Nasty

About 9-10 years ago (can't remember exactly) Ken and I went to a really interesting exhibit at a museum in Tampa. It was artifacts from the South American Inca Indians, lots of cool stuff.

One section was in particular interesting, it was about the Inca's very advanced medical care. It was even proof that Inca's performed some type of brain surgery, drilling holes in people's craniums (there was also proof that the patients had continued to live afterwards, phew).

In one areawas some actually shrunken Inca heads, and Ken got so excited he scrambled to get up close. In his scramble, he accidentally kicked my left front toe, straight on. My nail split all the way down the middle. Ouch!

Since then, my nail has been messed up (thanks a lot, Ken ). Usually half the nail appears dead most of the time, but at least it grows out...

I went to a podiatrist back in 2002 that declared "It's fungus!" and she gave me fungal lotion. Now, fungal lotion is at it's best successful up to 50 % of the time, plus I was on all kinds of chemo drugs and immune suppressants, not exactly helpful.

But now, when I have been off all those drugs for 3 years, I figured I might have a fighting chance to fix this nail once and for all.

This morning I had an appointment with a new podiatrist (foot doctor), and he said it might not be fungus at all, it did not look like it, at least. His guess was that the trauma from the initial damage (thanks again, Ken)coupled with my body's lowered ability to heal itself might have caused this.

The only way to be sure is to test the nail, so they clipped it all off and it is going to a lab to test fr fungus. If it is positive I can have a new, (expensive) laser treatment that actually works, if not, well, I will be stuck for with an ugly toe for the rest of my life (thanks... well, you get it...).

So this is how my now all naked toe looks like. A little sensitive...

Nasty

Hope I didn't ruin anyone's appetite now! :-)

In other medical news, Sarah's blood tests came back all clean. No signs of anything inflammatory, lupus, RA or other. Big sigh of relief! Now we just have the MRI on Friday, which she will be sedated for, since it is a rather long procedure, and it is not so easy for a little kid to be perfectly still for that long...

We have to be there at 2 PM and she i snot allowed to eat anything before to eat all, just some fluids before noon! I think she is a little tense about the MRI, but also very curios. There are lots of videos on YouTube about what to expect for kids, so she watched that, I think it helped ease her nervousness a little, now when she knows exactly what to expect.