Hi all! First let me hang my head in shame 'cause this is gross. Apparently after wearing the wrong kind of shoes while running, my toenail won’t grow back. It’s something to do with trauma to the nail bed. It always used to come back, but now it only goes a quarter inch up my big toe. I’ve tried acrylic and gel, but they are too stiff to be comfortable with shoes. painting the skin looks ridiculous. I really want to be able to wear sexy shoues in the spring after Katherine is born.
So anyone with any suggestions for falsies or maybe to help the nail grow. FTR I am not going to the podiatrist.
May I ask why? Because, while it’s true that, collectively, the SDMB knows everything, if we give you stupid advice, you can’t sue the boards for malpractice.
I had awful ingrown toenails when I was younger and a podiatrist “solved” the problem by clipping it down so I had a little button nail on my left toe. I only discovered years later that he had accomplished this by destroying the nail bed. To make it even nicer, about 10 years ago I dropped a real estate sign on the same toe and the little button grew back as a gnarled little button.
I asked a podiatrist’s nurse about solutions and she said I was essentially SOL as the nail bed was gone.
If your nail bed is gone there are no magic solutions. I keep the little nail down to a non-scary micro nub with a Dremel moto-tool grinding head used ever few months. I’m kind of surprised they can’t re-create a nail bed . Compared to heart surgery it doesn’t seem very high tech.
I had a pedicure on Wednesday and the girl told me I was getting an ingrown toenail. She told me not to go to a podiatrist because he/she would cut that side of the toenail all the way down and it would kill the nailbed.
She said to put a little piece of cotton under that part of the nail. I couldn’t hear exactly what she meant…all the time or only when I wear a shoe too tight? It was noisy in there at that moment and I forgot to ask her. I was actually going to go on the SDMB and see what people thought about that.
I started putting the little piece of cotton under there during the day. And if my shoe is too tight, I’m going to stop wearing those shoes.
I wish something would kill my nailbed. I get the worse ingrown toenails. I had to have both big toes clipped down twice in the same year. The second time, he used a really stinky, really painful chemical to kill the matrix so the problem wouldn’t happen again.
Guess what?
The goddamned chemical didn’t work, and now they’re growing back as healthy and thick as before.
You too? Drives me nuts. Don’t have as many problems with my toenails as I used to, but I still have some, and…jeez. You’d think cutting out part of the nail and cauterizing the thing with nasty chemicals would get the job done.
Ah! I have been waiting for a toe questions thread!
I don’t know if this is what you guys are talking about, I don’t think this is an ingrown nail, but what happens to me is on the big toes of both feet (and only those 2 nails!) the back of the nail where it meets the cuticle will separate from the skin, and continue growing out, leaving a crescent shape where a new nail layer grows in. So it looks like a series of steps that move out from the cuticle. What is this problem called and why does it only happen to both big toes? It’s been going on now for like 5-6 years or more.
