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Evil little spiky buggers!
Have a tip of black thorn embedded in my hand..
How do I get it out before my hand swells up and falls off?
Charm it out by digging a crater in your hand with a sharp knife point, find a very, very fine point pair of tweezers, (the sort most people have kicking about just don’t cut it), or let it fester, poke the top off where it’s healed over and squeeze the pus out along with the tip of the thorn that’s broken off. It wii, almost certainly, turn nasty for a while.
Tweezers like these would be ideal, a single pair can cost a lot, these aren’t too bad:
Oh, and having spent some time trimming my Pyrocanthus hedges out front earlier today, you have to be really careful with that stuff too, I was walking around on a carpet of cuttings that were stuck into the soles of the shoes I was wearing, and I wear heavy duty welders gauntlets to cut and pick up the bits, it’s just as evil as blackthorn.
An epsom salt or mustard poultice may draw it out keep the thorn covered eventually it will come out
I usually dig them out with a sowing needle. They pop out afyer 15 mins of poking about. It hurts but better out than in!
Earlier this year I got a wood splinter in the outside of my little finger. It was annoying 'cause I couldn't see it to dig it out.
I covered it with a sticking plaster for a couple of days, it then took a bit of a squeeze and out it came. It was about 8mm long!
As itstig /\ says.
dig them out with a sowing needle.
😳 Christ, how big are the splinters in your neck of the woods! Most people use a sewing needle...
Magnesium sulphate paste. Available in pharmacies:
As an example...
https://www.boots.com/boots-pharmaceuticals-magnesium-sulfate-paste-bp-10083701
Be prepared to see GP at short notice for ABs if it does go septic. My thumb came up like a banana and was so sore I couldn't even sleep for the pain. Luckily there was a doc at the foreign caving conference I was at when it began to fester a couple of days after picking up the thorn. He just happened to have some spare ABs in his medical kit and within a few hours of taking them it all started to go down and become bearable. Nasty bloody stuff that blackthorn. Makes nice sloe gin mind 🙂
MagSulf is very good, I got a big splinter/thorn went too deep into my finger to dig out, helping my g/f’s mum clearing stuff in her garden, she had some and put it on, it cleared up without anything too nasty happening.
No MTFU yet?
This is a changed place nowadays!
I had a whole one deep in my thigh. Had general A&E doctor have a dig and ended up with a plastic surgeon. It's a very nice job and it got the bugger out after some thigh carving with a scalpel.
They are a form of poison and bring you out in welts when you get a scratch, which is why they we're associated with witch craft.
The little syringe you get with CalPol
I’ve used these to gently apply suction to a tiny area and remove splinters and thorns from the kids who tend to panic if you go anywhere near them with tweezers or a needle
We've got one of these widgets
https://www.landyschemist.com/aspivenin-insect-poison-remover-kit
It works on stings - not tried it on a splinter, but I guess would work.