Almost 25 years back I met with an accident on road and got myself hurt on the left knee. I received a small bleeding wound on the knee apart from other minor cuts and bruises. It was nothing too serious, hence I was taken to a nearby clinic for the first aid and got the dressing done on the wound.
The wound healed completed after few weeks leaving a big round scar.
Years passed by. Almost a quarter of century.
Then, around a year back, I started noticing a tiny hard point on the knee. Not on the old scar. Not even near it. I dismissed it as folliculitis or a small boil.
Instead of fading off and going away, it started to become more protruded and prominent.
After couple of months I could see and feel an evident piece of glass, piercing through my skin.
Then I realized and correlated it with my accident which occurred 25 years back. Where I fell during the accident, there was a lot of broken glass scattered on the road.
Putting 2 + 2 together, I comprehended that at the time of accident when I got hurt, a piece of glass went deep inside my knee, which at the time of cleaning and dressing of the wound did not get removed. Once the superficial healing happened, it remained stuck somewhere deep inside.
What actually (physiologically) happened –
During all these years, it did not lay dormant, encapsulated in the fascia.
While our immune system deals with the pathogens, skin cells gets renewed which helps to move the foreign object closer to the surface of the skin (the skin grows from bottom upwards – therefore, whatever is was on the bottom layer, will eventually move to the top).
Gradually it has reached the outermost layer of the skin (stratum corneum) where shedding of the cells resulted in the foreign body being pushed along with it.
The glass piece is 1 cm long and 0.6 cm broad.
I could have easily got it surgically extracted the moment I realised it is coming out but I decided to wait and let the natural process take its own time.
It took almost 2 months for it to completely come out on its own from the day I felt the tip of it.
Although it is not a magic and is simply our body’s own way of healing and dealing with foreign objects but for me, it was no less than a ‘miracle’!
All images are actual.