ahhhh....relief

I should have gone to the podiatrist weeks ago, rather than the urgent care, when my ingrown toenail got infected. The urgent care merely treated the infection, not the underlying cause, and left me in pain. I put up with it for a while, thinking it would get better, and then realized it wouldn't. Finally my husband told me to get in to see my podiatrist. When he says I should do something, I pay attention, because usually he minimizes these things (like the time that I broke my ankle and he said I was OK and questioned whether I really needed to go to the ER). But I had the race on Saturday, and really wanted to wait until my easy week to get it fixed. So I waited, in much pain. It didn't hurt too bad in the mornings, but at night the pain got severe, despite soaking in salt water, etc.

Today I finally got it fixed. My podiatrist took one look and said, "How long have you been sitting on this one?". Um, yeah...I was a bit embarrassed, but told him of the urgent care visit, the race, etc. He offered to do a little surgery to fix me up, and I was MORE than amenable. He would remove that side of my toenail (just a few mm), and treat the nail bed with 10% sodium hydroxide to prevent regrowth of the nail on that side, and then rinse with acetic acid to neutralize. Oh, and he also had to trim away some granuloma tissue that had grown in around the nail. He noticed that the nail was a bit loose, so I told him that I thought all this started from my black toenail last summer at the Seattle RNR marathon; the nail didn't fall off, but it was really loose on that side and when it grew out it just didn't do it right.

An hour after the procedure, I'm feeling great. Nothing like anesthetic to relieve the pain :). He said that when the anesthetic wears off I shouldn't have too much discomfort though, and I'm glad about that. I can resume normal activities right away, too. I hope to be back to racewalking by Thursday :).