Well, it happened again. The stupid nail on the second toe of my left foot decided to abandon ship for the third running season in a row. Only this time it did not go gently into that good night. Last year I hardly noticed the process was happening, and when I took off my sock after a long run the nail just came right along with it. This year is another story. A giant blister formed under the nail, which triggered an infection that required a bit more attention to treat than simply taking off my socks. Now that I've sucessfully pulled out a part of my body, I thought I'd share my tips and tricks for you runners you may need to embark on this disgusting journey at some point in your training. Here we go!
Step One
Does your toenail look like this?
Yes? Congratulations! You've officially run so much you've killed your toenail, leaving a oozy, nasty, crusty, keratin-hooptie in it's place. If it's swollen and sore, don't try to remove it yet. It's probably infected and the swelling is your body trying to fight that off. You can relieve some pressure by draining the blister underneath (even if you can't see it, it's there) with a steralized needle. To steralize a needle, hold it over flame until it's too hot to touch. Keep it clean with soap and water, and try to wear open toed shoes as much as possible, or until your friends stop inviting you out to eat because your nasty-ass feet are making everyone lose their appetite.
Step Two
This is the fun part. Ideally you should wait until the cuticle has dried up "died" as well, meaning you can wiggle the toenail freely without a lot of pain. This may mean living with a dead nail on your foot for a few weeks, but pulling it off pain-free will be worth it. If it didn't get infected, you should be able to gently pull the nail away from the cuticle from left to right, releasing the nail from its bed all in once piece, with little if any blood. This is what I was able to do the first two times. However, this time the infected nail was going to affect my ability to keep running due to the pain, and I needed to get it off ASAP. So I steralized some tweezers, took a deep breath, and...
pulled! Since the cuticle was still attached to the dead nail it did bleed a bit, but it didn't hurt that bad. After you pull the nail out, wash the area with mild soap and water. I didn't bandage this up as I wanted it to dry out and harden as quickly as possible. A toe without a nail is pretty sensitive at first, so you want it to heal like, yesterday.
Step Three
Sweet relief. It's still a little sore, but now I won't have that thick, irritating, asshole-nail pushing into my nail bed with every step. I'll wrap it up for my run today, but otherwise I'm going to air it out as much as possible. It's also fun to shove in my husband's face.
You now have what many marathoners consider a badge of honor. And a toe that looks like an angry little bald man. Win win!
Oh, and if you do go get a pedicure (I mean, there's no reason the rest of the nails should suffer), make sure you warn the person doing your nails of your bald toe, for your sake and theirs.
Happy trails (and nails)!
-Lora
