Gross

Did you know that warts come from a virus? Did you know that little kids can get them? Did you know they were painful?

I had absolutely no clue about any of that. Once again, parenting fail!

Sarah, my oldest, has had a boo boo on her pinkie toe for quite sometime. At the beginning, it looked as if she had scraped it right on the tip-as if she had stubbed it on cement. She often runs around outside without shoes on or is just wearing flip flops and the weather was still warm when we noticed it, so I thought nothing of it. It never seemed to heal and I just figured she was re-injuring it.

Well, on Thanksgiving, she tells me she has a black spot on her other foot. Off comes the shoes and socks and between my parent, my husband and I we deduce that both are warts. Nasty, disgusting, contagious warts. The toe wart has worsened and actually looks like a few warts clustered together and that they are under the toenail. Gross.

I had no idea that all warts are contagious. This girl has been showering in MY shower for years! Ewwww. Being that she is 8, we figured a round of compound W might not be the best solution and I made a call to the pediatrician. Pat adjusted his schedule to take her the next Friday for the appointment. The doctor barely even saw her before she declared that it was a job for a podiatrist. Don't get me started on the wasted appointment- they could have told me that on the phone when I made the appointment and I could have saved us a trip! Thankfully, the office didn't charge us a co-pay.

This past Friday, Pat to Sarah to his podiatrist. (They had a dual appointment so that he could get an ingrown toenail dealt with at the same time.) Well, the doctor whipped out some razor-like tool and got down to scraping away at the warts. Poor Sarah had no anesthesia, but evidently the doctor was pretty skilled and didn't cause her much discomfort. She came home with some distinct holes in her pinkie toe. The instructions were to get a freeze-away wart kit and NOT to use Compound-W. She is also supposed to wear shower shoes at the indoor pool. Gross.

Last night we broke out the wart remover kit. We are pretty sure that the first wart we tried to "freeze" didn't take. When we did the second wart and it turned the skin white and caused Sarah some discomfort (pain) we realized the first, that just tickled, probably didn't work. Tonight we are supposed to add the liquid remover. I'm not sure what we do if none of this works.

Things Pat learned about warts:

Each little tiny black dot is a wart. The roots of the wart are attached to the dot and are trying to get into the blood stream. When they do, the warts can pop up anywhere. Gross. All warts are viral and are contagious, but not everyone is susceptible to them (since I have never had one, I consider myself immune-same goes for poison ivy too).

Warts are gross (but we aren't supposed to say that to Sarah).