I haven’t pulled up the pics yet, but that sounds like something I did as a child…I managed to peel back a piece of the nail on my pointer finger. Mom couldn’t get it to lay flat, so she trimmed the piece off…the nail itself regrew just fine though.
I jammed my right ring finger in a door when I was a pre-teen and lost the nail. It grew back fine.
When I was 11? 12? I slammed my left hand in a car door and ALL my fingernails fell off over the course of a week or so.
Then, in high school, I got frostbite and lost 7 of my toenails.
All grew back; and I am now normal! Err, sort of. 
That story made me cry. I don’t like stories about fingernail trauma.
I am 40 and have been wearing acrylics since I was about 18, with a few nail vacations in between (I was a nail biter, and my nails are very thin and fragile). I have never had a problem or a fungus. Reputable nail salons seldom have problems like that.
The reason your nail looks nasty after an acrylic comes off by force? Well, duh- it was super-glued to your natural nail, and took some jagged layers of your nail with it. If you soak off a set, your nails don’t look nearly as nasty.
I always use Nailtiques base coat if I lose an acrylic by force- it really seems to help the natural nail get back on it’s feet, so to speak. And unless there is actually no nail left over the raw flesh, I get another nail put on right away- nothing looks more ghetto than covering up a missing or broken acrylic nail with a band aid.
Well, my sister ripped off her pinky toenails in a weird bb gun incident when we were kids…she will be 39 next April and still has no pinky toenails. Have a doctor look at it. On a related note, my husband is a mutant who was born without a fingernail (or even a third knuckle) on one of his pinky fingers, it’s really gross and creepy and I swear I would have never married him if I had paid any attention to it before!
Minor hijack - I’m 26 now, a year past the cut-off for the wacky, and still going strong. The main thing is just to act like your insanity is completely normal and expect people either to be amused or just not to get in your way. I am fully planning on riding the Wacky Train right into the grave - I have seen the enemy, and it is Boring.
(For reference: 22 was the year of waist-length purple hair, 23-24 was the year of Balder Than Hell, and now my hair is just down to my shoulders again from growing it out. Never done acrylic nails, but I did file them into points for a while during the Gotheolithic Period.)
On the bright side, you look nowhere near death by fingernail - if anything, you’ve got a brand new party trick to fascinate any tween relatives you may have. Next time, plan more in advance, so that you can use it to clear out unwanted dinner guests during the holidays!
Yeah, it looks ghetto but, man, it hurts when you rerip it. My nail was hanging on just at the very base, the rest of it was exposed nail bed. When I had the tip put on when it was half grown out, the nail tech was scared of it 'cause it was still very, very loose. And then, sure enough, I caught it again and it was so weak, it just ripped mostly off again.
Although I finally forced myself to look at Dio’s “icky” pic and it’ doesn’t look nearly as bad as mine was; it’s only about half ripped off and still has a lot of nail connectd to the nail bed. With mine, the entire nail could literally be lifted up like it was on a hinge. She might be OK with a new nail.
::sigh:: I’ve never had a time past 20 that I could be wild. I started working in a bank at 20 and you know, banks have some damned strict dress codes. I’ve always wanted to have wild hair colors, but the dress code stated no hair colors that didn’t occur in nature, so that left out the purples and blues, and such. :mad:
Awww!
I can’t have too wild of hair because I have to meet with clients, but my way around that is to have a natural base with crazyish stripes. For instance, I had dark dark dark brown hair with bright red chunks through the top. If I was meeting with a client, I’d just pull the top half back, so you couldn’t see anything but the brown. Another time, I had purple extensions put in, but they were in the middle layer of hair so they just peaked out the bottom. Actually, they were in such a way that I could curl my hair a certain way and you’d never see them.
Get yin/yang symbols and peace signs, doves, etc.
Nope. Your finger will not only have to be shunned by the rest of the hand (and even the toes) but you may be headed for full finger decapitation. Don’t worry, prosthetics are almost flesh toned these days and aren’t dayglow colors.
(Have you *seen *her taste in fingernails? She might prefer the dayglo!)
You think I can get a glittery pink one? I sense a new trend coming on. . .
And WhyNot- you should just get hippy nails. OMG OMG OMG! I have the best idea ever! Tie dye design on your nails! That’d be so amazing, you have no idea.
And I know a nail lady who would do it for $10. True story.
Of course, the $500 airline ticket to California might inflate that price a bit beyond reasonableness!
(I was thinking little teeny tiny pot leaves over a tie dye background would be awesome, but I’m not sure how they’d go over at the toddler’s play group.)
Smashed my thumbnail when I was a kid, it turned dark black and fell off. It grew back perfectly.
So, when are we meeting for those rum drinks you spoke of? 
If they don’t accept your hippy nails, then they don’t deserve you, my lover. :mad:
I have a cold, but I’m free for rum drinks whenever there are rum drinks to be had. I’m in college, I’d be a bad person if I turned down free booze.
When I was 10, I smashed my right middle finger in a door and lost the entire nail. It took close to a year to fully grow back (my nails are punishing me for my good fortune with hair. they crack and split much too easily and grow really slowly).
Close to 18 years later, it is still deformed and still splits and breaks before it reaches my finger tip. It has white spots between the nail bed and the nail. They’ve been in the same spot all this time. I think it’s scar tissue. The nail also has a strange overly curved shape which makes acrylics not stick very well to it.
If I understood my son’s podiatrist correctly, this means you smashed it hard enough to damage the bone in your finger. Apparently the nail continues growing in the shape of the bone - you must have broken the bone, or chipped it, and it healed funny, and your nail’s just following orders, so to speak!