Day 9: feeling is fully restored over 3/4th of the implant, with one sector still numb (opposite the scar line, strangely enough).
How long did it take for other flexNExT wearers?
With the flexNExT, not very long - Iād say maybe two weeks? On my silicone implant, it was much longer, about a month or maybe even two, and Iām honestly not sure if it is completely restored yet. I can feel touch and all, but it might be a little less than on other areas of my wrist. But itās surprisingly hard to tellā¦
Day 10: the stitches are out. I probably pulled them out too early, but the skin was getting very red and irritated all around the scar line, and the stitches were starting to embed themselves into the skin.
Fortunately, I put some strips across it 30 minutes after the removal, and that seems to have stopped the skin from tearing itself apart. Itās separated maybe 1 mm between the strips, and itās not really dry in the middle. But the redness seems to be going away slowly. Hopefully itās just irritation and not an infectionā¦
Uh ohā¦ Non-negligible fluid buildup over the implant now. Wtf?
I imagine that you irritated the area. Personally I would pressure wrap it to keep the fluid buildup down and take some Ibuprofen.
Way ahead of you there 
I had those things at the ready in my backpack.
I donāt think itās anything the piercer did (he removed the stitches). But maybe it has something to do with my resuming cycling yesterday. Maybe it was too early. Sports gets your blood pressure up real good.
Itās not a massive fluid buildup. The skin has lifted 3 mm maybe. So perhaps itās been there since yesterday. I only noticed now because the middle bit that had reconnected through the center hole of the doNExT suddenly went pop. When it did, I looked at my forearm and it was slightly convex instead of slightly concave. The touch feeling over the implant has vanished too.
Oh well. Itās wrapped up like a Christmas present. Weāll see what happens.
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Had that very same problem - my body tends to hate the stitches before it decides to let the skin stick together -.- Got them taken out after about 14 days and wore strips for another full week, because the wound didnāt seem to be closed. After that, everything was fine.
And to the fluid buildup, that might really be because of the cycling. I still have a slight fluid buildup when I worked a lot with my hands, this goes away after less than a day, but it happens everytime I do too much, until now.
The swelling has gone right down - but Iām keeping the compression bandage on for now.
Yeah the cycling might have done it. Cuz ya know, it went without a hitch for 9 days, and now thisā¦ Iām a bit miffed actually. Thing is, 9 days without cycling is hard on me: I sleep less well and I feel restless when I donāt go out and spend some energy. Not to mention, winter is coming fast, and now is my chance to enjoy the last nice sunny days of the season.
So yeah, I probably should stay put, but I just canāt.
The wound is probably closed: whatever tiny seepage there is in the middle will scab over tonight. But youāre right: Iāll keep the strips for a while. Better safe than sorry.
Is the fluid buildup likely to continue or only during the healing process?
Iām pretty sure if it continues, itās not normal
I released the compression bandage to take a closer look at things, and I might have found the source of the redness - and possibly the fluid buildup:
When rotate my wrist, the doNExT slides ever so slightly right and left under my skin because it follows the radius and ulna more than the stretchy skin above does. When I supinate my hand as far as itāll go (palm up), the implant slides towards the radius and its edge bites the skin right at the edge of the drop around the bone. The skin is intact there, so no problem.
But when I pronate my hand all the way (palm down), the implant slides towards the ulna and its edge ends up biting the skin exactly under the wound. In fact, it slides just past it now
I think my installer made the pocket just large enough to slide the doNExT in and stitch the wound closed without poking the implant with the needle while my wrist was stationary on the armrest. But as soon as he was done and I started moving about, the implant started moving right and left and carving its own space, and the ulna-side edge started scraping against the underside of the wound and the stitches.
Iām thinking removing the stitches ended up releasing fluid into the pocket somehow - since the scar is now slightly over the pocket. Iām not big on anatomy, so maybe itās nonsense. But it seems like a reasonable explanation.
Anyhow, my wrist is now back to its original flat self. Iāll keep the bandage at low compression during the day and pop ibuprofene for a few more days to make sure it stays that way. As for the wound, it seems closed up and dry now. Still quite pink in hue, but nothing unhealthy-looking.
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Hmm, something quite odd is definitely going onā¦ I can feel some kind of hard āknotā between the implant and the skin near one edge of the implant today. I thought I was feeling one of the blinkies, but itās not over a blinky. Itās really quite hard, maybe 1/2" x 1/4" in size, but absolutely not painful. It almost feels like old scar tissue, but itās nowhere near the entry point. And I canāt remember feeling the implant ever biting there.
Hmmā¦
On the plus side, my arm has almost returned to its normal color, and the blinkies are getting brighter and yellower. So I guess most of the blood has vacated the area.
ā¦and itās started to turn again 
Definatly sounds like you damaged the healing with the cycling
Somethingās happened for sure. Itās going downhill a bit nowā¦
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I can understand now why you were wanting the anti migration coating.
Iām pretty sure I wouldnāt want conformal coating on a huge surface like the flexNExT, even if it was possible on a flexible device - which I doubt. I mean itās great on a small glass capsule, but imagine the butchery to get a properly encased silver eagle-sized implant out of you
Out of curiosity though, Amal, do you think a small tab of parylene over and under the implant, on the edge, would do anything to lock it in place?
I imagine getting it out will not be fun no matter what. In my mind, if you have one of these removed anyways, it will be a process.
I am not sure how the skin heals around the implant itself, but I can only imagine it creates a scar tissue pocket. If you remove the implant only, where will fluid go? I feel it would cause issues to pull out the implant and not do anything to all the scar tissue remaining. Leaving like a pocket that doesnāt heal up internally holding fluids. I would imagine that the skin internally needs to be scuffed up in some sort to heal back normally.
Long winded way to say I think it wouldnāt make a difference in the end I feel. Having one removed will suck in my opinion.
I imagine people who implant big-ass cosmetic subdermals under their skin such as Coma and leave them in for years would have noticed if the skin has been messed up to the extent of not repairing itself upon removal, and would have posted about it on bodymod forums. But Iāve never read anything like that. Still, I aināt no specialist: maybe it does get pretty messed up.
Hey that is a good point. I have not looked to far into this as those are bigger implants than I am comfortable with.
I would love to see what Coma and anyone else has to say on the matter. I am genuinely curious about removals like that.
Basically nothing sticks to our biopolymerā¦ itās like Teflon, even though it contains no PTFE. I still think the only way to make this work would be to put offset holes, change the shape, or leave tabs in the shape of the outer or in your case, the inner circumference. Still, none of these guarantee it stop rotating when sitting in a fluid bathā¦ not unless the entire shape is radically different from a circle.
Check out Tim Cannonās journey with the Circadiaā¦
Unfortunately I canāt find the one image Iām looking for - after removal. Basically it looks like any skin that has been inflated then deflatedā¦ itās wrinkly like an old deflated balloonā¦ but it is attachedā¦ just maybe a bit looser because of all the excess skin for the given surface area.