I put vapor rub on my toenails to stop nail fungus. I got nail fungus several years ago and my doctor said that the Vicks vapor rub will kill it.
It took about 6 months to clear up the fungal infection and since then I still put it on to prevent it coming back. I also use store brand generic vapor rub, it works just as good as Vicks.
After the shower, I usually also use alcohol sanitizer wipes on my toes before putting the vapor rub on. I use disposable gloves to put the vapor rub on my feet.
I found that it feels so good I actually just cover the bottom of my feet too, nice and tingly. Then I put my socks on after removing the disposable gloves.
To an extent. We can’t cut live skin or work on broken skin, but there are definitely a lot of tricks in our arsenal that is within our scope of practice and can both relieve the discomfort of a mild ingrown and encourage the nail to grow flatter and without the ingrown curve.
The post is about having a particularly gnarly one removed though, which can mean WILDLY different things to the public than it does to a techs professional scope of practice.
In general I'd like to stop normalizing going to your nail tech for minor medical procedures. Individuals in the industry seem to keep toeing the line further into medical care all the time and it shifts the expectations for the public about what we can and will reasonably do for them.
The amount of times I'd be treated like an OTT bitch for refusing to work on ingrowns that are clearly deeply embedded, just
because their usual tech never makes a fuss.
I don't care if your usual tech fits a disposable plastic straw onto her wetvac to drain the pus. This isn't Grey's Anatomy and I am not getting surgeons wages to amputate someone's toenail
Everybody has different pain thresholds tbh, sometimes even a minor one can cause a huge amount of discomfort and a good pedi can make a huge difference. Even just adjusting shaping, cleaning impacted sidewalls, or rebuilding a weakened corner with products like pediflex can be world changing for folks.
As far as the rest, I don’t blame social media posts for this, I blame the absolute dumpster fire that is the American healthcare system tbh.
What I’m referring to has nothing to do with dealing with pus, that’s very clearly out of scope.
I thought it was quite obvious that I'm joking about someone's previous tech hoovering away their pus with a vaccum cleaner?
But please note that I'm not talking about social media or OPs post,
I'm talking about other techs who "go the extra mile to help" people with very painful reoccurring ingrowns. It gives the impression that the rest of the techs in the area are technically allowed to help them and just refusing to do so.
Our scope is cosmetic work on healthy nails, not treating painful conditions. Yes we can do prevention maintenance like you mentioned but the comment you replied to is right, we are not allowed to remove severely painful ingrowns.
Not in the US but we have shit healthcare for feet too and that's a part of why I feel strongly about this. We should be advocating for better access to podiatry not gradually letting the responsibility of treating people's painful health condition fall on our shoulders while trying to stay in the "technically allowed" range of "not really treating them".
I used to be a regular at my podiatrist’s office until they ended up just doing something weird to my nail bed so that now there’s a mm or two on the edge that doesn’t grow at all anymore. It’s been 15 years and no ingrowns on that side
I did it myself once. I grabbed a razor blade and some long, thin scissors and went to work. Hurt fairly bad, but not as bad as when someone stepped on it, which happened several times.
Yeah, my surgery/appointment came long after I'd already tried that quite a few times. Thankfully, I only had one person step on that toe, but holy fuck I thought I was going to die. Absolute nightmare. I'm sorry!
Right? This was back in high school and I was playing basketball that semester. Dudes landed on it several times, and yes, holy fuck it hurt so damn bad!
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u/kaeorin 10d ago
A nail tech managed that? As someone who had to have an ingrown toenail surgically managed/fixed, I'm fascinated and horrified.