There’s no Business like Toe Business

Dear God.

I’ve survived the most traumatic medical experience of my life.

I’m now down one toe.

And when I say, toe, I mean TOE toe. The big one.

Ok, ok. It’s just the toe nail.

Ok–it’s just half the toe nail, but still. Traumatic.

More traumatic than violently vomiting in a KFC bathroom with the stomach flu and drinking Smecta. More traumatic than getting that thing removed from my back. More traumatic than holding Nick’s hand as the doctor fisted his leg with a triple XL Q-tip full of iodine.

If you read my blog or keep up with my life (and really who doesn’t? ahm ahm), then you’ll know that after surfing two weeks ago, I developed a pretty nasty toe infection. This thing started like your normal ingrown toenail-type infection, swollen red area, a bit of puss, throbbing pain–this is what having a minor cut in Taiwan will do to you–it’s the water, it’s normal.

Anyway. I let two weeks go by. I don’t like going to the doctor (especially here) and every morning I woke up thinking it felt better, only to not walk properly on it and think it was getting even worse by the end of the day.

This goes on and on until I realize that we’re going to Bali next Saturday and I don’t want to be trying to surf with this absurd thing I’m calling a toe.

So here it is, Sunday evening and I decide that it’s finally time to go to the Doctor, which means the ER because nothing else is open. The good news is it’s, like, one minute away from our apartment. Woo hoo.

When we got to see the doctor, we sat down and he said it was severely infected and that antibiotics should take care of it. Then he called over another one who said they had to cut it off for it to heal. They called over a third doctor who agreed with Doctor #2. They said if I wanted it to heal within the next three weeks, I needed to get the nail out of it. So..with Bali on the short horizon, I agreed.

Then we went into the “operating room”.

It’s the Taiwanese ER in an old hospital, so the Operating Room is more like an eerily lit storage room with an old bed that looks like it was pulled out of Bedlam Insane Asylum. Old scary equipment, ancient defibrillators, lights that look like something out of a Tim Burton movie, and mad scientist-esque tools waiting their turn on the metal table beside the “bed” filled the room.

Doc #3 came in and he said he’d give me a local for the pain and then begin.

I was nervously laughing about the shot–I wasn’t looking forward to it. After all, this was my big toe–a local shot means you get it in the toe and frankly, there’s not a lot of get to be gotten on big toes. It’s just bone and skin, baby.

So he started by dabbing me with iodine, which stung at the time, but looking back, it was like a friendly tickle compared to what happened next.

I had bunkered down and braced myself for the shot(s) with all of a sudden the Doctor jams the needle into my big toe nail cuticle, while using my infected area as a leverage point.

Like I said before, toes don’t have a lot of get to be got. Look at where your skin meets your toenail. Do it, right now. Really look at that spot. Give it a little pressure with a pencil or your fingernail and notice it’s sensitivity. Now get an ice pick and jam it down into the cuticle–not once, not twice, but three times. Make sure you pick three different places, to really maximize the pain factor.

I’d like to say that is the end of the pain, but it’s not. The doctor neglected to tell me that the anesthesia’s purpose was for “post-op” and not the actual “removal”, which would occur before it could even begin to kick in (it takes a few minutes). So, without a moment’s delay, he grabbed the medical scissors and CUT MY BIG TOENAIL IN HALF.

NO ANESTHETIC!

As I was writhing in pain, uncontrollable tears streaming down my face, Nick was holding my hand, looking at my toe with a utterly horrified look on his face.

Then came the tweezers that he used to not once, but twice rip the still-attached, still full-of-feeling toe nail right outta its peaceful bed. I was pretty much screaming, curled up in as much as a fetal position that I could physically achieve at this point.

Then he said, “All done”, jammed some gel on it, spent five minutes wrapping it up like the Christmas Present from Hell and had Nick squeeze it for another five minutes to stop the profuse bleeding.

I was twitching on the hospital bed, unable to really speak or think and trying not to cry–not just out of pain, but that was a darn scary experience–right out of left field.

The doctor wrote me a prescription for a painkiller and antibiotic gel and then sent me on my way.

I’m so, so, so, so glad Nick was here for me on this (though he always is!) and that he held my hand and sympathized during that terrorizing ordeal.

I have to wash and re-wrap twice a day, but hopefully this will heal well enough for my to get in the water by next Sunday–we are going on a surf vacation after all! I would be pretty sad if I didn’t get to surf on it!

So that’s my story. Have you ever had a scary/traumatic hospital experience at home or abroad? I want to hear about it!

****EDIT

Either check the comments for the link or click on the right-hand side link of “Ryan and Leslie in the Gambia” for Ryan’s story.  It’s hilariously (terrifyingly?) similar.