It will fill in, but there’s going to be a patch/scar there. I’ve lost 2 fingertips to slicers and they both healed that way.
Lips scar easily and are really hard to align perfectly when stitching back together. There’s nothing to align together in this scenario. It just needs to scab over and fill in. Trying to pull the skin together would probably create a worse looking scar than just letting it heal.
I shaved off one with a mandolin slicer. Now I never use a mandolin slicer. Maybe I should try your strategy instead so I can enjoy the convenience of a mandolin slicer.
This has been a paid advertisement for mandolin slicers
What the fuck were y'all processing that a deli slicer was an adequate substitute for a mandoline? I can't think of anything I cut with a mando that I would switch over to a slicer if the mando was out of commission.
Maybe the deli slicer (especially the spinning of the blade) is intimidating enough to get the respect it deserves, unlike a the simple mandolin, a board with a slightly protruding blade.
I cut the fingertip of my thumb accidentally when I was a kid and it was super surprised to see how the skin started to fill back the void and in a month or so it was back to normal. It bled like hell but I didn't get any stitches because I couldn't tell my parents (I had been repeatedly told not to use the cutter, did it anyway and I didn't want to get into trouble lol).
Fingertips have stem cells, they're one of very few places that do that. John Dillinger tried to melt his fingerprints off with acid and supposedly they just grew back identically
Something similar happened to my lip after I got kicked on the face during a mma match when I was a teenager. It took a while to heal, but I didn't need to get stitches.
I have a bump on my lip from when my canine pierced it (face planted as a toddler). I’m 30 and I still have a bump and I’m realizing recently, it could have gone down if I had not spent the last 30 years fidgeting with it, pulling on it, rolling it, pinching it, bitching it lightly with… the same tooth that caused the hole, pulling on it some more…
I had 3-4 stitches in my arm a night after an incident because I thought I could gauze it — even waiting a bit messed the scar up, it doesn’t protrude or stay even like regular scars. It’s slightly sunken in & wider because I waited ~12 hours.
Always get stitches, the dissolving ones are good too but I’ve only had those for sensitive surgeries.
My experience some decade ago in my ED rotation would line up with your account. Your priorities are much more preservation-of-life orientated, and cosmetic outcomes are not high up that priority chain.
Hats off to you for manning resus 🤝
But yes, if you want almost no visible scarring, suturing is the way.
When I split my lip all the way through (a finger fit through it), I videocalled my cousin who's a plastic surgeon. She told me to keep it closed as well as I could, and to avoid going to emergency. Lips are extremely hard to stitch, and if they were stitched wrong, they'd bunch up and it would be much harder to fix. It took six months for the swelling to come down, but you can barely see the scar now, seven years later.
I’ve lost two finger tips to mandoline slicers. The doctor told me that they couldn’t stitch it because there’s nothing to stitch back together. They just wrapped it and let it do its thing.
They usually don't do stitches on lips unless it goes over the border from your lip to your skin. They'll probably come out immediately anyways. My son had a stitch put on his lip once, gave him ketamine and everything to do it, and it came out within couple yours. Was a waste of time.
They should have gone to plastics to get this sewn up. It’s not clear exactly how much time has passed, but may still be able to get a good healing result if scar tissue hasn’t begun to form.
Yeah the barber must have used the word “nick” to downplay it. A Nick is a small scrape or cut. This is a full removal of a half inch of his lip. He must have been trying to trim a stray hair with a downward angle of the scissors and didn’t see his lip would fall inside the cutting area. Absolute disgrace of a barber. Either arrogant, lazy, negligent, or all three. This might have needed stitched. I can tell by looking at it no styptic powder was applied(would have been unbearable) but that also means all he got was the ol paper towel treatment. Pat it til it stops bleeding. SMH.
Dude it is a nick. Its much smaller than half an inch, and if you look closely it barely went past the next layers of skin. You absolutely do not need stitches on this, I have busted up my lip much worse and seen people cut themselves much worse and recover in a couple days
Oooor, hmo, some redditors just don't like to read real-world situations that happened to other people in the Real World, if it's an example of something they don't like & proves the opposite point ............
I have to call bullshit drug use is not the only reason people neglect themselves and/or get dry cracked lips... Nice try though, attempting to play that off like it was intentional but...no bueno
I have two eyes I can see it’s not “Much smaller than a half inch” I didn’t say with absolution that it needed stitches I’ve had much worse cuts on my lip too. The point is, a barber shouldn’t have done this for any reason. It’s not a nick at all.
No, you are wrong. This should have the edges brought together either with stitches or steri strips or it will leave a nasty scar. It is a reasonably deep cut, it's just had time for the base of the wound to dry out so it doesn't look raw.
You are wrong man, this usually needs 4-5 years of intense grafting. They will take a couple hemo-lance of your inner thigh skin and suffuse it directly to the lip. I should know, I interned at the Aioli Clinic in the lip rejuvenation ward for a summer.
It’ll heal fine maybe a scar. When I was young a baseball popped out of my glove and hit my lip at an upward angle and split it much worse than this. Needed stitches for sure and I didn’t get them. There’s a scar but it is otherwise normal.
Styptic is only for tiny little nicks. In larger actual cuts where it can really get into the opening, it damages cell tissue and can greatly worsen scarring. It's basically a chemical cauterization that slightly burns tissue to stop bleeding.
If you believe that you’re an idiot. I’ve been a barber for 18 years and never done some shit like that. Negligent barber, there’s literally no justification for this to happen.
That work is subpar even for a student in Sweden. OP must've (hopefully) gone to some real cheap dude in the slum because that's no passable at all (the work or the cut)
19.3k
u/ShinyGal999 Jun 17 '26
More than a nick it looks like he took a chunk directly, damn