Day 14
It has been Two weeks now since the implant.
I have not once regretted it, during karate it has been a minor annoyance but after 13 years of karate I can deal with a minor injury.
So a fair number of people have asked me about side effects, I have suffered none, let me be clear on that. I will how ever attempt to list the possible side effects and talk about them a bit.
Immediate Risks1. INFECTION: If you do the procedure on your own, or if everything is not cleaned properly the risk of infection is very high. Make no mistake about it, you are putting a foreign object into your body, evolution has worked hard to make are bodys resistant to this. When this happens your body has been designed to fight it off, trying to break what ever it is down, and push it out of the body.
2. PAIN: It will hurt. I didn’t find it as painful as I thought it would be, but I have a high pain threshold. It will hurt for a few days, and then just be sore and sensitive for a week or so. The hardest part is after it heals, is to stop protecting it so much.
Long Term Side Effects and Risks
1. NERVE DAMAGE: It is possible if the procedure is done by someone who is unskilled, that they will inadvertently damage the nerves in the area near the implant. At this time nerve damage impermanent. How long that will remain the case has yet to be seen but I feel it wont be much longer till we master the technology to repair nerve damage.
2. BIORHYTHMS: My significant other mentioned that it might interfere with my natural biorhythms. Truth be told this had not crossed my mind, but as far as I can tell there is no evidence, in any written material that this will happen, I have also seen a lack of evidence in my own experiences. Perhaps there are some long term effects that are as of yet unknown, but such is the fate of early adapters.
3. MAGNETIC EFFECT ON HEMOGLOBIN: A friend who is a biology major mentioned this one, hemoglobin has iron in it. You may see where this is going but allow me anyways, since iron is effected by magnets, wouldn’t the magnet pull the hemoglobin to the side of the vein or artery closest to the magnet and thus cause a build up and eventually slow down circulation in that part of the body? Well if it was a strong enough magnet yes, but after some research we both feel confident in saying, that this magnetic implant is not strong enough. Any build up will be swept away as blood is pumped through the body. If one were to have dangerously low blood pressure and weak circulation, I could see this being a problem.
4. BREACH: It is possible that the human body will in time breach the bio-neutral silicon sheath. This was much more common in earlier implants, as the silicon sheath was not as strong as it is now, in the one I have the silicon is as strong as a car tire.
A brief overview of what happens when the sheath is breached:
Once the sheath is breached, the body eats away at the gold coating, and then quickly “eats” the iron out of the body. In a healthy person this will not cause any real harm. At this point the magnet becomes very brittle and should be removed, by some one with medical training, from the body before the infection gets too bad. Most likely not all of the magnet will be esaly removed and this is OK, it is not toxic. The goal is to remove the larger bits to diminish the infection, at this point antibiotics will probably be needed to help fight the infection. Since the magnet shattered the sense will be gone, but it being a magnet in time it is very likely that it will reform.
MRI’s
A MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) uses a very very strong magnetic field to take images. This means that it will rip the magnet out of a human body, the magnet will take the straitest path regardless of what is in the way, that means it will go through bone. If you get this implant MAKE SURE you make a note saying you have the implant and wrap it around your insurance card, consider getting a medical dog tag as well.
It has been two weeks since I got my implant, and not for one moment have I regretted it. It has become part of the way I interact with the world, I have learned so much about the technology I interact with on a daily basis. It has been great, now before people take this as my recommendation that they go out and get one, if you asked me yes or no, I would have to say yes do it. That said I urge caution, and I know it is hypocritical of me to say, but I say to wait and see how my implant goes.
