I recently injured my thumb where the top part of the nail was pulled back. Ouch!! :eek:
I have been advised that the nail will almost certainly fall off and, looking at my poor thumb I have no reason to doubt this. I have never experienced this sort of thing before and don’t know how it will progress.
Will the nail completely fall out or is it likely to just start to separate from the thumb and need radical trimming back to where it is still attached?
How does it grow back? (It will grow back, won’t it?) Is it likely to look normal or deformed?
Let’s see…thumb nail not back to 100%…injured it around July 23rd…took about 3-5 weeks to completely fall off…it seperated somewhat painlessly when it fell off, give or take a few areas that were hanging on (I coerced them, with some discomfort.). I was glad to see it go, because it was snagsville on everything! OUCH!
Ah, it fell off…nothing but raw skin for a while…yet, it was never tender or painful. That blew my mind, because the injury itself was unbelievable when it happened-- OMG OMG OMFG! M-F-ER!!! M-F-FER!!! SOB SOB!!!
I am about 80% back to normal on my thumb nail coverage.
The nail grows back in the most unusual way. It sort of comes up from the base/cutical, and simultaneously grows in layers/thickness. Like, the base raw skin was sheathed over with thin layers of nail, and meanwhile the ‘main’ nail grew like you’d expect. My nail tip now is just the nail layers that thickened, and about 20% down is the nail growing towards the tip, and is noticably thicker.
If you just bent it backwards, there is a good chance that you won’t lose the whole nail. I’ve done that several times, up to 1/3 of the way back from where the nail seperates from the bed naturally. It hurts alot, bleeds a little or alot, looks bloody and scabbed for a while, and then grows out. My advice for that situation is to cut back as far as in comfortable, and then keep your fingertip bandaged in any situation where it might get bumped, like colating papers and drinking coffee and sleeping (basically, all the time). Oh, and when you are bandaging, don’t stick anything directly to the nail 'cause it will hurt a whole whole lot when you pull it off.
I know, personal experience is not a cite, but thats my 2 cents.
I haven’t lost a thumb nail but I have lost a big toenail twice. That part blew my mind as well. I thought the nail would just grow from back to front and I would just have to wait. Instead, the whole nail bed starts to become the nail by getting thicker and thicker. That is good and bad. The good part is that the nail bed will start to be pretty well protected although funny feeling in a few weeks. The bad news is that it looks like hell for a long time and some never really grow back quite right. My toenails took a good 8 - 9 months to get mostly back to normal. I would think that a thumbnail will be shorter but you are still looking at a multi-month healing time.