It was the second weekend of December, 2005. A relatively warm day in the San Gabriel Valley, and I went with my sister-in-law, her son, and her fiancee to enjoy a late morning romp around the park playing baseball. Balls were hit, balls were tossed around, and a good time was being had by all.
Until tragedy struck.
My soon-to-be brother-in-law launched a baseball at me at a high rate of speed. I lost it in the sun (or so I would later claim), so I jumped back and to the side in order to get out of the path of the ball and avoid being struck by it. But I didn’t quite make it. The ball struck the top of my left big toe, leaving me limping around in agony for quite some time.
Well, it turned out nothing was broken but my fragile ego. What I was left with was a very ugly toe. Since that time, the nail has felt vaguely uncomfortable, and underneath the nail, my toe has remained a very ugly, violent purple. This evening, I noticed that there’s a sort of gouge line all the way across the nail near the base of my toe. I showed it to my wife, who said that I’m going to lose the nail.
So here are my questions:
Is it inevitable that my nail will fall off?
If so, how long might it be before it fully grows back?
In the meantime, is the skin underneath more sensitive than normal, “exposed” skin?
If the answer to #3 is yes, should I wear a bandage or some other protection while I wait for the nail grows back?
Could be as long as 6 months for complete regrowth. Nothe that sometimes they grow back strangely–I had a thumbnail fall off after an injury, and now, even 10 years later, the nail grows with a split in it.
Some, especially for the first several days. Mostly it just feels strange.
It’s only necessary if it’s bleeding, AFAIK. A bandage may also help cushion it if it’s sensitive for the first several days fter the nail falls off.
I can’t answer number 1, but I’ll tackle the rest.
My son just had a toenail removed a few weeks ago. The doctor told him to keep it bandaged for the night after the removal, but then not to bother. No limitations on activities, either, even when my son mentioned they were doing a unit of soccer in gym class!
It was sensitive for a few days, but he hasn’t mentioned it since.
It grows from that bottom edge up, but it will take a long time. It may be nearly a year before you have a whole toenail again.
(All this predicated on the assumption that you don’t require medical advice. If it’s puss filled, swollen, red or especially if there are red streaks running up your toe, go to the emergency room! Seriously, people *die *from infected toenails.)
I went to my doctor a few days after it happened, and she sent me to have it x-rayed to make sure it wasn’t broken. I’m relatively certain someone would have said something if there was anything more serious going on in my case. The worst I got was a scolding from my doctor, who told me that if I’d come in right away after it happened, she could have drilled a hole in it to alleviate some of the pressure discomfort I was experiencing, but by that point, the blood had all dried.
I was moving a computer desk about three years ago. With the famous-last-words statement, “It’ll be fine” in reference to the keyboard drawer I hadn’t removed, the desk tipped, the drawer slid out, and its corner landed squarely on the nail of the big toe of my right foot. I reflexively assumed the fetal position, grabbing my foot in breathtaking pain.
I was limping for the next week or two, and the nail turned a violent purply-black and eventually fell off. It took quite a number of months to grow back, and it never did grow back the same – it’s a very thick, slightly deformed thing now, and it detatches from the underlying skin about halfway down the the nail such that if I trim it I can cut about half of it off before hitting attached skin.
I dunno why this is so but I suspect it was a little more serious than average and may have involved deeper tissue damage. (I never did see a doctor about it)
Others have answered but I have lost my big toenails twice so I will chime in.
It will take up to a year to grow back. However, this isn’t as bad as you may think. The whole nail bed doesn’t stay sensitive for that long (days). After the toenail falls off, the whole bed becomes harder rather quickly and is like a pseudo-nail. Compare it to hard-shelled versus soft-shell crab. The regular nail builds up from there over time and whle it looks bad, it won’t hinder much.
If it falls off, set it aside for a while. If it’s like mine, it will curl about its longitudinal axis over the course of weeks. I just thought that was neat.
I’m usually not the evil type, but I once kicked my dog. Please don’t jump on me about this. I have never done it before and will never do it again. I still feel very guilty about it. She pulled the garbage out of the cabinet (where we put it specifically so she couldn’t get to it), ate a whole loaf of bread off the counter and destroyed (frame and all) a sliding screen door. I had just walked into the house after work and saw what looked like a tornado had hit. I lost my cool and kicked the dog. Immediately afterward, I knew I shouldn’t have done it. And immediately I was smited for my action.
The shoe I had been wearing was kind of loose. As the tip of the shoe connected with the dog’s butt, my foot slid forward, catching my toenail on an inside seem and lifting my toenail off the nailbase. As Minefield said, I dropped to the floor in the fetal position. It was extremely painful, but there was no blood. I ended up crawling around the floor picking up the mess since it hurt too much to walk. This was in April of 2005. Later it also turned the nasty purple/black color that others have described.
Eventually, the pain went away, but the nasty coloration underneath the nail remained. I don’t think it actually ever grew, but rather completely came off the cuticle and the new nail grew underneath and forced the old nail forward bit by bit. I did have to trim it every so often, or it would snag my socks.
In August of 2005, the toenail finally fell off on it’s own. There was a hard crusty bit of skin or nail underneath. No bandages needed. Slowly the nail grew forward.
The dog was and is fine. I showered her with hugs and kisses and appologies and more bacon than is probably healthy for a dog. Last night was only the second time that I had to clip that new toenail. It’s a bit disfigured and doesn’t seem to grow as fast as the others. So less than a year for it to come back.
Just in case any of you were sitting on edge for the last couple of months, the nail, or what was left of it, came off last night. I already had a new nail growing in which covers about a quarter of my toe’s length. I assume the new growth just pushed the old nail far enough for it to lose its grip.
So why do we have finger- and toenails, anyway? Are these tools that we developed in the course of evolution?
All primates have finger and toe nails. They are modified from the claws that our earliest mammal ancestors had, who got them from their earliest reptile ancestors.