For a few years, I've had this bump on the inside of my big toe, so I thought it was a callous. Every now and then, I'd use clippers or a blade and cut it down to be less apparent, but I finally decided to ask my doctor about it. He said it was a regular wart (HPV) and that I had a plantar wart on the ball of the same foot. Today was the big removal day.
For anyone who needs to have this done, here is what to expect, because I was freaking out that he was going to have to numb my toe. They tend to be sensitive, eh? He stuck me under the wart, which was a pinch as you'd expect with a needle in the toe. Then the pain hit when he started pumping in the lidocaine. Thankfully that pain only lasts about 5-10 seconds, but he continued to numb it with various angles and depths without and discomfort.
Then comes the cool part: the cauterizer. He tapped my skin with it, sending up a puff of smoke, looked up to see if I felt it, and continued as I just grinned at how awesome that was. He continued to burn the entire area until it was like a burnt marshmallow. Then he took a tool that scrapes and scoops like a melon-baller without a bottom. By now, I had a pretty good crater in my toe, but he grabbed the cauterizer again and made a new layer of burnt material, ending with an area a little smaller than a dime, but not much smaller. It was bleeding pretty profusely, so he cauterized the area once again and gave me a bandage.
I just took off the bandage and found that it'd bled through, so I'm letting it breathe for a few minutes before putting on a new one.
For the plantar wart, he decided to cryo-cauterize it. That's fancy speak for freezing the crap out of it and giving it frostbite. This was just a rod connected to a tank of nitrous oxide that felt like putting my foot on an ice cube, just on the wart. It didn't really hurt until about 3 hours later, and now I want to scrape the darn area off like he did the toe, especially since it's on the bottom of my foot.
Photos are available if you want them. :-)
