Every month or so, I suffer from an ingrown toenail that I have to cut out so that it doesn’t start to hurt. I usually feel a slight discomfort and that is the sign that I need to soak my foot and soften the nail to cut it out. Well, in early March, that is exactly what I did. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years and it usually is not a big problem. This time was different.
About 4mm of my nail is under the skin. This time while cutting it out, I damaged the inner lining of the skin that sits on top of the nail. This has happened before but this time it swelled really badly. Helene insisted that I head to the hospital right away but it honestly didn’t seem so bad. But soon enough it got infected and started to hurt. Eventually the infection went away but the swelling did not go down. I suffered with this damn foot for about a month before I realised that this situation was not going to just go away on its own.
Turns out that the little bit of swelled skin healed over my nail covering an additional 15% that it didn’t cover before. Basically it grew over and healed on top of the toe. Have I grossed you out yet? To be honest it wasn’t that painful or troublesome. I quickly realised that the true issue was that eventually my nail would start to push up against this and that would hurt a lot. I frantically searched for my insurance documents and payment slips and when I couldn’t find them I went to my local ward office and told them that I was a stupid foreigner who lost his insurance card. The stupid foreigner comment always works. They quickly gave me a new one at no charge.
Saturday March 5th I went to the Hospital with my friend Lynn to explain the situation; her Japanese is a lot better than mine. Turns out that on Saturdays the Hospital is closed. Yeah I know. Hospitals in Japan are a Monday to Friday organisation. The doctors in the emergency room (the only part of the hospital open on week-ends) were really nice and spoke some English. They said that the extra skin needed to be cut out at the “plastic surgery department”. I told them to relax and that I didn’t need plastic surgery just a small operation. They ensured me that it was alright. Do we also call minor surgery “plastic surgery”?
I came back the following Monday when the hospital was open. We met with a doctor who honestly believed himself to be a gift to the medical profession. He would not read the file from the previous weekend until I insisted that he did not understand the situation. It took 4 times to tell him to read the file. He had no patience for our meagre Japanese (Helene was frantically trying to look up words in her pocket dictionary!) and in the end told me to wait until my nail grew out through the skin. I said that I have to walk and do things over the next three months but he really didn’t care. He prescribed me some painkillers for whenever the pain would come. Now if you have any idea what an ingrown toenail is like, basically, if I followed his advice they would have to do a serious operation to clear up my foot not counting the months of pain I would have to endure and in the end the situation would repeat. I flipped out at this doctor, said he didn’t understand me and basically called him a quack.
I was angry as I stormed out of there pretty much planning to go to another hospital. A moment later, the nurse from the office called us into a corner with a very confusing gesture and told us the nice, English speaking doctor comes on Fridays. We thanked her and a week later I was back in the hospital. The pills the quack doctor gave me
to lower the swelling worked a bit but the top of the area was still healed onto my toe.
The third visit to the hospital was far more productive. I walked into the office and the doctor immediately said that he had read my file and knew exactly what to do. I needed laser surgery. At this point you can understand that my faith in these doctors was so thin that I spent the next 10min going through the story again. He insisted that he understood but I was pretty sure he didn’t. Anyway, the idea of having laser surgery threw many questions through my mind; where, when, how much and what will he be doing? He said just lie down and don’t move. He injected me with some anaesthesia straight into my toe which hurt a lot. Then he pulled out this laser pen and started to shave off the top layer of the swollen area. I was half worried, half shocked. It was truly a weird feeling. I could sort of feel like I was bleeding and maybe even the heat of the laser but it was too numb to tell. He worked on it a bit and basically burned off the extra growth. The whole operation took 4min. The walk home on the numb foot was far more painful than the operation itself. As I waited
to pay at the hospital I was dreading the cost of this marvellous operation. With conversion it pretty much came to $4. Let’s hear it for Japanese health care.
About a week later when the wound healed my toe looked almost normal again. Amazing! But it hurt more than ever before. It turns out that the original ingrown toenail had returned and because of the pain of the growth I was mixing the two together. Rather than going in there on my own I went back the following Friday to see the same doctor.
I was in much higher spirit and I apologised to him for my attitude the week before. He was very nice and in good humour. I explained to him that the actual ingrown nail was hurting me and he finally understood his mistake from the week before. He said “you need lot lot of laser”. I was ok with that. He injected me and burned a huge hole in my toe cutting the ingrown nail and the skin around it. The walk home st
ill sucked but the next day I felt great.
He told me that the nail always moulded to the shape of the skin as it grew and it would always grow back into that same painful shape. But by burning off the skin, the regenerated area would mould around the nail and perhaps it could not be ingrown after a few more of these operations. That sounded amazing to me because I knew that the alternative operation to cure this problem forever was messy and did not yield great results. My other big toe had such an operation 10 years before and it still hurts in weird ways.
With any luck this guy will cure my ingrown toenail problem permanently. I was totally wrong in my original assessment. If you have any problem, the Japanese may have come up with some crazy solution to fix it!
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