# Small splinter (glass) in foot: is pre-flamed needle still SOP? \[NEED ANSWER FASTISH\] **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 18, 2022, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434 "2022-06-18T19:17:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2022, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/21 "2022-06-19T18:08:22Z")
> [@Lancia](#): > > I believe our own @Johnny_L.A 's wife is a foot care nurse. Our local foot-care nurses have more people requesting their services than they have the ability to care for and while I can’t speak to their fees or what their income is, the ones I’ve spoken to love doing what they do and the freedom it gives them and none of them have any desire to return to working in a “traditional” nursing role in a hospital or clinic. She is. RN, BSN, CFCS (Certified Foot Care Specialist). She worked at a wound center before hiring on at a home health company. She left the home health company to start her own foot care business. The first couple of years were rough. First, she needed to find clients. Then COVID hit, She’s built up her client list, and is often scheduled a month or more out. Income is a far cry from when she was with the home health company. Since she sees people in their homes and it’s a good-sized county, she only sees two or three patients per day (though she has seen four or five when there are ‘two-fers’ – two people in the same home). She gets many referrals from her previous employer, as they do not have a foot care nurse on their staff and don’t want to hire one. She loves her patients, she loves her work, and she loves being her own boss. ETA: Diabetic foot care requires an RN with the necessary training and certification. At least in this state, non-certified RNs and other caregivers are not supposed to do foot care for diabetics. Wifey, RN had one patient who lost a toe when someone (a neighbour?) trimmed his toenails and nicked him. When a new patient mentions they have diabetes, she tells them that an RN needs to do the job, and why. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2022, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/22 "2022-06-19T19:40:12Z")
How sure are you that it’s actually a splinter of glass in your foot? I ask because I get ‘hair splinters’ - animal hairs work their way into a skin pore and hurt like hell. I had one yesterday after I had been cutting pieces of glass and I assumed a stray bit of glass had somehow got into my shoe, but it was just a hair - usually I need a magnifying glass to even see the protruding end of the hair and grab it with tweezers. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/23 "2022-06-20T18:57:15Z")
Thanks all-- a lot. Went to local walk-in medical care shop. (When did those first appear? Future OP…) They had x-rays, surprisingly, which MD insisted. Long sucker. Lateral, angled and top down=plantar 2-D shots can’t be correlated as to location between edges of foot, which surprised me but I get it . Even if she had located it exactly, said she wouldn’t dig it up and out. Scheduled me for podiatrist for tomorrow who first can do an ultrasound as well. Also a tetanus shot, no doubt my _n_th since my first one still valid (eight years?). It’s about 1/2-long and normal to sole and skinny jagged. Digital pix-or-it-didn’t-happen not attached because I can’t find my damn external drive. I asked what the podiatrist will probably do and she said > [Use] sterilized equipment, topical antiseptics, good lighting and magnification as necessary, knowledge of anatomy to avoid doing ancillary damage, topical anesthetic if it is necessary to do any actual incision, careful technique to avoid driving the foreign matter deeper into the body, post-removal assessment to assure that tissue is healthy and no sign of infection, tetanus booster. That sort of thing. > > Stranger Leo PS: Hi @Mangetout! It’s fun being back and meeting old friends. Ditto @DSeid. Ditto @Quadcop\_the\_Mercotan and @Johnny_L.A! And Stranger if I haven’t already… ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/24 "2022-06-20T19:38:24Z")
Mod request in for title fix. You’re right about my petard self-hoist (recent post of mine). Next time I’ll add “…Especially on Title Pages and the Like.” One of my special cover issues at IEEE was on anti-ballistic missile defenses, and the spine (those were the days when we had enough advertising to actually have spines) read “…missles.” The art-director had sign-off on the cover copy I submitted, and apologized like crazy, but I still feel bad about the whole thing, even though I had no way to check it pre-print. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/25 "2022-06-20T22:39:43Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I’ve since learned about that as well as different kinds of infections and injuries that can occur to hands and feet as part of wilderness medical training where the comprise a large proportion of traumatic injuries in the backcountry. As a result, I am much more careful about protecting extremities and treating any injuries on hands and feet including scratches and minor blisters. c.f. _The Snows of Kilimanjaro_ > **[The Snows of Kilimanjaro (short story)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro_(short_story))** > > "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway first published in August 1936, in Esquire magazine. It was republished in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories in 1938, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories in 1961, and is included in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition (1987). > The story opens with a paragraph about Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, whose western summit is called in Masai the "... The wiki doesn’t make it clear, but the story’s protagonist Harry’s fatal gangrene is explained as beginning from a scratch from a thorn bush. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/26 "2022-06-20T23:00:22Z")
I confess to having done minor surgery on myself. I’m good with knives… I recommend you use bleach, not fire, for home sterilization of metal instruments. Heating a needle or even tweezers ruins the temper, and it might bend. I recommend that whoever looks for the splinter be someone who can clearly see the area. So probably not you for your foot. And i recommend strongly against digging around in the foot, even if you aren’t diabetic, because get take a lot of abuse and wounds there are problematic. So, if you can see or feel the splinter, maybe get a friend or family to pull it out with carefully washed hands and sterilized tweezers before going to urgent care, so as not to keep driving it further in when you travel there. But then go for wound care, since you have diabetes. And if it’s not easy to remove, try really hard to keep your weight off it until you can get to a professional. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/27 "2022-06-20T23:02:20Z")
Never mind, i see you’ve already started this process. Best wishes. That sounds nasty. Do try to keep your weight off it until you see the podiatrist. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/28 "2022-06-21T12:50:42Z")
[Moderating] Even though I’m not an IMHO mod, I took the liberty of editing the title (changing “match” to “needle”) at the OP’s request. In the future, the better way to deal with this is to flag the post, so the forum’s moderators can see it. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/29 "2022-06-21T13:00:07Z")
thanks ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434/30 "2022-06-22T03:16:50Z")
This doesn’t sound like a DIY job to me either, diabetic or not. Several years ago, my mother stepped on a sliver of wood (IIRC, a dropped toothpick) and she finally had to go to a podiatrist, who also used ultrasound to locate and remove it. There’s also a podiatrist who comes to the senior center where she and my dad often have lunch, once or twice a month, and he does free foot checks and nail trims for anyone who needs them. I’ve mentioned here before that Dad doesn’t have all of his toenails, due to recalcitrant toenail fungus, but he hands the DPM a $5 bill each time anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-splinter-glass-in-foot-is-pre-flamed-needle-still-sop-need-answer-fastish/966434.md?page=1)