Good age to start implanting?
Hi, I'm really interested in biohacking, particularly magnet implants, but I wasn't sure that implanting at my age (15) would be such a good idea. Anyone got any insight for a good age to start? whenever you stop growing? Thanks!
Tagged:
Comments
The thing is younger people tend to underestimate the risks, also often they don't really care (thinks I heard from younger people are for example: "I pierced myself with (not sterile) safety pins multiple times and there never was an infection, so it's fine").
If you have professional implanters in your country please go to them - if possible. In some countries they want(/need) agreement of your parents, so they should be on board (but even then some might say no cause of moral reasons). In other countries (as others already told) it might be illegal.
If you're really going to do this on your own read as much as you can about the anatomy of the fingers (especially the finger tips, finding infos about them is sometimes hard) as well as hygienic informations (how to do a surgical hand disinfection, what's the difference between sterilizing and disinfection, how to prevent cross contamination and so on).
If you never worked with the skin before it might be a good idea to try the whole procedure (except the final insertion of the implant) at another part of your body with no digital nerves, arteries or vines nearby and where you wouldn't matter that much about scarring issues. This is just to give you a feeling for the skin and the tissue below (after all you have to separate the skin from the rest, going not deep enough will cause rejection, going to deep could cause rejection, excessive bleeding and/or serious nerve damage). The skin thickness differs from person to person and even from body part to body part, so don't think you can just copy the test procedure at another body part 1:1 to your fingertips.
If you know some: Talk with piercers, tattoo artists and medic students (better not with doctors/professors, most likely they will call you crazy and won't give you any information).
Also make sure there's somebody with you over the whole procedure. At best one of your parents but a friend you're _really_ trusting with this would be fine, too. That person should at best have the same level of information as you have + be trained on first aid, cause when you pass-out he will have to stabilize you, decide to abort or finish the procedure (aborting most likely, except the magnet is already in and just has to be pushed a bit to reach its final position) and call emergency help when you won't wake up in around 10 minutes.
If you plan to use Lidocaine for pain management (which, if legally available, you should - else the pain will get horrible and, if you're not trained to work which such high pain levels (which I doubt looking at your age), will most likely stop you from finishing the procedure) also make sure to use a low-risk method (the two-injection method has a risk of piercing the digital nerves or damaging capilars) - if you need more info on that send me a PM as I'm currently planning my implants and already found the best (but also most unknown) method; I tried it yesterday (without implanting, just to see how it works out) and not only was it simple but also completely pain-free (pushing two needles in the webs of your fingers close to your digital nerves will hurt much more).
My general 2 cents: get some tattoos and piercings before moving on to implants. That would be a good litmus test for anyone's capacity for pain tolerance, as well as their ability to effectively heal these sorts of wounds. If one cannot get a tattoo or piercing for whatever reason, perhaps such as age, then don't.
Also, this community has a robust culture of transparency and sharing of information, experiments, success and failures. It strikes me as going against that, as well as being extremely disrespectful, unethical, and again questionably legal to claim to know a secret process without divulging it. Let alone offering to share it privately with a minor. (Who just implicated a family member in performing a questionably legal medical procedure, I should add.)