The Decroded Toe Saga Ends

Guess what, guess what!!!!!

My decroded toenail has FINALLY FALLEN OFF! (Well, it didn't really fall off, but it's off now, whatever way you look at it.)

If you have missed previous posts about said toenail, you can read about it here, here, here, here, and here. (Or you could just do a label search for "decroded toe; that might be easier.) It's fascinating.

Anyway, yesterday we were doing Ken's roof. It was hot, horrible and altogether unpleasant, but Joey wanted me to help him because his "morale was low". (His mom said it was just because he wanted me to get up there with my short shorts on, which was probably more accurate.)

I threw shingles at the boys for three hours before Deanine and Nancy (my mother in law) took me to Cosco with them. I was really wilty because of how hot and sweaty I had been previously, so I mostly just wandered around the aisles and looked for samples while they shopped.

The weirdest sample I got was a hunk of Parmesan cheese...all by itself. Parmesan is not a flavor I'm going to choose to eat all by itself again. It's good on salad, but not when it's the only thing in my mouth. Ugh.

So after we went to Cosco we headed back to swim and loaf around for the evening. I swammed around for probably half an hour, until I started getting raisin fingers. (Swimming is great, but as soon as the fingers get wrinkly, it's time to get out.)

I'm not sure if it was the water, the tennis shoes I wore up on the roof all day, or what it was, but something Very Strange had happened to my decroded toenail. It's so disgusting I'm really not going to try to explain it to you, either. Just know that my toenail was looking longer than normal because some things had come apart on it.

But it was still attached.

I made my mother in law take a picture of it (probably against her will, it was really disgusting) and I'll attempt to post it later, when I get it. I then decided that I was going to pull off the toenail.
"I'm going to watch!" Joey said, and zoomed over to sit next to me.

"Eww." He said, when he saw what it was doing.

"I know, it's disgusting," I said, slooooowly pulling the nail away. There was no feeling at all, but it was still creeping me out. "AAAAUGH, I can't do it. It's so gross!"

Fortunately for me, there were three nurses present. One of them went to get some tweezers. She sat down in front of me and poked around the toenail for awhile. Then she said, "It's only slightly attached by a little bit of skin. I'm going to pull on three -- ready?"
I nodded.

"One, two--" She pulled on two, not three.

I jumped.

There was no pain, which was great. She held the toenail in the tweezers and got up to go throw it away.

"WAIT!" I stopped her. "I, um, need that still."

"You need this?" She gestured to the nasty, oozy toenail she was holding.

"Yes...Ineedtomailittothekid," I mumbled. "Can I have a baggie?"

She looked at me Very Oddly (and, frankly, I don't blame her) and fetched a baggie from the kitchen. I deposited the disgusting blackness into it and happily put it in my purse. Then I decided to look at my toe again.

"It's bald!" I crowed, happily. It was so nice to have that hulky black thing off my foot.


Later that evening I was sitting, looking at my toe when I had a very pleasant revelation.

"Joey! My toe looks sort of like Grandpa Richardson's fingers!"

"What?" He was not following me.

"The ones that got caught in the saw? I always thought they were super cool because they were shorter than the others. A couple of them grew back partial nails and they looked exactly like my toenail. So I may never have a normal toenail again, but that's fine because it's my Grandpa Richardson toe."

So I happily fell asleep thinking about my grandpa tuning pianos and playing The Piano Tuning Song (which, he always told me, was the only song he knew so it was the only one he could play for me) with his special hands.

Retraction...unfortunately

So my toe's not broken. Disgustingly black and decroded, but not broken.

I know this because when I was at the chiropractor this evening my rehab therapist glanced down, saw the lovely tape job I had done and said, "What did you do to your toe?"

"Busted it or something," I said.

"We should take a shot of it," she said.

All I heard was "take a shot" and thought she meant a shot-shot...like with a needle.

"Um, that's OK....." I said.

"No, I'll go tell Doc and then we'll go in the other room. Just one film is all we'll need to tell if it's broken."

Oh, an X-ray. I can handle that.

So I took off the tape and showed her the black nastiness.

"Wow, that's...gross," she said.

And it is.

We "took the shot" and she ran into the darkroom to develop it. The chiropractor took a look at my toe while we waited for the film to be developed. I told him it didn't hurt much at all anymore, which it doesn't. (Unless I jam it into The Kid's duffle bag, which I did on Monday.)

The X-ray came back quite conclusive: it ain't broken.

I did jam it and have some kind of contusion something-or-other in the nail, but I don't know what that means. My chiro said I might want to poke a hole in the nail to relieve some of the pressure.

I wanted to tell him to poke a hole in his toe to relieve some of the pressure, but I wisely held my tongue.

I'm ain't poking no holes in my toenail, decroded or otherwise. That's insanity. And sounds really painful.

And, so, Joey was right all along. My toe was never broken (although it hurt like a banshee) and I still have never broken any bones. Life seems a bit bleak with this new revelation.

My Decroded Toe

Joey and I were bemoaning the loss of our camera last night as we were examining my nasty toe that I "broke" when I was at my parents two weeks ago.

"That thing's disgusting." Joey moved my toe around to get the Full Affect.

"The toenail's getting super long and starting to poke me," I said, awkwardly holding my foot up by my face.

"Let me see!"

I showed him. "See? It was getting longish when I wounded myself, and that was over two weeks ago. It's almost long enough to be classified as a claw."

He wasn't convinced that it was yet at the claw-like stage, but it's on MY foot and I know when my toe's becoming a claw.

"Do you think I can clip it?" I asked, gingerly poking the nail to see if it caused excruciating pain.

"Yes!" Joey jumped off the bed and ran into the bathroom for the nail clippers. He had them poised and ready to go when he came dashing back into the room.

"Um, can I do it?" I asked, holding my hand out for the clippers.

"Sure..." He replied.

I attempted my first clip. It was pain free.

I attempted my second clip. Also pain free.

I attempted a third clip (the nail still seemed rather long) and realized that I was unable to do so.

The black area surrounding my toenail has apparently hardened. I cannot cut my nail any shorter.

"Joey! I think the end of my toe is malfunctioning!" I wailed, poking the hard, black area that took up a substantial portion of the end of my toe.

"You're OK, my fingernail did this too when I slammed it in the door." He comforted.

"But....but....my entire toenail and the area around it is black and hard!" I wailed. "I need to go to the doctor!"

"No you don't, you'll be OK. It just needs to grow out and fall off." He soothed.

"But when I slammed my finger in the car door when I was a kid I had to go to the doctor. They poked a hole in my fingernail and then the nail fell off..." I shuddered at the memory.

"Was the nail black?" Joey asked.

"I don't remember; I was five. I just know it hurt really bad."

"Oh."

We looked at my toe in its black, decroded grossness. I poked it a few more times for good measure, then sighed and flopped back on the bed.

"I'm calling the doctor tomorrow," I mumbled.

The Disgusting Picture of My Toe

So my toe is pretty disgusting looking. Under normal circumstances it's not really that beautiful (I'd never be a toe model) but currently it looks like the end is going to fall off.

Oh, and the white spots on my feet aren't, like, mold or anything like that; we painted a couple days ago and I can't get the paint off my feet because it tickles too bad. So I'm just waiting for it to wear off.

So here's my toe. Enjoy.

Update on the toe...

So, unfortunately, my toe may not be broken after all. I mean, it hurts like a banshee but...it's hard to tell.

We went to a few stores today and I tried a tennis shoe for the first time since Tuesday. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I couldn't really walk at all, so I got to ride around in one of those motorized carts.

In three separate stores!

It was seriously cool. (Target has the best one because it stops the most smoothly.)

But...my toe is starting to feel better. I can walk without limping too badly (unless I have a closed shoe on) and the pain is starting to decrease. What concerns me is the fact that the entire area surrounding my toenail is turning black.

BLACK.

The toenail has been purple since Tuesday, but this blackness I just noticed today. I'm concerned that my toe is going to fall off or something. The Brothers In Law tell me it looks like gangrene and that I'm probably going to lose my entire foot.

I choose to ignore them.

But if my toenail does fall off and the end of my toe remains black and dead-looking, I may freak out the people I work with.

I Broke My Toe

We were having Mothers/Fathers Day this evening since all us kids were on holiday from our Diaspora. We had just given Pops his new rockets (yay!) and Mom was getting ready to open her present when Andrew started making strange shouting noises directed at the living room.

Henry was sitting on the couch proudly (I guess dogs aren't allowed on furniture at Mom and Dad's) and Ernie (The Kid's dog) was sitting pitifully on the ground, looking up at Henry.

Andrew's shouting was directed at Henry. Because everyone knows that bellowing sounds make dogs get off furniture.

Since Henry wasn't getting off the couch, I went over to get him off. I picked up his furry little body and bounced back over to the dining room.

The living room is one of those sunken ones, so it's got one stone step in between it and the dining room. As I bounced along, I underestimated the appropriate height of my bounce up into the dining room and caught my pinkie toe on the stone step.

Crunch.

"AAAAAUGH!" I screamed, and dropped the dog.

We had just spent the last half hour discussing gory and disgusting stories, half for our dinner edification and half to gross dad out. So me crunching my toe on the step was real fashionable. Everyone at the table was silent for a second and then erupted into discussion a moment later.

"I think I ripped off my toenail!" I wailed.

Andrew shot off his chair and ran upstairs. Sister crouched down beside me and said, "Let me see, let me see". Joey hovered around above me. Pops said, "Oh man, I hope it's not broken", and "If you're bleeding, get off the carpet" and other motivational things.

I scooched myself over to the wood floor where we surveyed the damage.

For those of you who have been unfortunate enough to see my pinkie toe, perhaps you will recall that I have the sorriest excuse for a pinkie toenail. It's really small and Joey makes fun of it whenever he can. (Meanie.)

The nail isn't ripped off, but it's longer than it used to be and a strange greenish/purpleish color at the base. And there was no blood, which was a disappointment.

Andrew reappeared carrying two boxes of bandaids, hydrogen peroxide, and rubbing alcohol.

"I didn't know which to grab," he explained, and set all his loot down on the kitchen table. "And I couldn't find any cotton balls."

I was still wailing (as any self respecting woman would do) and Joey sat down and made me show him my toe. "Can you move it?" I wiggled it up and down.

"It's not broken," he said.

"Is too!" I wailed. "I've never had a broken bone. It's the very end that's broken."

"It's not broken," Pops weighed in from the dining room. He's the expert on broken toes because he just broke his a couple weeks ago.

"Is too!" I reiterated. "It's all swollen and purpley-like."

And, thus, I maintain that I broke my toe. It hurts like a banshee, it's all plump and swollen and, while I can move it, it's the end of it that really hurts. So I probably broke the end off or something logical like that.

Gross.