were so happy about that! Finally, they had someone who wanted to know more, to understand better, and who just showed appreciation and interest to the work they did.
So if you visit a studio, it might just be that they think you’re one of the “usual” customers, coming there for a service, and not really wanting to know more than neccessary - because this is most often the case.
All those “inside” news and infos I get now, I get only because I asked a lot and was interested - and I’m very grateful for that. I am no bodymod-artist, and I just love to feel a tiny bit like a part of that world, just because I love it :slight_smile:

Yeah, was the first thing that came to my mind as well :smile:
But if you are interested in what happens there, take a look at their page - I’ve never been there, since it’s only for professionals, but I’m always quite impressed by the program :wink: Maybe it helps a bit to improve your trust towards the scene :wink:

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No no, I’m okay with it. It’s all groovy. It’s just that I look like a moped in a Harley convention whenever I meet those guys. It’s simply not my world: I go there because I need them, but it’s not my favorite hobby by a country mile, unlike you.

What I’m not comfortable with is the “enlightened amateur” approach to hacking into people’s body. It’s not formalized and documented enough for my taste. But that’s just me I guess.

Well, isn’t that a reasonable request? Most people who go to the doctor are only interested in getting better. They don’t care about the doc’s background and the latest medical research either. Like I said, for most people, it’s not their hobby. I hope body artists don’t take offense that most of their customers are only interested in the end result and not the process, because that seems natural to me.

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I could literally quote every single sentence of yours, @Coma, and just agree with…
So i’ll keep it short… :stuck_out_tongue:

It is indeed… and summarizes very well my whole experience with this matter.

Besides what you already mentioned… It is also very easy to spot a bad body-artist. Not so easy to spot a bad doctor.

Body artists are open to being questioned about what they will do. Most doctors scoff at you if you ask them something and, in my experience, most just treat you badly if they feel you know more than they do (which is not hard at all with GPs in UK. trust me, their education is absolutely worthless! I already got prescribed some outrageous stuff here)

But the most important for me is…

Actually that is what I like the most.
That is less pretentious. There’s more honesty. more room to accept you don’t know things and need to study more. Now… young doctors… then tend to believe they know better! and that is dangerous.

No matter what profession we are talking about, the best professionals are the ones passionate about what they do.
I seriously doubt you would ever find a body-artist who is not passionate about what they do…
And despite the fact that there are many good doctors out there… they are diluted into the many who only wish for money and prestige, and the other many that are forced into it because daddy is a doc.

And that worries me. (especially in UK, where doctors are notoriously heinous)

I was talking about knowing of the increased risks… and you knew that. you, and quite a few others, have posts here stating your distrust about placing a NExT on the back of your hands… and all of you had very valid reasons. That is knowledge.

Now, going back on-thread a bit…

An allergic reaction should probably be either improving or worsening by now… So I’m thinking there are a couple other things that could be the case…
Most notoriously, could be an Epidermoid Cyst, especially if it’s no longer warm, is still stiff, and is not receding.

The cause and symptoms would match, but the timings still seem off, though…

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I agree with you there :slight_smile:

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Nah, nobody is offended by that :wink:
It’s just a possible explanation why the tons of information might not seem as “available” as they actually are. Because nobody shares in-depth information that isn’t asked for, in a way…

That’s not really the approach I’ve seen on my artists (at least not the “enlightened” part^^) - but there are such people, of course. Hey, take a look at the program I linked up there, I’m really interested what you think about that :wink:

Out of the race - it’s still warm :stuck_out_tongue:

A sentence of my artist comes to my mind - he said that if you work in that job, at some point, something will inevitably go wrong (not matter if it’s your fault, the customers fault, a material problem or whatever). The important thing is, how you deal with it then, and that’s how you can tell a good bodymod artist from a bad one - reacting in the right way if something goes bad. I like that approach, and I rarely if ever saw it in the medicine field - few people there admit that they might do something wrong :wink:

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That looks surprisingly serious.

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That’s why I wanted to show it to you - there is a very professional approach to all that, at least from what I can see. And people really look forward to that, because there is a lot of exchange, tons of new things to learn, to improve, to get better in the job you do every day.
And of course, they give out certificates - so if I visit a studio here, I can see which courses the artist visited, how many years he already went there, all that, and I might just ask about what new stuff he learned or such.

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Here’s a bit of a buzzkill: whenever I scan the doNExT and it fails (not often, but typically with my locker’s camlock at work when it’s gone to sleep after hours), I feel a slight pang of worry now :frowning:

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Reading through this thread… am I hearing the FlexNExT and its iterations may not be as long lasting and durable as we once thought? :sob:

I’ll be buying & installing mine early next year, hopefully before my 20th birthday in March. So hopefully we’ve got the issues figured out by then. :crossed_fingers:t4:

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From Amal

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Yep :slight_smile: I saw. Feels like we’re in a movie… we building more and more tech to upgrade ourself. Next up; battle against evil grinders.

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Any better?

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Hello @Coma how is your hand doing today?
As my wife @ShaakPsi already said, i am also very sorry that you had such a idiot surgeon in hospital.
But from what i also heard you have a really excellent body modification artist and what he gave you as advice is the same what i would recommend you in this case

That is the reason why even i (as a surgeon) have sometimes more respect for all the awesome body modification artists out there.

In my opinion many surgeons could learn very much from body modification artists. But that’s a different story, and maybe i get back to this topic at a different thread.

Sure, one problem is also that i haven’t seen your hand with my own eyes, and i don’t know what the current status is, but i also think you would already have told the Forum members if there would be any improvement. A photo of how it looks like right now could be helpful. (Only if it’s okay for you)
Would it be also okay for you if i get some more questions about the current status of your hand together? This would help me to sort out other possibilities… Meanwhile i am reading through your posts that you had the past days and weeks to see if there might be a hint for what is happening to you.
But yes, one of the first things that came to my mind was also this…

… simply because one friend of mine (he is a DIY bodyhacker) had such a problem too a little while ago and had the same symptoms. (I just contacted him about how his implant is doing. As soon as he answers i report back…) To be clear : In his case it was no DT product, it was a other flex implant, but especially when i see your hand kinda small hand with this big implant it’s easily possible that you had a edge of the implant cutting into the pocket. Because you said that you had a strange feeling at night and woke up with this hand.
Even if the pocket is only injured a little bit, there could be **a lot ** of fluid inside (also under the implant) that has no exit point to get out of your hand, which can sometimes even cause this feeling of hardness that you mentioned.

Also another possibility (even after months!) is still the adhesive thing, because this is totally possible.

And even if you never had any allergic reactions before, sometimes such reactions can come out of nowhere.
(My wife mentioned that she saw one photo of your hand in another thread with some redness of the skin above the implant (?!) but she wasn’t able to find again. Could be a hint too if you had something like this not too long ago)
So this option is also in my mind still a possibility.

I will check back here later on (i waited some time with finishing my post if there is a response to Rosco’s question, sadly not, so i give my post a go now before i get back to the last few hours of work before my holidays)
Good wishes to you :slightly_smiling_face:

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I can relate to what you’re saying: by an unfortunate set of circumstances, the edge ot my implant ended up smack against the reverse side of the scar. It irritated the hell out of it for quite a long time. And when I had the edema, most of the fluid was concentrated in that area.

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Hey again - bascally, no, not really. It turned red over the implant itself, is still swollen and hurts a bit. Nothing unbearable, just pretty annoying, constant, low-level pain. At the suggestion of my artist, I visited my family doc here, and he was incredibly relaxed (which is what I really appreciate about him…): He said that an infection “from the inside” was totally possible, but relatively rare and not something to immediately worry about - he thought it might have been a little, unknown injury as well. His advice was to keep the arm up, hand calm, maybe put an ointment on it (or not) or take some homoeopathics (or not) or ibuprofen. So, basically he told me to do what I was already doing and keep an eye on it for a few more days. I was really surprised he didn’t advocate for instant removal, but he found the chip itself quite interesting - he just said that some docs are slightly annoyed by people who visit them because of “activities” they did. I told him that massive long-time smokers get treated, too, and he laughingly agreed :woman_shrugging:

First of all - thanks a ton for your very, very in-depth answer and all that! Totally grateful for that - it’s great to have a medical pro here :wink:

:relaxed: I do… he cares very good for me, at least as much as possible without having an open studio, currently :wink:

Sure!
These are two pictures I took this morning… like I said, it’s getting red since the second day of swelling, but other than that, not much change.

hand01
hand013024×4032 4.26 MB

hand02
hand023024×4032 4.25 MB

Another thing that might point to that problem is the fact that while the whole swollen area is slightly painful, there is this nice little red spot (I mean, darker red…) near my knife edge that just hurts a lot when I touch it… and if I touch the opposite side of the rim (which leads to the implant pushing on that red spot from the inside), it hurts pretty much as well.

Okay, I thought my body would have dealt with that after some months, so that’s definitely interesting! I have a nickel allergy that developed over time as well (from wearing a nickle-covered dog collar as a teen… stupid me…), so I know this could be possible, but I have some soy-based products in my diet and still tolerate them :wink: But even if there is no allergy, implanting glue might lead to problems, I get that :wink:

Yeah… but somehow, my hands (even the one where I did not implant a big chip…) tend to have some strange colours from time to time. Sometimes there are slight red spots, sometimes it’s more a bit blue-ish… since it’s that way since I can think of it, I decided to ignore it :wink:

Thanks a lot! For your time, your thoughts and your wishes, and as well to everyone else here - I’m surprised and honestly a bit touched by how caring this community is :slight_smile:

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