I have no earthly idea how to look for this thing.
I have a wart on my dominant hand, in the webbing between my thumb and index finger. It is annoying as hell, and has so far resisted duct tape, abrasion, acid, and dermatologist-applied freezing (although a lovely blood-blister the size of a dime DID come off that hand, and let me just tell you all how *delightful *that process was).
Immediately post-blister removal, the dermatologist assured me that the wart was gone (she lied) and scraped off the not-frozen-off-but-markedly-unhappy wart with an odd little scalpel.
The wart has since returned, but I am too broke to continue paying this woman vast quantities of cash to scrape it off of me every month or so. I know you can buy scalpels and medical equipment online from all sorts of places, I just need to know what this thing is called.
It was a single-use disposable scalpel with a plastic handle and a tiny little metal business end. I need to know what TYPE of scalpel it is. The scalpel part itself was shaped like a thin cylinder, with the sharp end of the scalpel as the bottom of the entire cylinder.
Imagine taking a straight-razor and curving it into a circle. The curve of the blade made it easy to scrape across the skin and take off the nasty wart layer without as much possibility of impalement.
I already have straight-razors, but I hesitate to use one on myself (of necessity with my non-dominant hand) when there seems to be a safer option available for use.
I’m not getting a clear image of this thing, then. The way you described it sounds like a biopsy punch. I don’t know if you CAN use those the way you describe.
The handle of the spoon was curved slightly, and where the bowl of the spoon is, instead there is a tiny (perhaps 1 cm across) horizontal metal circle, set at an angle (like a spoon bowl is) to the handle. The bottom side of the metal circle is the sharp side.
She used it like you would use a vegetable peeler - scraping it across the wart, and the layers of warty bits just peeled away from the underlying skin.
It was like a tiny round vegetable peeler for skin. I could imagine it being useful for thick horny skin on feet or hands, as well as for warts and growths.
It was sharp enough that I also imagine it could scrape off *prominent *growths to the point of them bleeding, but it was small enough, and because it was circular, there doesn’t seem like much chance it could cut down into flat skin at all.
It is not a punch biopsy, but if you took the rounded end of that, angled it to about 45 degrees to the handle, and used it as a scraper, that would be what I’m looking for.
And I have a few #10 scalpels, and am profoundly disinterested in using those to try and scrape off a wart. I like my fingers, and my thumb, and all of my underlying tendons and muscles. I’m not using a straight-razor or straight scalpel on my dominant hand, thanks.
It sounds like you might have already tried just about everything. But on the off chance you haven’t, this worked remarkably well (it never came back) for me.
I used something called ‘Compound W’. It is (or rather was, I’m talking 35-36 years ago.) a clear, slightly viscuous liquid, that is basically an acid.
I, uh, ‘modified’ the directions somewhat.
I applied a liberal coating of the aforementioned, then scraped the wart down to the point of freshness (so to speak), then applied a second coating. Caution! That second coating is gonna BURN, pretty fiercely! :eek: Grit your teeth and deal with it, it’ll quit burning after a while. Once it quits burning, scrape off all of the dead warty skin and repeat, if you can stand to.
Me, I had to do it in stages. IIRC about every second or third day I would suck it up and go thru the ordeal.
Seems like it took 4, maybe 5 applications before I was satisfied that it was all gone.
(The wart was about 5/16" across and protruded about 1/4".)
It never came back, and for that matter didn’t even leave a scar. YMMV
Good luck!
You don’t mention having the thing burned off. One time I had a wart on my palm that insisted on coming back when frozen. A doctor finally numbed the hand and attacked it with a device that looked like a miniature arc welder. The process filled his office with a lovely smell of burning flesh, left a crater on my palm where the thing had been, and was sore while it healed, but it did not come back. Did leave a bit of a scar, though.
I used a variation on JBDivmstr’s method on a thick one on the pad of my thumb. In my case, I dug out as much of it as I could with tweezers until it looked like all I had was a hole with mostly healthy tissue around it. Then applied Compound W. Thought my thumb was on fire but it passed. Checked in the morning and it was all scabbed over. Tore off scab, more CW, bandaided, healed up ok but started coming back after a couple weeks, repeated procedure, havent seen that wart in 15 years.
Various woodcarving gouges would also seem appropriate for that sort of cut. “Gouge” has such a nasty connotation; I wish there were a different word for a gouge.
Though you seem to be bonded to the idea of doing the cutting on yourself, I can’t recommend it. Your body’s own sensations are going to interfere with having a steady hand and remaining conscious.
Without going into details, I can say with certainty that I’m really not worried about that. I’ve had a bit of practice.
This will actually be much easier than actual self-surgery, because if done correctly, it shouldn’t hurt at all (irritation, but not pain) because I won’t actually be breaking through the skin. Just getting rid of a nasty layer like peeling off the top layer of a really thick callus, or pumice-stoning the thick skin on my feet.
[QUOTE=Lasciel;14319884This will actually be much easier than actual self-surgery, because if done correctly, it shouldn’t hurt at all (irritation, but not pain) because I won’t actually be breaking through the skin. Just getting rid of a nasty layer like peeling off the top layer of a really thick callus, or pumice-stoning the thick skin on my feet.[/QUOTE]
But will it ever go away if you only do that? Have you tried caustic stuff or freezing after the scraping? Also, you can get a freeze spray at the drug store (not as cold as liquid nitrogen), or even use a compressed air cleaner spray. Cut a plastic QTip in half and stick the end in the nozzle of the spray can. The swab part will get very cold. I’ve been able to use that get rid of tiny skin tags, but it’s easier to let them grow until I can tie them off if I can’t just rub them away.