Pain in thumb....

[V8 Stang]

Basically i have this lump in the middle of my thumb, its around 6mm wide. If i rub a finger over it you can feel a fair bump, even though it looks tiny just looking at it. If i push down on the lump its quite painful. Which makes my day job awkward, as i am an electrician, so always using screwdrivers etc.

Its been there at least a month now, as i can remember it being there before christmas!

So it doesn't seem to want to go away...


The only thing i can think of is im always getting little bits of metal shards in my fingers, and its sometimes difficult getting them out.
Is it possible for a tiny shard of metal to be in my finger, then the skin heal over the top (leaving the metal inside)?

Or something else?

Anyone any Ideas?

This pic shows it a bit, its hard getting a photo of it:

[Mars]

After two weeks of something similar in my thumb - a painful sore point whenever I touched it - I became desperate on Saturday evening and tore open the skin with a sewing pin and rooted around inside with a pair of tweezers. I can't see too well up close now I'm going long-sighted so I took photos with my phone and zoomed-in but still didn't find anything obvious. I swore it must be something metal I picked up while making something on my lathe but I just couldn't find anything.

So I plastered it up, and 3 days later the sensitivity had gone, and the mess I had created has started to heal.

Perhaps try something less drastic - try that Bazooka stuff? It'll soften up the skin until you can pick it off. Anything in there ought to come out then.

And wear gloves now and in future. I just bought a pack of 6 pairs of those rubber-dipped ones that are meant to be difficult to cut - 3M branded. It'll take some adjustment to be able to use tools with them on but I'm fed up constantly living with metal and wood splinters under my skin.

I'm in my 50s. It's about time I learned, eh?

[Drive it fix it repeat]

I’m always getting splinters and metal fragments in my hands due to my job, I do tend to go for the somewhat nuclear option of cut it open and try and find what’s in there. Is it possible it’s some type of Varuka or wart forming?

[JapanRed]

Wart/verruca or some sort of foreign body would be my top 2. GP will have a decent idea. Might send you for an X-ray or Ultrasound if they think it’s a foreign body.

[johnpsanderson]

V8 Stang said:

Is it possible for a tiny shard of metal to be in my finger, then the skin heal over the top (leaving the metal inside)?

In my experience yes, but you can see them through the skin as they're not that deep in. I have dug plenty out with a pin. Presumably if it goes in deep enough you won't see it?

When in my early 20's I had quite a few veruccas and cut away at them quite a bit (not sure it ever worked, but they went eventually). They didn't look like the photo you've posted - it always looked as though there was an actual 'hole' going into the skin in the centre and once you cut in there were what looked like little black seeds.