The stitches came out yesterday on my back flexEM install, and the (slight) swelling is gone. Now I’m touching this thing and I can feel it as if I was touching it through the pastic baggie it came in: I can feel all the features on its surface very well. And when I fold the skin around the edge, it sticks out very visibly and the skin forms a thin white edge.
My installer specifically told me he had “installed it as close to the surface as possible to prevent migration in the fat of my back”. Well he sure wasn’t kidding: It really is very close. It’s fine and all, but I’m wondering if you can install an implant so shallow that it will get rejected at some point, or something else would make it inviable there in the long-term. I doubt my body would manage to eject something as large as a flexEM without some major skin drama, but I’m curious all the same.
I can feel my spark, xsiid, and the NeXT like that. I cannot feel the others as easy.
I wouldnt worry about it being too close to the surface, unless the skin starts turning black. Your installer had a front row view to ensure they put it under the correct layer… Assuming they did.
When I make a fist, or drive, or anything of that sort, all my chips in my hand turn my skin white.
Yes, you can.
Pressure would be my guess. If it is continually being pushed out and irritating you.
It is still kind of blue over the implant, but slowly returning to normal skin color. It’s only been less than 2 weeks after all, and the implant has been quite busy biting me in the first few days.
He most certainly had a better view than I did back there - or indeed ever will
I trust him to do the job right. I ain’t worried or nothing. The implant seems fine. I was just in awe at how close to the surface it seems to be, and curious to know if you can overdo it, is all.
It is being compressed between me and whatever I happen to be sitting or lying down on for many hours a day. But it’s low pressure, and it doesn’t seem to have any adverse effect. Although I guess only time will tell.
That is a different kind of pressure wound. I am meaning like one direction pushing out and away from your center mass.
like anything, it can be overdone. Yeah, it still baffles me when I see some peoples pacemaker implants. Those are like a bar of soap under some peoples skin.
@Backpackingvet has covered it pretty well, but since the skin is fully covering it (there is no wound) and the device itself is seated well without producing any kind of tension on the skin above it (like alien trying to break out of that guy’s chest), then basically the biggest impact will be blood flow to the area.
Blood flow can be impacted due to severed capillaries (the device is now resting between the skin above and the tissue below where it used to get its blood from). Now blood must take the long route around the device using pathways not generally taken which will provide much less flow to the affected area until angiogenesis can resolve the issue. This may be why you are still seeing a “blue” color above the implant… the skin is probably not exactly getting enough blood flow yet.
Of course, blood flow can be impacted and even stopped by internal tension from the device pushing on the skin from underneath, internal pressure from inflammation, or external pressure from compression or acute tension.
I reckon you got that spot on. The blue area was exactly the shape of the implant disc a few days ago, and now it’s like a splotchy thing in the middle, with some normal skin whiteness “gnawing” at the edges. I figure you’re right: the blood vessels are growing inwards there.
Also, it could have taken a bit longer to heal, what with the implant biting right and left as I tossed and turned in bed. Amazing how fast that little implant taught me to turn left to puke
And well, I might not have such great healing powers these days. Although my hands are fine.
