Well, that didn't work out as I had intended. Of course, many things don't, so I don't know why I was surprised.
My doctor appointment this morning was supposed to be a go in, have my foot cut open, clean out my foot, sew back up my foot, and I leave sort of ordeal, culminating in my hobbling for a day or two.
Instead, the doctor commented that, despite my attempt to cut out the wart, surgery really is the last option for warts, not the first.
What else did I learn?
Warts don't last 20 years, as the one on the bottom of my foot has. They tend to last months, maybe a year, but the body will reject the wart, which is caused by a virus. Since the wart exists in the skin, the continuous sloughing of skin will usually force the wart out of the body, through natural growth.
A wart that lasted 20 years? Yeah, it's probably not a wart, the doctor told me, but rather a collection of blood vessels that well, essentially just become confused and ball up into a painful lump embedded in the skin. Or, maybe it's a ball of scar tissue from some dig attempts of mine, other than the one last week. Unfortunately, last week was my first attempt at hacking this particular wart, so no, it most likely wasn't scar tissue. Well, he asked, had I during my many years of shaving off the top of the wart, ever noticed any black dots in the wart? Nope, hadn't noticed that either. I really think this is just a wart.
But you know, in the back of my head, I couldn't help but wonder if the wart was something more, something more sinister, because I thought the growth next to my eye was a wart: it looks a lot like the knot of flesh at the bottom of my foot.
The doctor, however, spent a few minutes with a knife, cutting off the top layer of skin, and looking at the lump. It didn't hurt a bit, which sorta told me the lump wasn't a collection of blood vessels balled up into a painful mass. After those few minutes, he declared, nope, looks like a wart, though twenty years? Wow, that's pretty much unheard of. Twenty years?
Yes, twenty years. Look at my chart. It's not that unreasonable to know that you've had a wart since your parent's divorce when you lived in another state, and hey that was twenty years ago, so just move on and accept that yes, this is a freaking twenty year old wart already.
Maybe.
Assuming it's a wart.
So, the doctor offered these steps:
1. Take a lot of vitamin A and zinc to help my immune system. The A will help the skin turn over, and the zinc will just boost the immune system, as if I had a cold.
2. Hold still while this magical blistering potion is dabbed on the wart. The skin will roil, boil, toil and trouble, hopefully ejecting the wart at maximum velocity off of my foot.
3. Keep the band-aid on over the blistering magic potion, until at least tomorrow, minimum four hours if I can't stand it any longer.
I can walk or run or do whatever I want, within my own pain tolerances. Want to go for a run? Have at it.
This guy doesn't exactly understand my pain tolerances very well, was my initial thought.
My current thought, though?
HOLY CRAP! My foot HURTS!
It's a throbbing, knife like pain on the bottom of my foot. Or rather, it's like a magical blister pulsing on the bottom of my foot, just throbbing, throbbing, throbbing, telling me, here I am! Here I am! Yo! Remember me! I'm not going easily.
Right.
Not going easily is still going.
Stupid twenty year old wart.
