Okay, I know, see a doctor. The doctor thing might be a little difficult right now, though, and I’d like to know if this is likely to be something that could wait a while or the dangerous kind of thing I need to have looked at pronto.
I’ve had my toenails polished for, I dunno, pretty much ages. I usually let them rest a day or two between polishing, but the polish stays on for a long, long time until it grows half-off from my big toes and usually all the way off from the little ones. Sometimes I do them myself at home, and sometimes I go out and get a pedicure. I don’t come into contact really with things like communal shower floors. I don’t put my feet away wet. I do walk around barefoot in the house and wear sandals in the summer.
A few days ago when I went to put my sock on my left foot, a sizeable chunk of my big toenail on that foot sort of… crumbled. It was polished, recall, so if there was an obvious break in it already I didn’t see it (the color was Taupeless Showgirls, if that has any bearing besides the snicker-value). It was something like a scant eigth of the nail - a diagonal “crumble” of that corner, which I then had to remove from the right “side” of the nail - it didn’t stick to the flat part really, only the side. Now, the nail on that toe has always been a little odd - the top right bit sort of has an extreme curve to it once it hits the “side” of the nail, it isn’t ingrown but it’s a little painful to really poke around at, like the nail people do sometimes. No idea if that’s related, it’s the “crumbling” sort of break that I’m concerned about.
So I yelped and swore and all sorts of things, removed the loose bit, clipped the top so it wouldn’t snag on my socks, and removed the polish. Both that toe and my other big toe as well as the tips of a few other toes have these odd little white patches on them. They also seem kind of… porous, maybe? The white areas (some of them look almost like wear patterns that follow the ridges, some are more like spots) are mostly towards the top of the nail (meaning where the polish still was). There’s no change in texture between a white bit and an adjacent normal bit. Also no noticeable smell.
I don’t think it’s fungus - it isn’t yellow, it doesn’t look like the pictures of fungus I’ve found. Could it be just weakness from not letting the nail really breathe between polishing? Could it be some dreadful toenail disease? WebMD hasn’t been very helpful (except for fungus pictures.) I know nobody can diagnose me over the Internet, but I’d like to hear some opinions on what it could be and how I might know that.
Thanks!
