I had my big toe toenails removed three times. Once on my right foot and twice on my left.
If done properly it works really well and your nail grows straight and won’t get infected ever again, if done improperly then you nail grows later after layer up instead of out but never gets infected again.
They let you cut down along the edge. Cut straight down, as far as you can, then yank out the piece by the root (yes, ouch). Over time, the nail will stop growing along the edge. I can’t tell you how long it takes, I don’t remember. It wasn’t that long, I did it decades ago. It’s a permanent solution.
Do those have a special name? I wanna try
Never had this problem. I have that annoying little nail splitting out from my little toe. Gets snagged on socks all the time.
Same, I’ve never had this happen either. I only used to get the splitting in my hands but it hasn’t happened in a long while and I suspect it was because of the cold.
I just looked it up. We’re freaks with a 6th nail! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_nail_of_the_fifth_toe
Huh! TIL. I had that for years and years on both feet, then one day it snagged on a pair of jeans as I was putting them on and the one on my right foot got ripped out. Hurt like crazy and bled like you wouldn’t believe. Still have the left one, but the right never grew back. Always wondered why, and I guess the answer is it had its own nail bed and I ripped that out
Well now you’ve given me ideas! I hate these things. They’re ok untill suddenly and unexpectedly they’re not!
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Horse
Looking sus.
TIHI
No
Footernail
This is so disturbing lol 😵💫
Why does this even happen?
This happened to me when I used to trim the nail too short. That let the nail dig into the skin and caused all the issues. After letting it grow out long enough that the nail wasn’t able to dig into the skin did the problem go away. It’s a little weird looking having longer big toe nails but it beats the pain of accidentally stubbing your toe and living in agony.
Any damage to the nail can cause it to do this. I broke my toe and after it healed I started having this problem, probably because the nail bed got disrupted when the toe got broken.
this stopped happening to me when i heard i shouldn’t round the edges of the nail when cutting them
For me, the only thing that really fixed it was surgery :/
Okay I’m going to try that
That’s so counter intuitive. Like, the things at the sides are those that hurt you. But as long as you let them do their thing it’s fine.
You see I have heard this multiple times and read it online too, nonetheless I had to ask my pedicurist to round my toenails, otherwise by next day it’s in my flesh and hurts.
I try to even clip mine into a bit of a V (but very subtle; ~10°). Had a friend teach me that in college. It feels weird for a day or two but I haven’t had ingrown nails since.
You’re lucky, I’ve never done that and still get them.
For me it stopped when covid hit and I started working from home. I am barefoot 90% of the time.
My back pain has also gone since then.
Being barefoot (specifically not even wearing socks) for some of the day actually made a noticable improvement on a few funky things about my feet that bothered me. So maybe those weird toe shoe people were onto something after all…
I don’t think they were on the right track, lol. Those things always stank.
I think the main part of the barefoot benefit is the neural feedback from being able to feel with your feet. The many many muscles in your foot and legs can make the micro adjustments they cant do when in a shoe.
It’s sort of like wearing gloves, sure you can type on a keyboard or write with a pen, but you are going to do a lot better when your fingers can feel directly.
For me it’s cutting the big toenail too short. I cut it straight across on the inside edge. Leaving about 1/8-1/4 inch of white. Toe builds a callous under it that never goes away. If i cut it short it hurts for a month.
I had a lot of trouble with this and in my case I just have weirdly curved nails. Viewed from the front my big toe nails are basically half-circles, so any pressure at all pushes them edge first into my toe.
Shoes.
shoes and stuff. but maybe festering ingrown toenails just killed a certain percent of the population until modern times. how did prehistoric humans trim their toenails anyway? did they chew it off?
Like most claws from animals they’d probably just wear down naturally.
Luckily I ripped my toenail’s arms off, so he can’t pull this shit.
how do I perform this
OP might be talking about a procedure where a podiatrist or dermatologist kills the mis-growing edges of the nail root. The remaining root grows a narrower nail, but hopefully a straighter one. Sometimes the process doesn’t work the first time (hard to judge how much cell-kill stuff will get just the edges and not damage the middle) and has to be repeated.
Do not rip a toenail’s arms off. Only a paid professional toenail armripper should perform the procedure.
If you hit it hard enough you will lose the toenail. Normally this does also break and or fracture the digit.
Or you could soak it in prescription strength urea for a couple of days to get the nail to fall off. Less collateral damage that way.
what about amputation
While getting it taken taken care of by a doctor is the more prudent option, the cotton trick can temporarily help in the meantime.
You pull a small strip of cotton about 2.5cm long from a cotton ball and stuff it under your nail, as if you were flossing your nail, with the ends of the cotton acting as a sort of cushion and softening the edges of the nail. You would then use a bandaid to keep it in place for the day. (also, you should use some antibiotic ointment before stuffing in the cotton if you have any broken/torn skin)
Again, it’s only a temporary solution, but it really does help with the pain.
This also helps if you have short nails, and just want to make sure it doesn’t grow in before the nail gets longer again. Can raise the nail up enough that it will grow out forward without cutting in, then you can make sure you clip it properly so it isn’t rounded at the edges, and it can sometimes stop it from growing in later.
my fingers do this all the freaking time and i hate it :(
I’ve had those and it sucks. Had to go to a doctor.
Thanks, I hate it.
To anyone who gets this:
do not let the podiatrist convince you to do the partial removal. Ask your podiatrist if a full nail avulsion could be preferable to a partial avulsion if minimizing chance of reoccurence is the most important factor to you. Ie, removing a tiny strip from one or both sides of the nail. It is HIGHLY likely it will get bad again. Have them do a full phenol cauterization and remove the entire nail. You dont need it, and you’ll be better off without it. However, I’m no doctor.gives medical advice explicitly in opposition to a hypothetical doctor
says they’re not qualified to give medical advice because they’re not a doctor
leaves
Your personal experiences with procedures are valid, fam, you can just say it didn’t do you or a friend any good and you wish you’d done something else instead.
Personally I love it when people who are not my doctor offer me specific, actionable medical advice. Especially so when it entails surgery to permanently remove my body parts
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Fair, edited to bring the final choice back to podiatrist.
i went to a surgeon with mine, he just cut stuff out. didnt even mention the existence of cauterization. so y’know, depends on the doctor you find.
i suffered along for a while more until i found out about it. had to go to a private clinic and pay a lot of money for it, of course, but so far it seems to have worked. we’ll see. i’ll consider it fixed if i go a whole year without problems. i’m at 6ish months atm.
Also anecodtal: I had the procedure you’re describing and it worked for me. Ignoring your podiatrist is bad advice
I also had that procedure where the doctor only removes the affected part of the toenail. That was over a decade ago and I’ve never had the issue reoccur; and I still have my toenail.
I’ve also had the same procedure before, three times (on different parts of nails, obviously) and it’s worked every time.
I had it done once when I was still a child, and the issue reoccurred. No issues for more than a decade from the ones I had as an adult though.
On the flip side, I had partial nail removal on two toes each side, and haven’t had any issues in 20 years. Procedure was quick, mostly painless, and the relief was immediate. I was playing soccer 3 days later.
If you want to ask about a full removal, go for it, but be open to professional advice.
Oh, if you add phenol the nail won’t grow out again?
Yeah the science is above my head but I believe usually after they rip out the nail (be it whole nail or a strip), they will apply a cotton ball of phenol to the bed and that is supposed to stop the nail from coming back. It failed to do so 3 times in my case, albeit on two different toes.
It’s chemical cauterization. The phenol kills the cells responsible for growing new nail.
you can probably get away with having a strip cut out, as long as they cauterize the matrix. just cutting a strip out is useless, it’ll grow back exactly the same.
alternatively, just reach in there with a pokey thing and pull that fucking nail out. about once every month or two. forever. yum. ask me how i know.
