Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The Wart of the Toeses...

Quick update on the wart-sitch. As I drove Miss O to the doc after school, she was in fantastic spirits. We were laughing and singing and just having the grandest of wart-removal-fretting-free times imaginable. I had a backpack full of candy, stuffed animals and magazines, and like the knob that I am, I figured there was nothing to warty about.

Even in the examination room, while we were waiting for Dr. Death to enter, she was laughing and boppin' around and cutting armpit farts like there was no tomorrowart. Then, the doc and the nurse burst in and kicked off World Wart III. Now, to her credit, Miss O didn't scream this time. Instead, she somehow hooked her warty foot behind her "good" foot and refused to extend it toward the doc. At first I tried reasoning with her -- I pulled out the "Spongebob Halloween" magazine and offered her some Smarties, but she wouldn't fucking budge. It was as if she had sunk her horny, warty talons into her Achilles tendon and was hunkered down for the long haul.

Finally, I managed to wrassle her foot free and hold it in front of Dr. Feelgood, as he first sliced off some of the dead skin and then proceeded to burn those fuckers with the liquid nitrogen dipped Q-Tips. It was intense -- each time he touched the Q-Tip to the wart, there was a little "sizzle" noise and then wisps of vaporized wart-smoke would waft upwards, occasionally curling their smokey viral tendrils up my flared nares. And you haven't tripped until you've huffed wart-smoke, my friends. A heady brew, indeed.

But there was no screaming. There were one or two tears, and I could actually hear her teeth grinding down to nubs as she gritted them throughout the entire process. But she, more or less, held it together throughout. I think I'm gonna chalk it up in the win column.

Granted, the warts are still there and the doc informed me that there'll be one, maybe two more visits until those fuckers are permanently vaporized. As he put it, "Warts are like swimming upstream -- you have to make it all the way to the end, or the current will carry you all the way back down and you have to start over from scratch."

The dude's a regular Wart Whitman.

So, I scheduled the next appointment for two weeks from now and, wouldn't you know it, it just happens to fall on one of the Old Lady's afternoons. Doggone it all to heck. She gets all the fun. Doesn't matter, though... she'll schedule the one after that on one of my days. It's a regular tug-o-wart between us.

Oh well, until we wart again...

7 comments:

Burbanmom said...

Awww. Miss O's one brave little trooper. I hope you let her have a shitload of candy on the way home!

Russ said...

That liquid nitrogen is so cold it feels hot.

I had plantar(sp?) warts, not the kind with the white crusty tops.

And yes, it is quite the heady aroma!

Anonymous said...

No screaming? Definitely a "win"

Anonymous said...

Way-to-go-Miss-O!!!
How are you doin', big Daddy Worrywart?

Harbor Hon said...

Good for Miss O!

Now, have you asked yourself if the wart smoke contains wart spores? Then the spores are connecting with a moist nasal cavity and the fertile ground work is set for a nostril wart garden? Sorry, think I paid too much attention in biology, but bet you'll be running for the kleenex next time, huh? *shudder* Oh, the wartanity!

Susan Sink said...

Miss O gets a BIG prize! And can I just say, sounds like some girlpower to me? Girls tend to suck it up after they learn what the pain is gonna be and that it's inevitable. Mr. Z? I'm thinking he freaked every time, right?

I know this is a lame suggestion, but have you tried Compound W? My sister had warts on her hands growing up and it was just awful. The burnin' off did nothing for her, but a few applications of CW did the trick. Of course, in addition to the Compound W we took her to the front of the church one Sunday for a good old-fashioned humiliating prayerfest for healing (complete with some wailing in tongues)-- so the story goes it wasn't the compound W but the prayer. Nothing like having some actually suffering and hideous warty old-people-hands put on your fourteen-year-old warty hands to kind of scare the warts right off of them. I don't recommend that for Miss O.

Unknown said...

Warts normally grow out of the skin in cylindrical columns and they do not fuse when the wart grows on thin skin such as the face.



genital warts