Peeled Toe Nails

So I did the Singapore Botanic Gardens walk way back in July, and what I didn't write was how I developed blisters under the nails of my two little toes.

Yep, blisters under the nails. I didn't feel comfortable leaving them alone, because I figured that the chance of the un-dealt with blisters under the nails had a high chance of causing the said nails to be ripped out if they snagged on something---I knew from experience that the skin atop a blister of any sort has much more give than a regular piece of skin. The answer out was obvious.

I burst them carefully, washed them clean, and applied antiseptic, and prayed hard that the nail wouldn't spontaneously decide to rip itself out in the mean time, repeating the process until they were no longer weepy. Thankfully, there was no infection---my disinfection process was good.

The nail didn't rip itself out, but it was in the strange situation where it still seemed to be detached from the nail bed. I was worried of having things trapped there and causing infections of all sorts that I could not easily take care of (think fungus in addition to regular bacterial stuff), and so I stayed on the down low at home, taking extra care on them. The nails were still growing in length, and I was extra cautious in trimming them down to avoid the dreaded snag-rip.

Recently, nearly two months later, the nails finally fell off.

Saying that they ``fell off'' isn't particularly correct. It's more of a case of them ``peeling off''. It happened accidentally for one toe. While checking on it, I found the gap between the nail plate and the nail bed to be suspiciously wide with no pain, and gingerly touched it. The nail peeled off the nail bed almost cleanly with my gentle checking, with just a little that was still holding tightly past the cuticle. I gently trimmed that part of the peeled off nail as closely to that cuticle as I could to avoid that ripped flesh scenario that was making me pay very close attention to the nail in the first place.

Beneath it wasn't raw flesh---it was a thin but serviceable new nail that had grown. Cool!

I waited for the rest of the day to observe if there were any complications and found that there were none. Curious, I started to fiddle with the other toe nail to see if I could remove it as well to avoid having to worry obsessively about it.

Interestingly enough, it too had developed a thin new nail over the nail bed, and was already detached from the nail bed. The key difference was that its shear edge along the cuticle wasn't as brittle as the other nail, to which I aided it along through gentle repeated flexing.

And with that, both the nails that had come from the blisters under them were successfully removed from my toes without any other injuries, which reduced the risk of them ripping unintentionally.

Good riddance.