All About My Warts: A Brief History

I am showing you this pleasing picture of interesting curled birchbark, to put your eyes at ease and spare you the disgusting visual details associated with this post.  You’re welcome.

My first wart appeared when I was a teenager, probably caught at music camp in the showers.  It grew.  And grew.  Located on the top of my foot, right where my toes meet the main part of my foot.  It was ugly, and embarrassing.  Up until that, I had really actually liked my feet, too, so it was also disappointing to have this disgusting wart.  My mom took me to the doctor and he froze the wart with liquid nitrogen.  It came back.  The doctor froze it again.  It came back.  Repeat.  Again.  And again.  This wart was getting to be expensive.  And so I felt guilty about that too, making my parents take me all the way to the doctor again and again to freeze the stupid thing.  They were forever offering to just do it themselves with the liquid nitrogen in the barn used for breeding cows, but I just didn’t think that was a good idea.

No matter what we did, the wart was just persistent, growing around the edges of where the big, grape sized blister had been each time, spreading and spreading across my foot in a ring.  We saw a dermatologist, and he created some kind of gel that I was allergic to so that I could create massive blisters on my own without making my parents keep coming back to the doctor for that liquid nitrogen all the time.  Still, the wart came back. One time the blister got infected and strange red flames of swelling creeped up my leg.  Another trip to the doctor.  That wart haunted me.   For years.  All through college.  All through the first years of my marriage.  I tried to wear socks whenever possible.  I went back to a different doctor when we were married, a resident at the family practice center to try having it frozen again.  No luck.  And it was expensive.

When the warts came back in full force when YaYa was a baby and we were in the last years of medical school and had no extra money at all, I convinced my husband to bring home some liquid nitrogen and take care of it himself.  It was both genius of me and a very bad move.  It was genius because my husband went to town on the wart(s), freezing them deep down, and it actually worked.  The warts have never come back.  It was also enormously painful.  I cannot even describe the pain involved.  My whole entire LEG swelled up like an elephant.  I couldn’t wear normal shoes for five weeks.  I have an enormous scar to prove it.  Whenever someone asks about it, I’m happy to tell them the story of letting my medical student husband experiment on me.  I advise them not to do that.

My husband always interjects at this point that he DID accomplish what no one else could.  And it’s true.  I really am grateful.

However, when I got a planters wart on my foot three years ago, I elected not to really tell him about it.  I heard, maybe even from Dr. Peds himself, that warts actually will take care of themselves if you wait long enough.  So, even though there was a bit of discomfort, I waited and waited, and that planter’s wart did take care of itself.  BINGO!  I thought to myself, I just need to ignore future warts long enough and I can avoid all the drama.

And then, somehow, I caught a wart on the side of my pinkie toe, probably from my kids, maybe from the bottom of my foot . . . who knows.  I ignored it.  This proved to be not a wise plan.  Unlike the planters wart, this wart was right by my toenail, and it rubbed terribly, and has caused me great pain all summer long, getting worse and worse.  Dr. Peds told me I needed to take care of it, but I really thought it would go away like the other wart.  So I didn’t do anything about it.

It has gotten super painful, so this week Dr. Peds is in wart removal mode.  I have more than a slight aversion to liquid nitrogen at this point, so he’s using wart removal acid from the drug store and he scrapes away at it with a knife every day.  He told me to do this myself, but I am a terrific wimp and just couldn’t manage.  So he’s taken over.  And I’m grateful.  But, there is some pain involved, my friends.  The prospect of wart pain makes me curl up in a little ball and become so tense I can hardly breathe.  I realize a lot of this anxiety is just a pyschological reaction, but I cannot help it.  And I do quite a bit of yelling and screaming when it hurts.  If I were a person who cussed, I’d probably do that too, but I’m not.  So I just yell and scream.

But here’s the humorous part:  my children think that watching their dad tackle their mom’s wart is the best entertainment ever.  They crowd around and laugh their heads off, because they’ve had warts that Dr. Peds has removed and they were very brave and didn’t even cry.  Their warts were also not like this one, which has made my whole toe calloused and swollen and full of pressure.  However, they really enjoy watching me in my misery.  When I scream in pain, they literally leap around the living room with peals of loud, evil laughter.  Even the BABY joins in when he sees them laughing.  There is a crazy amount of excitement during wart removal time, and they anxiously await the next episode tomorrow.

Everyone who can talk in the whole entire family tells me not to be such a wimp.  I get no sympathy from anyone (although I did get a little backrub from The Banana to help me feel better).  And that is my lament for the day.  Poor me.