Several months ago I was surprised to find a hardening of the skin in the bottom of my heel. It was about the size of a quarter, looked like a flat pimple in shape, was hard like a callous, and appeared to be green in color. The green coloration I assumed to be either an odd coloration of dead skin acquired through shoe action, or perhaps a sub-epidermal pocket of infected pus-gunk. The first idea was not a problem (it was not a visible location), and the second I knew how to deal with (splurt!).
Almost 2 months after the hard and very slightly tender bump appeared over the course of a day or two the center became dry and white, eventually falling out as a intact plug as if I had taken a core sample of my foot. Inside the cavity was what seemed to be soft callous material, most of which I coaxed out. The theory at that time was that I had stepped on something sharp and this reaction had expelled the foreign matter from my foot. Wait a little over two months…
…and the hole is still here. It is still flaking callous-material and has only lost a little of it’s shape. The green coloration is gone, replaced with normal dead skin color. Was my initial theory correct as to why this happened, and how long should the patching process take?
The skin of the bottom of the foot can be very thick and tough and calloused. The cells aren’t soft or flexible enough to “smoosh” into the hole. Since you have to wait for new skin cells to grow outward from beneath your epidermis, you might try a lot of exfoliation, like a pummice stone, to accelerate that process.
What you report sounds not unlike the lesions that develpoed on mu dpg’s right hip and left thigh after she was trapped for ten minutes between the road and the bottom of a car. Except that hose lesions were not round.
It sounds to me as though you might have had a small haematoma, caused perhaps by bleeding under or within the skin when you ruptured a small blood vessel (perhaps by treading on something pointed but not sharp), perhaps by standing in one spot long enough to cause a pressure sore. Think of it as a scab trapped between the layers of the skin of your foot. These are sometimes called ‘stone bruises’. The green colour might have been bluish clotted blood seen through yellowish callus.
Anyway, after your skin heal under the stone bruise, the (now dried) haematoma sloughed off, taking with it the overlying callus. What you have now is a patch of plantar skin that has not yet grown back its protective callus, surrounded by the damaged edge of the callus of the rest of the foot.
Wow, so I guess I didn’t dream it after all. I remember having something exactly like what you describe when I was a young boy. It wasn’t nearly as big, from your description, mine was only about a quarter-inch diameter. It was on the bottom of my heel. The first thing I noticed was a scab/callus, and being a kid I picked at it. The whole thing came out, as a plug, exactly as you describe, and I was left with a round hole in my heel that contained some “soft callus material” also. It didn’t hurt, didn’t smell, didn’t look particularly bad, so although it was weird, I didn’t tell anybody. It went away (although I don’t remember how long it took).
As I grew older, of course, the memory started to fade, and with the weirdness of it I had started to believe it didn’t actually happen, and may have been a dream. Now I know it wasn’t. Thanks!
Nope, it is not as painful as they describe, and there are no black spots present. I think that Agback was probably right, although I almost never get bruises. I either bleed or am ok. Thanks for the help tho, if it was one of those I would be concerned.
I’ve had stuff similar to this, Phage, though mine was the result of stepping on something sharp (a tiny piece of plastic, I think) that then got embedded in my foot. I got rid of the green thing and took the plastic out and everything was fine. If it’s taking longer for you, I’d advise seeing a doctor instead of posting to a message board.
The pit is less than a centimeter wide and about half a centimeter deep. Stuff can get in it, but I almost always wear shoes, and the area inside the hole seems to be made up of pretty much the same material as the rest of my foot.
The green area went away on its own, and as far as I can tell there was nothing foreign in my foot to start with and the plug was just regular skin. Right now it is a small hole surrounded by a slight thickening of the skin, and the hole seem to present little or no risk of infection. Don’t worry, if I start to rot I will be sure to call a doc!
Thanks for the help tho, if it was one of those I would be concerned.
