Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Three Bad Toes

About a year and a half ago, Maggie started complaining about the big toe on her left foot.  She had banged it on something but it just kept bothering her.  The nail looked weird (my medical term) and we mentioned it at her next physical.  The doctor was like "Oh my!" which never bodes well, and said it looked like a wart under her nail and that we should treat it at home with wart remover.  We did that for a while, and it seemed better, but then got worse when we stopped the treatments.  Meanwhile, Maggie is our clumsiest kid (her words, not mine) and would constantly bang her BAD TOE and drop things on her BAD TOE or someone would step on her BAD TOE and she would literally fall in a heap crying about her BAD TOE.  It even became a joke in her classroom because everybody knew about the BAD TOE she would always hit and then fall down in pain, and her friends started using it as a phrase when something went wrong, like a G rated version of an expletive.  "Oh my bad toe!"  Anyway, we decided to take her to a foot doctor.  The foot doctor took one look at it, said "I see this all the time" and gave her a prescription for a cream to put on it.  I honestly can't even remember what the diagnosis ended up being, but after a while of putting the cream on her bad toe, her bad toe got better and grew up to be a good toe.  We had spent a long time with her bad toe and we like to reminisce about it from time to time and laugh at all the toe drama.

But then.

We were packing up the van to head home from our vacation in New Hampshire, and I asked Alexander to take the dog out to "do her duty" before we all got in the van.  The dog came out the door on the leash with Alexander, saw us packing up the van across the parking lot, and ran for us.  Xander ended up tripping and falling and the door closed on his toe (he was wearing flip flops).  Poor kid was bruised and banged up, and each day the toenail on his bad toe got a little darker and looser and eventually fell off.  So now Xander has the bad toe with no toenail, which he thinks is really cool, as a 9-year-old boy would.  We all like to ask him about his BAD TOE, especially Maggie who was the original owner.

Please tell us the toe drama ends there Colleen!  
Reread the title my friends.  
There were three.

And I was the unlucky recipient of that third bad toe.  I think it began when I got a pedicure in July.  I love getting two pedicures per year.  One in the spring, as soon as I can wear open-toed shoes, and one in the summer when that spring one looks terrible.  Anyway, about a week or two later, I felt pain on one of my toenails.  More like pressure.  I cut the nail, thinking maybe the corner of the nail was digging into my toe, causing pain when I saw a growth under my nail and ran to Maggie to have her officially diagnose me with BAD TOE disease.  She confirmed the case. I started the at-home wart treatment, after Dr. Phil googled it and it did seem to get better.  The pressure released and there was no pain.  But then the toenail started to get loose and I freaked out a bit.  

You're welcome for the far away shot ;)

I made an appointment with the foot doctor, who looked at it, said he wanted to cut a small piece of my toenail to get a better look at what was underneath, then stated my toenail was dead and he was going to just cut a big chunk off.  He did, and it didn't hurt, and then he scraped away some old skin and said "Well, whatever it was, it's gone!" I paid a copay for that?!?!  Haha, I was just glad it was nothing serious.  He said it probably was a wart, and that I should soak my toe, and put Vicks vapor rub on it a few nights in a row to help the nail grow back healthy.  Isn't that strange?  I guess it kills any fungus that might grow.  So now Xander and I have matchy matchy no-nail toes, which we both think is kinda cool.  Hopefully, the BAD TOE saga is like baseball strikes, and now that we've had three, we're done.

2 comments:

  1. That's a lot of bad toe stories for one family - but I guess your family does have a lot of toes so the odds are in your favor!? Hopefully your toenail grows back in time for next spring's new pedicure!

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  2. I feel like Three Bad Toes is a children's book waiting to happen. I don't know what the plot is, but it just seems like there's a tale there. I am glad that your toes will all recover well!

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