okay, that's not true. My foot looked MUCH WORSE than that, but I don't feel right subjecting you to some of the photos I saw when i searched "ingrown toenails".
That's what it turns out I had. My toenail had become ingrown, and then got INFECTED. I chose to capitalize INFECTED because my toe was really fucking infected. In fact when we went to see Dr.Henry(Does anyone else remember a cartoon PSA series called "H.E.L.P.! Dr. Henry's Emergency Lessons For People!" ? -That runs through my head every time I think about Dr. Henry. In fact, at the time, I used to say " Doctor Henry's Emergency Lessons For People" whenever we would mention him. Okay, enough of that.), he told me that if we had waited much longer, the infection might have reached the bone, and then I would have lost my toe. YIKES !!!
Thankfully, I was not going to lose my toe. However, I was going to have to lose the root of the nail on the right side of my right big toe. Without removing the root, it would probably just keep growing back under the skin. Yick.
Before Dr. Henry("H.E.L.P. Dr. Henry's Emergency Lessons For People !!") could do the operation, we had to rid the toe of infection. I started taking antibiotics,and I was told to soak my foot in VERY DILUTED bleach. Would you like to know what would happen if the bleach wasn't diluted enough ? Funny story...It would BURN your foot. Good times, good times. I sensed that maybe something was going wrong, but you see, i was always a wuss, so my parents just thought I was complaining because the water was too hot. Oh no, the skin was being BURNED off of the top of my foot. oh well, at least it gave me something for show and tell in Health Class on Monday.
Anyway, so the infection is under control, so we go to see Dr. Henry(H....No, I won't do it again, but rest assured, I'm saying it out loud as I'm typing this), and he preps me for surgery. this includes putting a little curtain up across my knee, so that I can't see my foot. this means I can't watch the surgery. I voice my concerns about this, but Dr. Henry stands firm, and tells me that I don't want to see it.The surgery goes well, and I return home. I am given some painkillers that i am supposed to take every 4 hours. I take one at 10:00 p.m. and go to bed, figuring that I'll sleep through the night and take the next one in the morning.
Oh no. At 2 a.m. sharp, I sit bolt upright in bed, bathed in sweat,with STABBING pains in my toe. I crawl/limp my way down the stairs and take another painkiller. Slowly, the pain subsides, and I fall back to sleep.
The next day, I get to start wearing my new "shoe"... I placed shoe i n quotation marks because it is actually a wooden block with two pieces of canvas stapled to it, that tie in the center. That's a fun one to go to school in as a teenager, I'll tell you what.
Well, that's the tale. I really don't have much to add. I guess it's kind of anti-climactic. I did have the same procedure done on my third toe on my right foot a few months ago, but with that one, the just burned away the root of the nail with some acid thing- I guess if there had been more bleach in the water I soaked my foot in, the first surgery may have been unnecessary.
Here's what my toe looks like now...
It's a god-awful picture of a fugly foot, but if you look at the base of the nail on the right side of my big toe, you can kinda see the scar. Pretty manly and sexy, isn't it ? It kinda reminds you of the scar on Harrison Ford's chin, doesn't it ? Sure it does.
So, there's your story, Feral Mom.
