The Curse Of The Toenails Continues

Sunday night as Mike was pulling Charlie out of the bathtub he said, "Can you come look at his toe? He looks like he might have an ingrown toenail." I looked over and sure enough, Charlie's right big toe looked just like all of my recent ingrown toenails, complete with green puss, except in miniature. As Charlie showed it to me he said, "Don't touch it -- that's my broken toe." Not that he had remotely complained about said 'broken toe' before.

Since I already had a follow up with the podiatrist Monday morning for my toe that I had lasered last week (we are single handedly putting bread on this man's table) I marched Charlie into the exam room with me and made the doctor look at it after he looked at my toe. Sure enough, he confirmed it was an infected ingrown toenail which he was going to have to cut out. This news sent Charlie into hysterics ("Let's just put my Crocs back on and go!") until I had cousin Kyle come in from the waiting room (thankfully Aunt Sue and Cousin Kyle came down for the day to help us out with the appointment!) and calm him down. Then Kyle got to help me hold him down for the doctor, who decided the novacain shot would be atleast as painful as the actual procedure (I agree after having had it six times and was glad to skip it) and elected to do it without; it took him about 2.5 seconds, mercifully, but poor Charlie was just about done in. When he could finally get a word in he was yelling "The doctor cut a piece of my toe off! He cut a piece of my toe off ON PURPOSE!!" as I carried him through the waiting room and to the car.

Charlie did manage to rebound enough to enjoy lunch at Unos and to go swimming at Sue's parents' house. Today he says his toe is "still a little bit broekn" which seems to be an improvement. Mike is taking him back for a follow up tomorrow. We think the ingrown toenail is a result of an incident a couple weeks ago when Charlie banged his toe on something and split the nail and Mike had to cut it down further than usual. We'll be sure to ask the doctor tomorrow how to make sure we minimize his chances of ever getting another one again!