Don’t ever shards of glass in skin will come out on their own
Accidentally, you tip a glass off the counter, and it falls to the floor. It shatters into a million pieces, scattering just about everywhere. You clean it up the best you can, but miss some tiny shards. Later, when walking barefoot, a small fragment enters your foot. You try removing it, but you can’t see it. You leave it alone, hoping it will work itself out, but it doesn’t. It just keeps going deeper.
It happened to me two years ago, and believe it or not, I still have the sad shard of glass in my foot. Broken glass can quickly penetrate the skin, leaving no detectable point of entry or inflammation landmarks. Your skin heals and seals in the glass. The only thing you’ll feel is pain, discomfort, and misery. Your problems have just started.
Glass moves deeper into your skin as you walk. You must remove it ASAP. Don’t think a shard of glass will work itself out, a common mistake many people do, and even your doctor might tell you that
My story
After realizing a broken glass would not come out on its own, I began soaking my feet in hot water and salt. This is a good idea because hot water relaxes and expands your skin and tissues while the salt gently pulls foreign objects out due to its hypertonic action (since salt has a greater concentration of solutes). However, this only works if you act immediately after the incident; if you let a few days go by, it will not work.
I did this for weeks with no luck. The shards of glass in skin and became sealed. You might be able to poke holes with a sterile needle creating a way for the shard to come out. However, some may not want to do that for some apparent reasons.
I went to a doctor, and they looked at my feet for a moment and then ordered tests. So I went to 5 different doctors. I had multiple X-rays, ultrasound scans, MRI, CAT scans, and none of them could locate the shard.
I even had a session with a highly specialized high-frequency transducer hockey stick puck ultrasound. This fancy machine might work in some cases and can detect broken glass better than your average doctor’s office ultrasound.
This may help you, but good luck finding a doctor who even knows what a high transducer is. I happened to be lucky to work with a doctor who knew someone who did. Unfortunately, I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area, a center for innovative medical technology, and it was challenging to find one here.
None of the doctors I visited were able to find a definite landmark leading to surgery. Doctors will not perform surgery unless they can locate the shard, and I don’t blame them. If you get them to agree to exploratory surgery, you might end up with more damage to your skin tissue. Surgery can cause damage and produce scar tissue; broken glass in your feet can do the same.
If you have shards of glass in the skin of your foot for a long time, the glass might not even be there anymore. This is what a doctor told me, but I am not sure if I believe that.
Your body has ways to assimilate glass after a few years. So why do I still feel the broken glass inside? It happens due to scar tissue produced by the shard injury. Scar tissue can feel exactly like a piece of broken glass. However, the funny thing is that once you realize that, it feels less painful when you step or walk — there is a psychological component to pain.
After a few weeks inside your foot, a shard of broken glass is perceived as a foreign body encased by scar tissue. But your body is so efficient at isolating the glass it aggressively makes a rigid and robust capsule. Unfortunately, sometimes it is so big and complex it presses against nerves, creating nerve inflammation. So you feel like you’re stepping on a hard lump, and it can cause significant discomfort.
Here is what you do first after stepping on a glass
If is in your hands you’re lucky. You can see it and access better. The foot will require someone to help you. Unfortunately, the foot is always more at risk.Broken glass in your foot may never be found or removed. The good news is that you might not need to remove it after all. You’ll live with it in a painless state…or almost, depending on how the glass is lodge.
Trick #1 — remove it as soon as you can
If you step in a piece of glass, remove it as soon as you can. Then, get sterile tweezers or a needle and dig, dig, dig until you remove it. Remove a large part of your skin if you need, but make sure the shard is out.
Soak it with hot water and salt for 20 min every day until you feel the glass is out. Don’t let a lot of time elapse, thinking that it will come out on its own. The deeper the glass goes in, the more difficult or impossible it will be to remove it and the more chances of affecting a nerve.
The more you walk, the worse it will be. This is a mistake I made; walking is like a perfect mechanism to make the glass travel deeper inside your foot.
Trick #2 — soaking in hot water
Say you could not remove it with the tweezers or needle. Soaking in hot water at this point will help your body push the shard out. Use table salt because it creates the hypertonic solution you need. You can also add Epson salts because it further relaxes your tissues, but Epson salts alone will not work. Do it every day for 20 minutes. You can get it at drugstores or online for a large selection of foot massage basins. The massage vibration is fundamental because it loses up the tiny shards out of your foot.
Trick #3 — use suction
The bottle trick. This is one I wished I had known at the beginning. First, heat a small bottle, such as a medicine or condiment bottle, that has a small opening. Clean your skin where the shard is, but leave a little moisture to help with the sealing. Next, heat the bottle on the stove, but be careful that the flames don’t crack the glass. Once the bottle is hot to the touch, press the opening with force against the area where the glass might be. As the bottle begins to cool, it will produce pressure and suction, hopefully pulling foreign objects out of your skin. It could work in some cases.
Trick #4 — remove by thick tar
Apply Ichthammol Ointment 20% (Drawing Salve) 1oz Tube (28.3g). This is an old fashion medication. A thick black tarry substance that will pull things out of your skin. Just going to warn you — this is a nasty tar that is difficult to clean and very thick and sticks to your skin. Apply to your skin and leave it for a significant amount of time. It also helps if you soak your feet in hot water prior to applying.
Trick #5 — remove by using glue
Crazy glue to the rescue. If you ever have a drop of crazy glue between your fingers and end up with one finger stuck to the other, you know the power of this glue. They don’t call it crazy glue for anything. This will work if the shard of glass is somewhat protruding out of your feet but not enough to be grabbed or seen. Apply crazy glue to a small area where the shard is, wait until it dries (3 seconds), and peel it off. You might have to pull part of your skin out, but hopefully, the shard will be in there with the skin.
You’ve tried everything, and nothing works
There is a moment when you realize you’re never going to remove the piece of glass. Don’t panic; there are still things you can do. Your objective now should shift not to remove but to smooth out your scar tissue because that is what is causing you pain. You’ll have to learn to live with your scar tissue the best you can. Later on, that might include using thick socks and learning how to walk in a way that minimizes your discomfort.
Cortisone injection
If you can’t remove the glass and painful scar tissue has formed, there is only one thing you can do — inject cortisone directly into the scar tissue. Cortisone will dissolve or alter the shape of your scar tissue. But this is not as simple a straightforward process as it may seem. Applying the injection requires a special technique that I found out by trial and error, and you might need to work that out with your doctor until you get results.
The injection needs to be placed inside the scar tissue. You would think doctors know about this detail, but they might not. This is why my first two injections failed to work. The scar tissue is usually very small. You need to locate the exact spot, and this might be a challenge.
If you are about to perform an injection, you need to massage the area, feel the painful lumpy place, and make a mark with a hypodermic pen.
A good idea is to soak your feet in the foot soaker massager for 20 minutes with warm water. After doing so, you’ll be able to feel the lump with ease. Locating it is the key here.
Then, you instruct your doctor to apply the injection from the bottom up directly into the scar tissue. Some doctors might want to approach from the side of the foot, and that may not work.
What to expect
If you miss the spot there is no pain and just a numb sensation that lasts a few hours. After that, it will feel like nothing changed. You walk and the pain is still there, so you might think these injections are good for nothing.
If your injection is spot on to the scar tissue, it is a whole different ball game. You’ll feel a lot of pain, and the pain will last for about 3 days. That is good news. Because once the pain subsides you’ll be a new person. 80% (in my case) of the pain and discomfort will be gone.
But wait, there’s more…
After a successful injection of cortisone, you need to work a little. Scar tissue is complex and edgy and needs to be brushed out of the nerve structures. So, you need to manually make sure that things get better aligned between your nerves.
Soaking and massage
I strongly urge you to get an electric soaker with vibration. Some magic happens when you apply vibration, and it helps break down scar tissue. I soak in hot water for
Twenty minutes every day, and then massage it with arnica oil. This oil has great nerve-healing medicinal properties and is also used for diabetic nerve pain. Another excellent product is Dr. Christopher’s Formula Complete Tissue and Bone Ointment. Massage the area vigorously with any of these products for a few minutes and every day after warm water. Dr Christopher’s Formula Complete Tissue and Bone Ointment, 4 Ounce
Massage cream
When I say massage, it is far from the traditional pleasure of having a massage. After soaking in hot water (warm), apply arnica oil or Dr. Christopher’s ointment and start by trying to feel where the lump is. Start pushing vigorously with your thumb as if you are trying to straighten or simply disperse the lump. It might hurt, but each time you do, you’ll notice it gets less painful. Do it until there is no pain, or you simply don’t feel the lump anymore.
After 2 years of suffering from a shard of glass on my foot, I finally found some relief. I never thought a small shard of glass could cause so much trouble. The best way to prevent this from happening is to not step on a shard of glass in the first place.
Other Considerations
Doctor’s office or ER
Health care is all about specialty. Most family practitioners don’t know enough about this type of injury, which can be quite serious and is sometimes underestimated by family doctors. Care for this type of injury is very specialized, so look for a doctor who has experience with this type of injury.
If you can’t find one, you might be better off going to an emergency room. Nurses and doctors in ER’s are much more familiarized with shards of glass in skin injury as they see it all the time.
Shards of glass in the skin do not travel to other areas.
One big fear people have is that a broken glass piece will move inside the body, go to different areas, and eventually get into the bloodstream—that does not happen due to the fast and effective formation of scar tissue.
The real danger is the actual injury glass can cause, especially if it is big. It can cause severe damage to your nerves and tendons, but if the shard is very small, it just gets covered with scar tissue and stops about 0.5 cm from the surface of your skin.
One last thing — if you break glass, clean up the floor with a wet towel. Let me know if these tips were helpful. Feel free to ask any questions and leave a comment. If you have any tips that can be added to this list send them my way. It could help other people with the same problem as you. Thank you!
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Image credit: Charli Lopez
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