Had a Little Work Done

This may be TMI, but a tale definitely worth telling.

I had an infected, ingrown toe nail. I know, disgusting! I’m pretty sure I picked it up from a nail salon in town. I tried to self medicate and did many a soaks in Epson salts. To no avail, it was getting worse, so I made an appointment with a podiatrist.

I went into the doc’s office thinking he’ll fix me up, clean out the gunk and I’d be on my way with an antibiotic cream or something… no, no, no. That’s not how it happened at all! He proceeds to tell me that he has to remove the entire left side of my toe nail. WHAT?! Are you kidding me? Now, I’m not squeamish – I’ve seen it all! Heck, I’ve been through a lot myself with several broken bones and a partial finer amputation. So you’d think I could handle a little in office procedure. But when it comes to feet and nails – I am a completely different person. It just skeeves me out at the mere thought of lifting up a nail… oh… I just got the shivers.

The doc assures me that it won’t hurt a bit. He’ll numb me up and I won’t feel a thing. Well, what he didn’t tell me is that he was going to jab me countless times, injecting this numbing medication deep into my foot that burns really bad. It was awful. I think I may have screamed at one point. The nurse comes over to me and says, “breath honey, breath” I wanted to tell her to get lost, she’s not the one getting her foot stuck like a pin cushion!

Once I was good and numb – I couldn’t watch. I literally covered my eyes. I’m pretty sure that he just cut up the side of my nail and ripped it off! I can’t even write about it with out feeling sick.

When all was said and done, he wraps my toe and asks me if I like modern art. Thinking to myself, what the hell is this guy asking me this for, now! After what he just put me through?

All I could muster was, “no… not really.”

“Well how about faces?” he says.

He gets out his blue marker and proceeds to draw a smiley face on my big bandaged toe. I couldn’t help but laugh. And I think that was his intention.

On the way out, I had to make an appointment and the ladies at the desk were looking at me a little funny. So I said, yes, that was me – the screamer in room 2. We all started laughing. I needed that!

So the lesson of today, to avoid horrific, medieval torture - make sure you cut your toe nails straight across and be wary of seedy looking nail salons.