Zombie Toe

Illness and computer problems...and grad school...got in the way of my posting. But since no one really READS this blog but me, that's okay!

About two months ago now, I wore an adorable pair of shoes to work. I bought these shoes for the play, and had no trouble with them.



Cute, right?! Now, I have feet which are not properly shaped. My second toe is very long, and the first toe curves in and under the second to the point that over the years, the inner part of my big toe has been flattened. A couple of doctors spoke to me about breaking the foot and resetting the toes, but I said no thanks. Additionally, the nails on my big toes and next-to-pinky toes grow upward at an angle rather than lying flat. This makes finding shoes very difficult. I was excited I'd been able to wear these.

Then I wore them to work.

And this happened.



It turns out this is a condition called "Black Toenail." A bruise forms underneath the toenail. Like so.



I took these pictures to gross out my friend Cassandra, because that's the kind of awesome friend I am.

So I read up on this condition, and it turns out that sometimes the trapped blood and bruising can cause the toenail to lose its connection to the toe. I kept an eye on mine, and began to notice last month that my right toenail was getting...loose.



I've been very nice to it, but it kept getting worse. This actually surprised me for two reasons. First, I would have thought my monkey-like second toe would suffer the most from pressure, but it's the big toes. Second, because my left foot is almost half a size bigger than my right. I'd've thought that one would get the worst of the deal. Lefty, however, looks a bit funky but is still solidly connected.

Here is Righty a week ago. It was wiggling a bit like a loose tooth.



And then this afternoon, I took off my shoe, and this greeted me.



Nice.

I went to get some gauze to wrap it up, but in the process the darn thing fell off. So now I have the perfect toe for Halloween!



Please ignore the dirtiness of my feet. The black is actually from the shoes I was wearing.

Zombie Toe eats the nails of healthy toes. "Naaaails! Must have naaails!"

Alternately, I could compare this to Tom Sawyer's "mortified toe."

At the very bottom there is new nail growth, which is what caused the old nail to finally give in and fall off. There's bits of old nail stuck on here and there, but it's not at all sore. I'm still going to wrap it, though. Research indicates it'll be 6 months - a year before I have a normal looking toenail growing there.

So there is my totally gross nail story. Saved on the internet for posterity.