How to Drain a Blood Blister

Video Transcript

"Wow, you've just hit your thumb with a hammer. My name is Beverly Bitterman, ARNP, Health and Wellness Consultant, and I'm here to tell you a little bit about how you might deal with that. So you can get an injury of a nail in several different ways. Hitting your thumb with a hammer is classic You could shut your finger in a car door, for example, or shut it accidentally in a closet door. All of those different ways essentially cause a bruise underneath your nail. And what will happen, and what will happen pretty rapidly, is that you'll see a little bit of blood underneath your nail, and your thumb or your finger will begin to throb. Well, if you're in a circumstance where you could go visit your medical provider, I would recommend that you do that because they would have equipment and strategies to help drain that blood blister from your nail in a very sterile and safe environment. But let's say that you are camping, and you're not going to be home until tomorrow. Or it's eight o'clock at night, and you really don't want to go to the emergency room. If you have to, if you can't get a medical provider to treat you, here is a home remedy. And what you do is you take a paper clip and undo it. And then you clean it. I would recommend that you clean it with soap and water, that you pour a little alcohol on it. The next thing that you want to do is you want to get the tip of it hot. So you can hold it in a flame, like in a candle flame, until it gets kind of red. And then what you're going to do is you're going to apply pressure onto the nail with the tip of this hot paper clip. And what will happen is you'll basically bore a little hole into the nail, and the blood that's trapped in there will release, and you'll have a fairly immediate relief in terms of pain. I would then bandage up that finger and make sure you treat it like a cut, that you keep it clean and dry. And if you don't still feel well the next day, if you feel there's more to come out, etc., or if any signs of infection occur, then you'll want to make sure that you see your physician as soon as possible. My name is Beverly Bitterman, ARNP, Health and Wellness Consultant."