revenge of the return of the toe

I don’t know how many readers have known me this long, but this is a story that starts way back in September 1996. (I may have written about it incidentally in re: the death of Becka Ozias Smith.)

I was working at the Children’s Museum of Tacoma, on a Sunday IIRC, with LKW; I was carrying the paper-cutter across the front office by the handle, the handle fell off, and the hinge hit me squarely in my right big toe. ow ow ow ow ow. LKW ran & got an icepack, and for a couple of days I just tried keeping it iced & grinning/bearing.

But after spending my birthday party (such as it was) with a bag of frozen peas on my foot, Greyson persuaded me to let him take me to the emergency room. The doc drilled through it (fun fact: I had on purple nail polish, and when they removed the polish, the nail itself was almost exactly the same color), they sent me home with neosporin & drugs, and that was that. It fell off not long after, and slowly grew back, although never quite the same.

The last few months, C’s been bugging me to go to the doctor about it, just because it looks kinda nasty. I’ve been putting it off, because it didn’t seem like that big a deal. But it has been …wiggly… lately, so I finally made the appointment.

Today I went, the doc looked at it, and said (a) it’s disconnected from the bed most of the way and (b) it has a fungal infection and (c) o by the way we could just take it off now. $deity help me, I said yes, and they walked me right over to the little mini-surgery room. 3 shots of numbing, he gave it an initial go, it still hurt, waited some more, yeah, still hurting, another shot, and then I was just weepy and didn’t know if it actually hurt or if I was just freaking over the pressure sensation. But then suddenly he was done, it was all wrapped up, and I was out the door.

It’s still numb right now, and while I haven’t looked, I think the toenail itself may still be on, but will pop off shortly. Then it’s antibiotic cream, and antifungal cream, and maybe this time it will come back in something closer to normal condition. In 6 months or so. Bleh.

I hope it’s not too sensitive for too long, because I am DESPERATE to get back on the bike after the last 2+ weeks of SNOWPOCALYPSE.

update: yep, he actually removed the whole toenail. ewwwww. and it still smarts something awful; I drove this morning, rather than biking or even walking the 3 blocks to the bus.