First scarification on left ankle, 8 months old. Second scarification on right ankle, 5 weeks old.

Just a quick progress report. Yesterday I had the pleasure of peeling of the scabs, which is easily the best part about the whole scarification process, it is such a satisfactory feeling.

Ever since I did my first one back in July (link) I’ve been wanting to do more. After careful consideration (read: my laziness ceased) I finally came up with an idea or two about what I could do for my next one. The one that particularly stuck in my mind after a while was this really basic idea about doing a couple of angled lines positioned in a row. So on Tuesday I decided to perform another self scarification, this time on my inner right ankle.

A week or two ago I ordered a few scalpels to aid in my (the then not thought of) procedure, as I had previously used a box cutter for my first scarification. It worked pretty well considering, but it wasn’t exactly the most optimal tool to use. After receiving them it didn’t take long before I got the urge to use them, and so I did.

I started off by trying to find something to clean my skin with. With the lack of any disinfectives, I resorted to the ghetto solution of a miniature bottle of Absolut vodka. I wasn’t really sure whether or not regular vodka would be of any use at all, I know it’s not exactly rubbing alcohol or anything like that, but it was what I had. A wikipedia search reveals alcohol has disinfective properties starting at 18% and peaking at 70%, so I figured it couldn’t hurt either way (feel free to correct me if this is absolutely useless). Not that I really think there was much point to it to begin with, although the scalpels are sterile it all boils down to the lowest common denominator, and I’m pretty sure there were some contact with other unclean surfaces or objects during the procedure anyway. Oh well, that’s the charm with do-it-yourself things isn’t it?

After I rubbed my the skin on my ankle clean (if you want to call it that), I took my trusty marker out and tried to draw up a few lines on my ankle with the help of a ruler to get them straight. After being somewhat satisfied with the alignment, I unsheated the scalpel and proceeded to do the cutting. I was quickly reminded of how wonderful adrenaline rushes are, as cliché as it may sound, you truly feel alive in those moments. The blood rushed to the surface of my skin, making it hard to judge the length and debth of the cuts, but I think I prevailed through it all with a nice result. The cuts aren’t quite equal, but it was never really in any way intended to be perfect, so I’m happy with the outcome.

Of course I had to take pictures, so here they are, in chronological order, with the last picture being taken 2 days after the initial cutting.

It’s been about 3½ months since I did it now, here’s the current result. There’s still not much change, the scars have flattened and widened a bit, but it will take several months more before it will even begin to fade I think.

Most of the scabbing had fallen off, so I peeled off the remaining parts. That felt sooo good! Now I can finally get some sort of idea about how it will turn out, although it’s going to fade a great deal I guess. Still some slight bruising around the cuts as well.

It’s been two weeks since I first did the scarification now, and it’s going along pretty good I guess. The scabs have started to become quite brittle and some of it has started to fall off at this point.

The cutting didn’t hurt. Rubbing salt into the cuts didn’t hurt. What hurts is this constant desire to pick the scabs, it’s just itching to get picked off! I’m a scabaholic. The only thing that’s stopping me is lazyness. Because if I started doing it, I’d have to make sure to get everything off in order to get the scarification even. Not that it really is from before, but why make it worse?

I was fairly happy about the progress of the first cutting, and although I was initially going to wait it out and see how the scar would turn out, I decided to go ahead with an attempt to make two more stars last night. A smaller one to the “left” of the first one, and a slightly smaller than that again on the right side. It went OK I guess, just messed up one line a little bit, not sure if I’ll even bother to try and fix it. It’s not supposed to be perfect after all. I’m unsure if these second ones will have the same visibility as the first one, as I had to make a bit smaller cuts in order to make it not look like shit.

First star has been cut. I used a thinner green marker this time, worked much better.

Second star done. Argh, if only I had done this a day later, then I could have made the caption Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Salt rubbing.

Hm, how about another song title. Blood on the Dance Floor?

A shower later. You can see the slight error on the right star at one of its points.

Roughly 12 hours has elapsed, and just came out of the shower. I could finally see a bit more closely how the cuts really turned out, and as I guessed, far from perfect. But that was somehow a bit of the charm about it all, the do it yourself feeling. Joining the cuts at the points of the star was what seemed to be the biggest issue. I’m not sure if I’ll go over it again, I’d rather see what kind of results this will give.

Slightly fucked lighting in this (time to get a new camera), but actually it was rather glowing red right when I came out of the shower, as I rubbed the marker off a bit and irritated the wound slightly.

Here you can see the not-so-perfect joining of the lines.

Today when I woke up, I got a sudden idea that I wanted to try doing a scarification on myself. I have absolutely no idea why or where this came from. Either way, I kept thinking about it throughout the day, and the thought grew on me hour by hour. So I decided I’d give it a try later on in the night. I had no idea whether or not it would hurt, if it would be hard to do, or anything really. I don’t know if this is going to leave much of a scar (I highly doubt it), but doing it was really fun, as well as a new experience. I wasn’t really looking for a very noticeable scar either, just wanted to see how it would turn out. If it leaves a light or faint scar that can be seen, then I’ll definitely try doing more and make some sort of pattern out of it or something.

Seeing as I wasn’t sure about how hard this would be, I just tried a very simple shape, and a bit of a clichè one at that - a star.

I first used a (too thick) marker pen to outline the star. I bought this light-in-the-dark star set a while ago that had a few pieces in the right size which I finally put to a good use.

First ~4 cuts. I used one of those scalpel knives that has re-usable blades that slides out. I was surprised at how easily it cut through the skin, and how the skin “parts” itself once you cut it deep enough.

nMain cuts are done. It takes a while for the blood to rise to the surface after you cut it, the incision fills up rather slowly.

Putting on salt and rubbing it in to irritate the wound. The point of this is to suppress the healing process, hopefully creating a more visible scar. I’m not sure if I’ll keep this up as I’m not really looking for that type of result, though I don’t want it completely invisible either.

Ah, blood and salt, what a mix. Notice the pro glove. Not that it’s going to help much since it’s not very sterile conditions I’m working under either way. Just wanted to show off.

Aftermath

More aftermath. It looks more “impressive” than it really is, as the marker is showing through a lot. Once it washes off it will probably be less noticeable.