So that is what the inside of your toe smells like if it is on fire..

My life is uneventful and fantastically mundane with the exception of my one arch enemy, my right big toenail. I know it does not seem like a formidable foe, but it certainly has been a challenge to the kingdom of "WorkoutLand"...Good god. Anyway, it was time for what has become my annual ingrown toenail surgery when I suggested to my trusty doctor that maybe we just remove the WHOLE toenail just to avoid doing this yearly song and dance. He said "we can if you want to, but look at mine first". He then produced the world's ugliest non-toe nailed toe I have ever seen. Most of the toenail was gone, but two little nubbin toenails were growing on either side of a gigantic crater where the rest of the toenail once was...I actually gasped out loud. Holy Crap. I have seen "nursing home toenail" and this was 15 times worse. He then qualified it by saying, "well he didn't do the best job, but it won't leave much for you to paint". I then pictured seeing my sisters' faces when I show up in the summer wearing sandals (which are really the only shoes I can wear since they don't make size 11.5 in "cute" closed toed shoes) and either A.) painting the crater where the toenail used to reside or B.) wearing a press on toenail..never would work, or C.) saying forget it and going Au Natural with my nasty bi-coastal evil nubbin toenail(S)..they would all freak. I did actually picture their faces and laughed out loud. I don't think the toe-nailless one would look okay even if you airbrushed the Mona Lisa on it and be-dazzled it.

So we carried on with the next best thing. Ablation of the nail bed. Yikes. I have had this freaking menace toenail gouged out of my foot repeatedly and the nail bed scorched with q-tips covered in Phenol that should have killed the entire nail but didn't even phase my prolifically growing toenail. Nothing has worked, so it was time to break out the big guns. No more screwing around. Oh no, this time we were going to cut out the offending party and then stick a electric cauterizing tip down the hole in my foot and actually burn up the nail bed. The nuttiest part is that this was the "better option" and I thanked him for it. All I could envision was my sisters' faces of despair if I went the nubbin toenail route...so I had to try.

I love this doctor. He gets totally excited about anything and will do anything for you. You can show up at his house at midnight if your nose gets broken (it must be set in a hour to avoid surgery..geez), page him in the middle of a run and he will turn right around in his tracks to go back to the hospital, he will do your yearly gynecological visit, burn off a wart or spay your cat...maybe not in that order, but totally not kidding. He apologized during the worst part which were the one million (or two) shots I got in my big toe and complimented me about how tough I must be to have tolerated my terribly evil toenail. He even save the piece he pulled out of my foot. I think it looks a little like Abe Lincoln as it sits on my coffee table ready to gross out my co-workers in the morning. Then he slapped a giant pad on the outside of my leg (ground for the electricity it turns out) and turned up the voltage on some sort of machine and went to work "ablating" my toenail bed.

"Ablating" must come from the French word for "on fire from the inside" because I knew my toe was numb, but it was definitely HOT inside my skin, and I could smell my toe burning..but it didn't really hurt in a normal way. I will tell you that it is not for the faint at heart. Now, I did watch the whole thing with morbid curiosity so that might have helped if I hadn't watched the smoke pour out of my toe....hehehe, there wasn't actual smoke. Meanwhile the good doctor is telling me some story about the time he was doing a vasectomy with the same sort of a tool...and ...I didn't hear the rest because that sounds like a worse idea that sticking the super-electric needle into an open toe nail wound.

So here I sit at home feeling pathetic with my big toe all wrapped up, no exercise for this week and a husband with a boarding pass for a 7 a.m flight tomorrow who is no Florence Nightingale because he just got home from China... and the smell of my burning toenail singed in my nostrils..