Steel Implants

A couple of weeks ago I was grinding up some PbTe into a powder using a home made morter and pestle. I was banging on the steel pestle with a hammer when I suddenly realized my arm was wet. I looked down at it and there was blood running down my arm. I thought to myself, "hmmm, that's weird, I guess a piece of steel must have chipped off of the pestle and cut my arm". I wiped away the blood and sure enough, there was what appeared to be a rather deep cut in my arm. I put a band-aid on it and carried on with my work.

Over the next few days I noticed that the cut didn't heal real well but sort of puffed up like a zit. I just figured there must have been a bit of an infection and didn't worry about it. Today Lisa noticed the giant zit on my arm and asked me what it was. I told her the story and she immediately said that I must have something in the cut. Again I thought, "gee, why didn't I think of that?" When we got home tonight she took a pin after my giant zit and after digging for a bit she found a small black thing in the hole she'd made. She finally dug out a relatively large piece of steel that had gone all black from spending two weeks trying to be metabolized by my body. Very strange.

--------------------trivia--------------------

During World War II, a German U-boat was sunk by a truck. The U-boat in question attacked a convoy in the Atlantic and then rose to see the effect. The merchant ship it sank had material strapped to its deck including a fleet of trucks, one of which was thrown in the air by the explosion, landing on the U-boat and breaking its back.

------------------------------------------------