Well, I once had one go away when my daughter had several treated… so simply being in the room as a treatment was apparently enough for mine!
Seriously… she was 5 or so and had developed a bunch on her hands in a relatively short time. And I developed one (after not having had one in about 25 years) just under the edge of one fingernail.
So I took her to the pediatrician. They used the canned freezing stuff on 4 of her warts; it was uncomfortable enough that they didn’t want to treat all at once. I seem to recall we were supposed to follow up with the topical stuff like Compound W but I never did.
A month later, the 4 frozen warts were gone.
As were all the other ones on both of her hands.
As was the one on my finger.
So Jim. B: does your wife have any warts that need removing?
Re the feet: I wonder if using moleskin or similar to make “doughnuts” around the warts might allow them to be less irritated when you walk around. Dunno if that would help them go away but it seems like a cheap enough thing to try.
I had two pop up while I was in college. A small one on the underside of my index finger, and a hard, horny monster on my thumb, right up against the nail than ran the entire length of the nail.
I tried Compound W, and when they got all soft I’d try to gouge them out, but the core was really tenacious and trying to pry that out was like no pain I’d ever experienced, so no-go on the home remedy.
Cut to a couple of years later, while stationed in Iraq with my MASH unit (Desert Storm), and one day a couple of the docs got bored and offered up surgery to whomever needed anything (a couple of guys got vasectomies!). One of the docs gave me a shot in the wrist area that numbed my entire hand, and he scalpeled those suckers out. The one on the finger was not so bad, but I about lost half of the side of my thumb. Oh, but it was worth it to have that thumb monster gone!
My son’s dermatologist prescribed flourouacil as a follow up to freezing. It was reportedly painless and appeared to be more effective than freezing alone, but the list of potential side effects is a little intimidating.
A rather gross story but we’re in that territory so…
In college, I had a wart on my right thumb about a half inch to the right of the nail. I used to pick at it and sometimes get small bits of it to come away but the main mass remained. One night I went with a buddy to a free movie they were showing in a lecture hall. The seats were the type that had a half desktop platform for note taking during class. During the film I started to pick at the wart and it seemed to be presenting more of itself. So I bit and pulled at it in the same manner someone might pull on a bit of a hangnail. It popped off. I spit the thing into a tissue and continued watching the movie. When the lights went up my friend practically shrieked as he pointed to a puddle of blood on the desk portion of my seat. The wart removal had caused a serious bleed out. I got some toilet paper to clean it up (today they’d probably call in a hazmat team). The wart never came back. So I say rip it out by the root!
There is a product like this in the feet section of the drug store. Moleskin precut into doughnuts with or without salicylic acid inside. They do kind of help with the comfort but they can move around. I’ve found them stuck inside socks and glued to the back of my leg.
There is at least anecdotal evidence that the immune system will respond to irritation in the area of a wart so this method may be extending the problem over time. I’ve had warts that may have gone away from scratching and once getting my hand slammed in a door, or maybe not, I’m certainly not going to repeat the door slam. Luckily freezing worked on all the rest. It does seem that deeply implanted warts are much more difficult to get rid of though, sometimes required excision.