When it comes to tissue healing, imagine the edges of a pocket made under the skin… it’s a bit like unzipping tissue, separating the two parts as you go. When healing begins, it sort of zips itself back together in a way… the closer, less damaged areas gain ground first and faster, pulling the skin back together with the muscle tissue under it… which in turn gets the next millimeter of skin closer and healing pushes in on the implant. This is what happens with x-series that are injected. The healing process pushes the capsule back toward the injection site, sometimes over half the length of the injection depth!
So, when it comes to healing around a larger object like a flexNExT or silicone implant, healing is happening all around the object, pushing in on all sides. Silicone is an elastomer with plenty of mobility, and it will simply bind up, getting a little more dense and creating a little more pressure against which the healing tissue will fight until it hits equilibrium and sort itself out… but with a flex there is no mobility. The advancing edges of healing tissue will bump right up against that edge and it won’t move. A “softer edge” won’t really help all that much, simply because the material isn’t going anywhere either way.
What will happen though is after healing calms down and the endocrine system’s signals to rapidly heal and repair die down, the tissue will relax around the implant and settle in nicely. This can take a long time though, as it did for my vivokey flex prototype in my left arm. Two years after installation, if my kids grabbed my wrist overtop of the implant and put any kind of twisting motion on the skin I would get that pinching sensation followed by dull pain… but that slowly went away and now someone can give me a good twist on my wrist and it will slide around with my skin… no bite.
I do think though that if you do give it some “stretching” like what you’re both doing now, it won’t take quite as long to settle… hopefully.
Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t know all the details, but I figured my skin was trying to fill up as much space as possible. It feels as tight as a nun’s ass: even if I pull slightly on it at elbow level, I can feel the dull pain around the implant on my wrist.
At least it did: with the massaging, it feels a lot less tight, and it bites a lot less.
I’m really not worried about that, or the funny hue over the implant. I’m fairly sure it’ll settle over time. The body always has a knack for accommodating just about everything. I have titanium in my knee that’s quite happily married with whatever’s left of the bone in there to prove it. It too took a while to find a home there.
I’m still concerned about funk attacks and rashes. It hasn’t returned since the other day, but then it hadn’t returned for quite some time before that. I’m still wondering what causes that out of the blue. But then, I’m getting quite blase with that too: after the n-th time, you just don’t worry about it all that much no more.
I just love your metaphors - they always make me smile. I’m a very visual person
This is really a good thing - I still hope your implant will stay calm finally, but it is also good to see that you are quite calm about that. It’s annoying and worriesome, but I think / hope that the periods between “funk attacks and rashes” will become longer and longer, until it is finally all done.
And @amal - thanks for the explanation, I didn’t think about the difference in mobility between a silicone- and a biopoly-implant, but this makes some sense to me. The only way to cause pain in my silicone implant is when I carry something heavy (=tendons tense) while additionally resting it on my wrist. Sadly, this is something stupid me does frequently…
After much massaging, the doNExT almost never bites anymore, and the darker hue seems to be almost completely gone. The collagen seems to have fully vacated the center hole once more:
Looks great again! Keep my fingers crossed that it’ll stay that way
And I’m slightly jealous of your scar - mine is still pretty red and quite visible. Ah, I’m not complaining - if I scar visibly, it might help with my other mods…^^
Can I just mention your arms are weirdly/impressively straight?
I don’t mean it as an insult or anything, it just takes me a second to figure out which side is which which is mildly amusing
The doNExT doesn’t seem to like the cold: I spent an hour shoveling snow off my driveway yesterday - which I do in a T-shirt because it’s quite a workout - and it hurt terribly. Today I got a flat on my way to work and spent 10 minutes mending the tire outside of the bike, and it hurt terribly.
Even after I get back into a warm environment, it keeps hurting for a couple hours afterwards: the skin on my arm goes super tight and stiff, and the entire area around the implant feels like a tight corset or something. Really quite uncomfortable. No point in massaging it then, it’s too tender to touch.
It certainly isn’t an implant-and-forget thing I’m really surprised by how long an adaptation time my body needs with that one. But it’s you’re patient enough, it can be worth it.
The biggest upside for me? I can browse any catalog of NFC-enabled device and be certain something will work with at least one of my implants.
Well it hurts deep in my arm and all the way around the implant, down to my hand. It’s not just over the implant. It’s a sort of dull, deep pain. It really feels like it’s too tight everywhere.
If it was a thermal conductivity issue, I’d expect the patch of skin directly above the implant to be affected and nothing else.
