PexelsI love to wear rings. They’re the best accessory and also, the most sentimental. I like to wear antique rings or rings given to me as gifts. And we can’t forget how priceless a wedding band is! That would be devastating to lose, let alone have to cut it off.
Yes, that’s right. If you’ve suffered an injury that causes swelling to your fingers, rendering your fingers so swollen, you can’t simply remove the ring by sliding it off. In fact, you must cut the ring off to ease the pressure – but not anymore. Here’s a smart, foolproof way to save your ring and your finger without having to choose one or the other.
Dr. Simon Carley is a Professor of Emergency Medicine in Manchester, UK. Alongside his two staff nurses, they have created a video to prove that you can remove a ring without cutting it off. Now, in most cases, applying oil or lotion will easily help the ring to slip off. But, in an emergency situation where the swelling is so bad, and time is of the essence, this trick is good to keep in mind.
The doctor asks, “Why are we doing this?” The answer is simple, “Patients come in with finger injuries, and we cut their rings off all the time. It’s a disaster. They don’t like it. And it’s not fair. Tony [the nurse off screen] took a ring off a woman who had it on for 55 years the other day.” I can imagine how sad that is. The patient had a broken arm but was more worried about the ring!
So, Dr. Simon introduces his clever trick. You need an oxygen mask strap, not the actual mask, only the wide, flat stretchy string that comes with it and affixes it to your face. Rip it off the mask and save it for another time. He goes on to describe that you have to “squash the tissue down” by wrapping the flat string just a few inches above the location of the ring, down to just before the ring. The idea is that the stretchiness of the string continues to compress and squeeze and push everything down. Wrap the strap tight, and all the way around until it’s able to poke under the ring. You can use tweezers to pull it through to the other side.
Now, according to Dr. Simon, this is where the magic happens. You pull the loose piece of string and watch as it spirals out over the compressed string. “What happens, is this rotates and jiggles the ring… It’s not only taking the soft tissue down, but it’s also spiraling down around the finger, and that’s the best way to get it [the ring] to move across.” And bam! Never cut a ring off again.
Click the video below to watch this genius idea in motion!
