anyone else get infected from cheap needles? i dissected them under my microscope after getting staph and i'm pissed
ok so i know i'm an idiot for buying $15 cartridges off some sketchy site but my wallet was crying and i thought "how different can they really be?"
well. turns out VERY different. thank god i only tested it on a small patch on my arm first because i now have a full-blown staph infection there to prove it 😅(imagine if i had done my whole face... i can't even think about it).
after the swelling went down i got curious (and angry) so i put both the fake ones and the real clinical-grade ones my derm friend brought me under my usb microscope. what i saw made me want to scream.
the fake ones:
- l needles were literally BENT hooks (my derm friend said this causes micro-tears instead of clean channels)
- l no sterilization packaging, just thrown in a bag wtf
- l the "surgical steel" was already rusting??
the real ones:
- l my friend said they use EO sterilization (ethylene oxide) which is why they're sealed like evidence bags
- l actual straight 33G needles, perfectly aligned
- l actual batch numbers on the packaging
tbh i felt so stupid. i thought i was being smart saving money but ended up paying $200 for antibiotics and almost got sepsis lol. not worth it.
the scary part is the fake ones LOOK identical until you zoom in. like you genuinely can't tell unless you have a microscope or, y'know, get a life-threatening infection
my derm friend was pissed when she saw them. said "you rolled BENT HOOKS across your face?" like ma'am i didn't know ❓