please stay safe anons. source: https://selfharm.pics/t/22326 -------- Okay, i’m really getting tired of writting paragraphs in comments of every person, no, i’m not tired of helping, but generally i’m busy. Instead i hope this community links this post to anyone who has no knowledge of self-care or just how dangerous this coping mechanism is. This is for cuts, i will make more guides on how to care for burns and other sorts of well-known self harm methods. this is the ultimate guide on how to care for self-harm cuts:- Alright, let’s first start off with basic care surface cuts/epidermis cuts aka “cat scratches:- First things first, everything must be sterilized, your tools, the scissors to cut bandages, your self-harm tool, the place where you’ll self harm. Wash your hands good with antiseptic soap or non-fragmented soap. • Make sure the tools you use are clean and sterile from any bacteria, rust, or any debris. Clean it with disinfectants or non-fragmanted soap. If metal, you could use a lighter. (don’t ever use any tool you may suspect is not fully sterile, dispose of tools after 3 or 4 uses) • Disinfect the area you want to cut and after you inflict it with rubbing alcohol (it burns!) , antiseptic iodine, or any antiseptic solutions or antiseptic soap/non-fragmented soap • depending on how deep you cut and where there are different types of bandages and gauze. always bandage and cover your wounds to prevent infection, debris or bacteria getting into it. • for small surfice cuts, just clean with distilled water, or saline soltuion, spray/swipe it with rubbing alcohol/antiseptic solution then slap a Band-aid 70 on it. If you want to be extra, you can apply antibiotic cream/ointment. It takes about a few days or a week to heal. Don’t scrap off the blood clot/scab or itch it! It will reopen the wound and healing process has to start again. Just leave it. All is well. Once you start itching it means the cut is almost healed. Still, don’t mess with it. note: Do not pick your scabs! They are an important part of the healing process, you’re basically ripping off the shield your blood clots made to protect you from mucky bacteria getting in. Now for deeper cuts into the second layer of the skin; the dermis aka “Styro”:- • Same steps as the first- clean your tools, clean your area of skin and your hands with antiseptic/non-fragment soap • After cutting you need to clean it with distilled water or saline solution, disinfect it rubbing alcohol spray or iodine, or antiseptic solutions available, apply antibiotic ointment or cream on it. • NEVER USE NAPKINS/TOILET PAPER AND COTTON seriously, never use it. Unless it’s the only thing you have; you Must put mepitel 302 or a wound dressing atleast on it! Because they break easily and can get stuck inside your wound and cause infection! Or use a clean/sterile cloth or cotton towel, cut it to use as bandages. Note: the unspoken rule for bandages is never use any easily breakable or dissolvable materials as bandages. the point of bandages is to keep derbis/foreign objects away from open wounds. • instead use Gauze pads or a non-stick pad and secure it with surgical/paper/medical tape on your wound. Roll a compression/elastic bandage on top to put a little bit of pressure to reduce blood flow. Tip: apply plenty of antibacterial ointment/cream if you don’t want blood to stick onto the bandage or put on a wound dressing) • it’s a good idea to keep some Steri-Strips 127 or Butterfly Bandages 142 in case you cut deep enough to make it gape open; but not enough to need stitches. (If not possible use surgical/medical tape to make a DIY Butterfly Bandaid 195 Change your bandages every 24 hours or if it gets soaked in blood or gets dirty, clean it after every change. it would take about a month or more to heal.(depends on depth & length) But watch it closely to look out for signs of infection. and if you see it, immediately get medical attention! You can’t play nurse on that. Signs of an Infection:- wound feels warm or hot to touch expanding redness around the wound More pain in the wound/more sensitive swelling, tenderness or pain around the wound inflammation and swelling of the wound yellow or greenish or cloudy pus wound drainage with an odor (late-stage) • fever (infection is spreading) If you got a rabidly high fever it means the infection is spreading in your body, get it treated fast, infections can’t always be under control, even by doctors, they can rabidly develop and may result to amputation. Or develop into sepsis & cause a shock; nausea, vomiting, throbbing headache and overall, you feel like dying. Note: you can treat early stage infections (redness, pus, warmth) using Fusidic Acid 2% 45 use plenty of it, change infected cut’s bandages every 12-14 hours, then repeat cleaning process. If the infections is still developing or if you got a fever, no point in a DIY solution now, get a doctor! Fat bois (aka fat cuts):- If you reach fat, you need to get that stitched and taken care of at the doctors. For real, you don’t want to DIY it. When reaching the fat tissue you’ll see bubbly yellow tissue, sometimes it can poke out of the wound, try to close the gaping wound after inflicing in an hour or two. But if medical care isn’t avalible then just clean it with distilled water or saline solution & steri-strip it. Apply iodine on the edges & around the cut. Apply antibiotic cream/ointment on the edges. Put on a wound dressing, or apply plenty of ointment/cream on the edges and alittle bit on the gauze/bandage. Change every 24 hours or if gets soaked in blood. Basically pamper it. Tip: fat cuts heal kinda ugly, and look kind of infected; that’s a normal part of the healing process! It’ll look cloudy/yellow-ish in the first week of healing. Just make sure to watch for other symptoms of infection. but don’t spray alcohol or iodine into fat, or put ointment inside it as that can damage the healing cells inside, it can get into your blood stream & slow the process. You can apply those around the wound instead. this is not a proper treatment for a fat cut, you need to get it stitched in the first 12 hours of inflicting it. Extra tip: you should get a deep cut closed/stitched in under 12 hours, after that the wound already started healing & making scar tissue. so don’t bother closing it, but it will leave a bigger scar & will take longer to heal. note: do not use hydrogen peroxide as an antiseptic solution! It is way too harsh on the cells, it kills both bacteria and your healthy cells, avoid using it unless it’s the only thing you have, so use only small amounts. fascia/thin layer of tissue right above the muscle:- Now, okay, this a big boi, you can’t fix that on your own, and that is grounds for amputation if it gets slightly infected. You must, you gotta get to the hospital, get the docs working on it. Lastly, make sure you are up-to-date with your tetanus/lockjaw shots! So you wouldn’t have to worry about getting your back arched to death, end up looking like a human boomerang. Extra tip: if a wound gets stuck to a bandage, soak in warm water with saline solution for 5 minutes, gently pull the bandage then stop if its still stuck, soak then try again till it gets off. Extra extra tip: if you accidently cut a vein or your cut wont stop bleeding, apply pressure for 15 minutes (don’t peak!) if it’s still bleeding, keep pressure on it for another 15. if your cut won’t stop bleeding; get medical attention For people who are allergic to adhesive or latex:- If you have an allergy of adhesives or latex, you may get a rash (red, itchy skin) after taking off the adhesive OR if you have a latex allergy, because some bandages & adhesives contain latex. You may have an allergy to those if Take off the adhesive after hours and see redness at the site, or erosions, vesicles, crusts, and scaling. You should avoid exposing yourself to your allergies because everytime you do, the servere the reaction will be. Here’s the alternatives instead:- • use hypoallergenic tape, such as Surgical cloth tape 17 or hypoallergenic paper tape 8 • use Skin preparation barrier films 10, you apply this on your skin, (sprays, wipes) as a protective layer between the skin and advesive, do not apply it on the wound or face if you feel burning or stinging you may have got that inside the wound. • Skin preparation barrier films can easily be washed off with water & soap, or by a protective barrier removal product. when taping isn’t an option:- • for the extreme reactionists, apply Gauze Padding 19 with Fluff Gauze Rolls 23 to roll it into place. • for wounds on you can’t roll, use gauze padding with abdominal padding 23 then use a Band Netting 23 to hold it place. Tool management:- The tools you use must be fresh new, don’t pick up a tool you found on the ground or any tool you don’t know the history of it, where it came from or what it touched, you never know if some special micro-dudes are sitting in it; waiting for you, carrying a gift for you :wink: (The gifts are:- Tetanus, Serious infections, blood poisoning, blood diseases, Hiv, viruses, transmittable disease ect. Ect.) 1)always use sterilized, fresh new tools. 2)Dispose of said tool after 3-5 uses or if you haven’t used it in a long time. 3)Disinfect tools before & after use. 4)ALWAYS keep tools in dry place away from humid & water! 5)store tools in a Sterile paper package 50 or a clean cloth, then hide in a clean containter. 6)Safely dispose of tools! when disposing of tools, place them in a strong closed container! You don’t want leave sharp blades in a plastic bag & end up hurting the garbage men! Also, keep everything sterilized when you’re working on your lesions, before starting a session wash your hands with antiseptic soap or non-fragmented soap, wash it good like a hobby-surgeon 47 if available use sterilized gloves, make sure the area/table you’re working on is sterilized with rubbing alcohol along with the tools, use a Q-tip or wooden tongue depressors to apply antibiotic creams/ointments, don’t use your bare fingers, who know’s what’s sitting under your fingernails? Extra tip: shave the area you want to bandage to help adhesive stick to it, do not moisturize the area & you spray/swipe rubbing alcohol on the area and let it dry to give you mega-grip! Consequences of cutting deep:- Going deep is not glamouris as you think, you risk cutting veins, causing nerve damage, paralayising your limbs, losing sensation & function. The deeper you go, the worse the chances & measures taken on the infections. Even after it fully heals, you’re bound to cut through nerve endings, causing irreversible nerve damage. you’ll get constant, life-lasting pins & needles pain, or sharp shocking stabbing pain in the raised, hard, tight scar of the cut, it messes with your movements & the tightness pulls you skin. (Which is painful) Applying pressure on it hurts & stops you from working, moving it hurts, stretching it hurts worse. sometimes you get this pain for absolutely no reason at random times, in a middle of conversations, making weird faces, flinching and all. You’ll lose alot of blood if you cut everyday, if you lose more than 20% of your blood/fluid supply it’ll cause alot of complications. You can sometimes still bleed underneath skin, causing a bruise around the cut. Bloodloss can cause organ damage, light-headedness, weakness/fatigue, nausea, dizziness, weak breathing and feeling cold along with low blood pressure and disturbing heart rhythm, electrolyte imbalances, anemia blah, blah blah, ect. Ect. Ect. And much more. Plus, caring for deep cuts takes a looong time, and alot of money on supplies, even worse if you get to a (american) hospital with a sky-rocket of a bill. You also risk your social statues, i know, i know, fuck all of these people who treat you differently just because of some old scars, fuck them beyond and above, but what can you do? This is how the world works, you must socialize with other people, to get jobs, make relationships/friends, getting your basic needs, you need to deal with people, and those people can ruin your social statues if they see your scars, either by spreading rumors, calling the cops on you (thinking you may hurt others) or an ambulance to get you to a psych ward (thinking they’re heroes) or simply eyeballing you all the time, or approaching you acting all nice (which is fake, they just wanna feel superiorly good) In summary, imagine as many ways as possible people can fuck with you because of your scars. They’ll treat you differently than others, they single you out of the group for the hell of it. Average people cannot fathom why someone would ever hurt themselves intentionally, they just can’t relate; so they think you’re an aggressive maniac. So they’ll stop you from getting into jobs interviews, getting disqualified from the military as soon as they see your scars, people being scared of you and isolating you from others by talking about you. Is it worth it? Really? This coping mechanism is worth all of these trouble of bandaging, wasting money, hiding, lying, wearing long sleeves in the heat of the summer, not being able to go swimming, not being able to show your scars without getting in some sort of trouble and avoiding being intimate for this? Scars will take years to go, sometimes decades if you don’t take care of them with scar removal treatments. they’ll soften, flatten, and fade but the pins ‘n’ needles pain will still stay. so, is it worth it? It’s up to you to decide. Look after yourselves, my dudes. BONUS: What did i hit? You can accidentally sometimes hit veins or small arterioles, or a fucking artery for all we know, if you hit any of them, you must stop the bleeding by applying pressure to it for 15 minutes, no peaking allowed, paco. If if’s still bleeding then apply pressure again. Still bleeding? Yeah no, your next place will at the hospital ASAP. So what did you hit? Vein: Slow steady pulsating bleeding, dark red blood. Arteriole: squirts when you nick it or hit it, pulsating fast bleeding, bright red blood. Artery: Squirting blood all the way through. Bright red blood, pulsating with the heart. Nerves: shockwave of pain as soon as you hit it, long-lasting stabbing pain & pins’n’needles, you may lose control, sensation or function of your limb. If you hit an artery or arteriole, those guys need internal stitching and medical care, those are absolutely Dang-O-Rous, dudes. Please be nice to your body & limbs, they don’t deserve that, they’re just trying to keep you mobile, independently live and care for yourself.