My ex-magnet

I’ve posted before about my magnet. I am here today to report to you that it is now an ex-magnet. It has kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

WARNING: This post is gross and features images of me sticking a scalpel in my finger/lots of blood.

I’d had the magnet for about a year, and generally very much enjoyed the experience. However, its positioning had shifted too much. Whereas once it sat deep in my finger next to the bone, it now sat near the surface. This meant that it caught on EVERYTHING. I touch anything ferrous, and my finger would momentarily stick to it. Super annoying. Plus, it almost sat proud of the finger. It was messing with my grip at the gym, and generally hampering my ability to carry large/heavy objects. So, it had to go.

In the tale of my NFC chip and DIY surgery, I talked about how I removed my own NFC chip and birth control implants because I’m a dumbass. In true Vic style, I continue to be a dumbass; I attempted to remove the magnet myself.

Now a finger is a little more sensitive than the webbing of the hand, or the meaty bit of an arm. But, the magnet was sat so close to the surface that I figured I’d give it a try. To the friend that took photos of the process/was on hand in case I needed help, thank you. I thought you were going to puke and/or pass out at one point, but you held strong.

As it turns out, the magnet was a lot harder to remove than the NFC chip. This is because the NFC is coated in glass, whereas the magnet is coated in some bio-compatible material. It had thus begun to meld with the flesh. It’s the price you pay for the sixth sense it had afforded me.

After some digging around in my finger, I made it to the magnet. This was difficult. It was surrounded by thick scar tissue. I took out a fair few nerves in the process, and can no longer feel 1/3 of my finger tip. The pain was on par with it going in, which is to say it hurt like hell compared to the NFC/birth control implant exorcisms. Swilling the incision out with surgical spirit to prevent infection is also not high up on my list of fun activities.

Plus, you know, magnetism.

Having to act against these forces made stuff a bit more difficult.

In the end, I couldn’t get the magnet out. It was too well stuck in there. I had to do the proverbial walk of shame and close it up best I could, then return to see the guy who had put it in. Thankfully he got the magnet out with ease, using a much stronger magnet to rip it out of the incision (smart). He commented that’d I’d done most of the leg work by getting through all the scar tissue, but I suspect he was just being nice.

RIP Vic’s magnet, summer 2018-2019. You were good fun.

I’ve had the realisation that I’m now 100% biological again. The metalwork in my leg is out, the magnet is gone, the NFC is gone, the birth control implant is gone. I’m not sure that such normality is for me. Give me a few weeks to get over the magnet removal and I’m sure I’ll be up for getting more dumb stuff done!