At some point last weekend, I think it was some time on Saturday, Renee came bouncing into the kitchen and reported that she just got a cactus thorn stuck in her foot.
Since my kids are constantly filing in and out of whatever room I am in at the time, asking for something, telling me about something they just watched or read, or just to plain blurt out for the 1,583,485th time that they are bored, I did not pay too much attention right at that moment. I simply told her to pull it out, that the pain would go away soon, and to get on with her life so I could get on with mine. (I know... I'm such a caring mother hen).
For a while all was good, and except for the constant update on how bad it was hurting whenever she hobbled past me, Renee seemed to be OK with it. I figured things would work themselves out.
Then yesterday, she came to me again and said that she still had not been able to get all of the cactus thorn out of her foot and that it was STILL hurting pretty badly. I figured that I better take a closer look, if for nothing else than to satisfy her obvious need for attention, or so I thought.
But then I realized WHERE in her foot that little thorn had gotten stuck ----- it went right through the big toe nail of her left foot. Yes, you read that right, all the way through her toe nail and into the toe. And NOT under the front of it mind you..... straight through the top of the nail.
How in the world....?????
I have no idea, whatsoever, how she managed to do this..... but there it was. Not very big, just a little black dot, after all her attempts at removing it herself, flat even with the toe nail and nothing left for my tweezers to grab onto and pull it out.
Below is (a very poor) picture of her toe. Ignore the white stuff on her toe nails... that's not mold, but leftovers of nail polish.... you can't really see the little black dot that is the thorn, but it is right in the middle of where I put that black circle on the picture.
Oh yeah, and here is the culprit. Probably one of the smallest cacti in our front yard, but obviously a force to be reckoned with.
I decided that it would probably grow out with the toe nail, but Renee was still complaining of pain.
When things were not better by this morning, I called the doctor's office and they wanted her to come in so they could take a look.
Even our fabulous family physician, Dr. Hubbard (affectionately nicknamed Dr. Rob by Katharina, although we are not sure how she came up with that one... considering his first name is Mark? ), wasn't quite sure what to make of it.
He had never seen anything like it either. Renee was his very first "Cactus -Thorn- Gone- Through- Toe- Nail -And- Gotten- Stuck" patient ever.
But being the great doctor he is, he tried his best to help Renee out. He took a needle, which he then switched for an even bigger needle and scraped away at the nail around the thorn. Then he used a few different tools to try and pull the thorn out. He got some of it, but it was getting painful for Renee, so he decided to stop.
So now we are left with soaking her toe in Epsom salt 3 times a day, hoping that the thorn will come out by itself.
But in case it doesn't, our doctor already set up a referral to a podiatrist, who will then have to remove the toenail...
Renee did not like the thought of that at all.... I think it actually scared her so much that that her condition is miraculously improving already:
She did 4 hours of gymnastics this afternoon without mentioning one word about her toe.
I am, on the other hand, wondering if it was such a great idea to replace the front lawn with desert landscape....
:-) Ulrike
How about ice plant? Ice plant is soft. Poor Renee.
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