Saturday, April 15, 2017

blood and gore

I don't recall if, in over 1,300 posts, I've ever posted a yucky picture of a body part. (I happily specialize in beautiful food and bicycles.) Well, why not? First time for everything, right?

Here is what I had done yesterday:


The technical name, like many things in medicine, makes it sound abstract (or at least not so yucky): ablation. The reality is that the doctor (in this case, my wonderful smalltown family practice doc) cuts out half (or sometimes all) of your toenail to fix a constantly ingrown toenail.

I first had this done on the other big toe when I was 19, and it took three months to get an appointment with a podiatrist at Kaiser, and hurt like hell. A week ago when I went in for a tetanus shot (gored my leg on rusty barb wire while hiking in the West Virginia woods) my doctor was like "yeah, sure, I can do that. Do you want a full ablation or just half?" The procedure yesterday didn't hurt at all.

So anyway, this is what it looks like when you get half of your big toenail cut out.

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