Ingrown Toenails

So as a kid, I had very bad ingrown toenails on both my big, big toes. The one on my left was okay, like it wasn't causing problems. The one on my right was severe. It was causing a lot of problems as a kid. And so they tried different treatments, didn't work. I ended up having two surgeries. So the first surgery, they took half of the toenail off, thinking that would solve the problem and then the toenail would grow back. Nope, still grew back the bad way, rubbed in, hurt and everything. So then they did another surgery and they took off the whole nail. So then I had no nail on it. And so that was frustrating as a kid because of course I was trying to get around on crutches with a bandaged leg and everybody was like, thought thinking I was faking it because my foot wasn't broken or sprained or whatever and trying to explain it to them when you're in grade like six. It's really hard to tell. Right now I still have them, but not bad like that.

So I've actually had three ingrown toenails. Two of them were pretty easy to fix. I had them done in America. They were great. The doctor was really easy and it was just fine. It's a little bit nasty when you, you can watch. I watched for part of it. He, you know, he numbs up your toe and it gets all big and puffy because of all the medicine in there and then you can't feel anything. And then he took these clippers and like dug them straight down the middle of my toenail, at least like straight down and then clipped it and pulled the nail out and I didn't feel anything. I'm very grateful for a numbing medication because that would have hurt a lot if it had been removed without any medication.

So growing up, I had pretty bad ingrown toenails. Every time I had to clip my nails when I was little, or my toenails, my mom had to do it, and she had these special tools, and it was just horrible. Sometimes there was blood, there was some screaming. Yeah, it was not fun at all. Luckily, we figured out once I got older, I don't know if it was just me getting older and my body changing as I grew up, but I have found a way where I never get ingrown toenails anymore at all. I think a lot of it that helped, at least for me, was cutting straight across instead of rounded, just for the way my toenails were shaped. That way, they grew up instead of into the skin, because that's what causes the ingrown toenail, and it's really painful, and it's not fun.

I had had ingrown toenails before my mission, but the most memorable one was definitely while I was serving an LDS mission in Africa. Just, you're walking all the time. You don't really have any other time to do anything because you're just preaching the gospel, so sometimes health isn't really your main concern. And if you leave it, just leave it be. A lot of the times, it can get infected and things like that, so I had to go to a medical doctor over there, and they just stuck a needle in me. It did some numbing, and it was kind of gross. I don't think they did a very good job, but the doctor just had to rip my toenail out and off clean. Like, no medical surgery where you can kind of clip it in a way that doesn't hurt. He just ripped it off.

So another personal experience I had when I was getting my ingrown toenail removed was in Bosnia. I needed it removed because it hurt to walk and that's I would walk around everywhere I went so I needed to get it removed. I was directed to this doctor and he didn't want to do it but I was like no you need to do this because I can't move and that's just how I learned to work with the people is I would tell them like no you need to do this I know you don't want to but do it please. So he eventually did it and then he used a scalpel instead of clippers and it was numb enough that I couldn't feel any pain but I could feel him slicing and cutting and everything and it was really really just disgusting to feel the knife cut through me but not feel the pain and then after the surgery I found out that he was like a stomach doctor and that he didn't even do ingrown toenails so I felt kind of silly afterwards.