Since I dont want to make a ton of separate posts, I’m going to include everything I need to get out here.
So I actually ended up getting 8 in the mail because when I ordered the first 4, USPS lost track of them. Thankfully mdanger was amazing enough to just resend the order. So I now have two copy’s of the xEM, xNT, xLED, and Spark 2. I even offered to send them back if they did arrive and she said just keep them. I was taken back by this but hell what a deal!
Anyways I decided to do the procedures myself. I was pretty loose about the whole process. As I am with many things. I still made sure to the best of my ability that I had a sterile environment and toolset. I have some experience in piercing and body modification. I have tattooed almost my entire right arm myself (I’m left handed), my legs, hell even tattooed my face myself (not something I’m proud of and in the process of removing, don’t drink like I did). So I took all my regular safety precautions and then some.
I tried to get some assistance from my fiancee to no avail, she was scared to look at the needle as it sat in the package. Nonetheless I proceeded and decided based off a YouTube video that a spring clamp inside a nitrile gloves should suffice to tent the skin. This proved useless and really only got in the way, but I still used it as I had no other way to tent the skin.
First one I put in was the Spark 2. Overwhelmed by the needle gauge I took a few hits of my CBD pen and put on my headphones. I attempted to draw out where I wanted it but I felt for me it was better to just eyeball as I usually do. In my defence this normally plays out well for me but I think just because I had not done anything like this before and because of the stress of the situation I botched the location a little ( the spark 2 is indicated by the 1 in the included picture). The end that comes out the injector first ended up being a little to close to bone. It’s not touching, there still a couple of millimeters between the spark and the bone. Hoping over time this sorts itself out. Overall happy with this. I’ve set up my vivokey account and I look forward to sharing my new business card with people who have known me for years simply because they absolutely need to know I have this inside of me lol.
Second was the xNT. This procedure went flawlessly. So flawlessly in fact I have no words for the procedure. you can find another post about an implant process and read that, it turned out perfectly for me. As of now I cannot decide what I really want the xNT to do. I’ve been toying around with NFCTools. I’ve had it toggle my phone’s flash, connect to my Bluetooth earbuds, etc. Not sure what I’m going to settle on or if I’m going to settle. I’ll happily take suggestions on this! Remember I also have another xNT to put in so even more room to do something with that as well.
Third but not last, is the xLED. Holy Hell what a trip that was. I got cold chills when I saw the needle. I placed around my room for a good 30 minutes jamming some tunes to try and get pumped up. More CBD, cold water on my face, nothing. Nothing could have prepared me for that enough. And boy o boy did I butcher this one. This went terribly to be honest. I again tented the skin with my makeshift helping hand. I flipped my wrist backwards and above my head so that the weight of the clamp pulled the skin down. This actually worked better than the other ways I tried, where the clamp was just sitting in various positions with my hand flat on the table. I managed to get the bevel into the skin. I had a couple of millimeters of the needle (behind the bevel) in, this is when I started to notice blood pooling inside the injector. I was not sure if this is common but it didn’t look good. I managed to keep my cool but I had to make a choice. My brain was saying to just pull it all out. But I figured, hell I’m already in, why not try to get this to work. So I ended up jamming the needle in just a tiny bit more, injected the chip, then pulled the injector out. The chip was sitting about 1/4 the way out of the skin. Still persistent I took some sterile gauze and attempted to shove it the rest of the way in. This was not ideal, but it did work. Barely. As shown in the picture (labeled 2) the edge of xLED has gone in and actually shifted in the opposite direction I had injected it in, going closer to the webbing of my hand. But just barely. I’m sure if I bump it the wrong way before it heals, the skin could pull back enough and the xLED could slide out. Because of this I’m currently using liquid bandage to cover the wound. On top of this, the best next thing to sutures I could think of was the following:
1.Placed a dot of CA glue on one side of the injection
site.
2.inserted the ends of two small pieces of thread into
the dot of CA glue and allowed to dry.
3. Placed another dot of glue on the opposite end of
the injection site.
4. Pulling the string under tension, I placed them into
the second dot of glue allowed them to dry.
The above process is not perfect, as when your skin is not under tension, neither are the threads, no matter how hard you tried to keep them in tension when applying them. Though they regain tension when the skin does as well.
Overall I have learned a lot from this and plan on resolving a lot of the issues I had when installing the next 5. Thank you all for being there:) thanks for reading, any advice or criticism is welcome!
