This happened about a year ago. I was soldering some stuff and accidentally touched my the side of my index finger on the soldering iron.
For some bizzare reason I didn’t realize it at first and only felt a minor discomfort after a while, and that’s when I pulled my finger. My finger was touching on the iron for probably more than a second.
I rushed to the freezer and grabbed some ice. But the weird thing was that I wasn’t feeling any pain, neither when the burn occured, nor afterwards.
I had much less severe burns that hurt like a bitch, but now I burned my finger crispy toasty for good (there was even the smell of cooked meat) but there was no pain at all.
There’s a chance you gave yourself a third-degree burn. They don’t hurt because, as **barbitu8 says, you roast the nerves, too. Often, the area is surrounded by painful 1st and 2nd-degree burns, but with such a point source of injury, there was probably much less.
A soldering iron is certainly hot enough to cause a third degree burn - crispy toasty, as you put it. You zapped the nerve so there was nothing to report pain. It was a very, very small spot, so you didn’t get a lot of 2nd and 1st degree burn around it, which would have hurt. Also, because it was a very small spot you didn’t have the infection and fluid loss problems of a large area burn.
As a general rule, if a burn doesn’t hurt it’s a Bad Sign and nerves have been destroyed. Likely, that spot is numb now, but since it’s such a small spot the sensory deficiency is likely unimportant.
Well, one sign of a 3rd degree burn is that it doesn’t hurt… others are charring, or skin that is either grey or white. Sloughing of the burned area. Eschar, which is a nasty, stiff scabby thing.
2nd degree are painful and typically feature blisters. May weep fluid, especially if the blister breaks. Skin is red, there’s usually swelling.
In my case, I definitely think it was a second degree burn that just didn’t hurt. I didn’t have any of those additional symptoms, although the blisters were pretty bad.
I’ve received many small, minor injuries (akin to papercuts, small punctures, etc.) over the years that do not hurt until I notice them - always wondered what that was about. Of course, larger wounds that I actually notice happening hurt immediately.
That’s totally normal for soldering iron burns. Skin turns white, gets raised at the exact spot that the iron touched, but NOT blistered, doesn’t hurt much. They heal very quickly and completely leaving no scar.
I’ve gotten lots of them over the years, but I have no idea where - because they’re completely gone within days.
It’s happened to me, working as a cook. I’ve got a 5-inch long, straight-line burn on my left forearm that I never felt happen. I had no idea it had happened until some time later when I was washing my hands, and the sleeve of my chef coat rode up a bit and there it was, fresh and red. But no pain at all. And it certainly wasn’t a 3rd-degree burn.
I once sliced my index finger open requiring 7 stitches. There was no pain at all. At first I was wondering how the knife hit me with that much force and didn’t cut me, then I saw the blood running all over the place. Even after I saw the cut, there was no pain.
