We’ve all been there – we’ve all gotten a piece of something, whether it was wood, glass, sand, even hair, stuck under our skin randomly, and tried endlessly with tweezers and pins to dig it out. After 45 minutes of digging, it’s still in there. What to do?
After a crazy night of drinking and dancing with my friends, my feet were in a crazy amount of pain. I figured it was due to the shoes I wore that night, causing blisters, but after I inspected my foot a little closer, I realized that I also had a splinter!
It was the tiniest piece of glass. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. I wanted this thing out, NOW. Though it seemed almost invisible, it was causing me so much discomfort! How can something so tiny be so annoying… Hmm…
Here’s what I did to fix it:
Baking soda
I made a paste by taking about a tsp of baking soda and adding several drops of water to it. I dipped a cotton ball into the paste, and added a few more drops if water to the cotton ball to dampen it a bit. You want the cotton ball to be wet, but not so wet that it’s dripping with water.
Apply the cotton ball to the area with the splinter
I put the cotton ball onto the area where I could feel the splinter, and taped it down with some medical tape. You can use whatever you have to help keep the cotton ball in place, like a bandaid or regular tape.
The moisture from the cotton ball helps plump up the skin and help “push” the foreign object out a bit. The baking soda (I find) helps slough off some off the dead and rough layers of skin, which in turn helps you target the splinter and get it out easier.
Check after 30 mins
After about 30 minutes, remove the cotton ball. Using your fingers, apply some pressure around the area of the splinter, kind of like trying to pop a pimple. Pay attention to see if the splinter pops out a bit, enough for you to pull it out with a pair of tweezers. If not, apply a few more drops of water to the cotton ball (if needed), and tape it back down and check again in 30 mins.
Once you get the splinter out, make sure to wash off any leftover baking soda and to clean the area with some alcohol or hydrogen peroxide.
And that’s it! I was able to get the teeny tiny glass shard out in about 30 mins, without having to rip apart my skin and digging into it. The glass was about 1 millimeter thick and 3 millimeters long. TINYYYY! I had to make sure I was in the right light to see light reflecting off of it.