The Tale of the Toe

I guess about a month ago was the first time I heard Rachel say "my toe hurts."  I didn't allow that to occupy any part of my brain because I have many, many, many things to do and not enough room in my brain to store the reminder messages. 

I'm pretty sure I heard that phrase several times over the next week and a half but again, didn't give it the time of day.  I mean, she's a teenager and teenagers whine.  And quite frankly, I hear enough whining all day that I've learned to just tune out a lot. 

Then I came home from work one evening and was making an attempt to get a homework/chore update from Kevin and in the background I hear "I think I have an ingrown toenail."  For the love of everything, is she still whining about this?

"Fine, let me see your toe."  I'm sure I sneered or was sarcastic or condescending.  She propped her foot up on the table and there was the most angry looking pinky toe I've ever seen.

Side note...I've never seen an angry pinky toe before, but I'm sure if I had seen dozens, this still would have shocked me.

"What the heck?  Seriously?  That looks horrible!!"

And then ensued a 5 minute escalating match of words, with her being correct that I had ignored her pleas for help for almost two weeks.  I HATE it when the resident teenager is correct and I am wrong.  After many words, I put together that her pinky toenail (which isn't big anyway) had had a snag and as she had pulled the snag, it had yanked off more and deeper than she had planned.  Combine a mad, open cuticle with the grime of teenager feet....and wah-la.

So began a process of soaking the toe in epsom salt and watching it closely.  It was just swollen to the size of Rhode Island and red as an apple but once we started soaking, the red began to disapppear. Yea for us!!!

Then the next day, it began leaking.  Clear leakage, so we thought "okay, clearing out the infection" and again, yea for us!!!  What amazing homeopathic physicians we are.

She woke up the next day to this:

Please to excuse the grainy, unfocused iPhone photo.

Holy toenails, Batman, that looks...weird.  So I took the above iPhone photo and shot it off to Uncle Dr. AJ, the neurologist (because to me, "neurology" and "fix this problem" are interchangable).  Who initially told me to just keep soaking and watch it and by the way, what was that white ring around her toe?  I told him I thought it was the pus that was leaking and he had a minor texting freakout moment and told me to get her to the doctor for antibiotics asap if she wants to keep her toe.

Gah.  So here we are 10 days later.  Red is gone, the dead skin peeled away leaving pristine baby skin and the toenail?  Is still hanging on for dear life and fighting the odds of survival.  Actually, it's dead too so it's just a zombie toenail trying to keep a host.

See the zombie toenail?

Lessons learned?  Toenail clippers rather than pulling snags.  Listen to your kids when they whine.  Always have a doctor just a text away.  And no matter how level-headed your teenage girl is, do NOT, under any circumstances refer to her toe as a "troll toe" in a text to your neurologist family member - apparently even level-headed teenage girls have issues with troll toes.  Huh.