Things You Don't Think About Until You Lose a Toenail

Yes it's gross. It hurt like hell when it happened. I pulled a door onto my toe and the pain was much like that of a stubbed toe but much worse (delayed as if it took my brain a couple seconds to reconcile what my eyes had seen). And I limped for a few days, could only wear flip flops for a few more and then it was over. So, I thought.

The nail popped off and it was relatively painless, but I was so determined that I wasn't going to lose it that it was a surprise when it came off and now I'm finding it's actually more of a nuisance than I thought. Here are some things that I didn't think about until that freshly exposed skin popped through:

• It's totally messing with my wardrobe. I start my outfit choice with my shoes and now my shoes are limited so I'm finding that I'm having a hard time figuring out what to wear.
• Speaking of shoes, I'm ashamed of the bruised skin and nubby little area for my toe, so no more open toe shoes. That has effectively taken my shoe choice to about 6 of my 30+ pairs.
• The skin is bruised and new so it starts to hurt at weird moments: when it happens to bump against a shoe, when the sheets hit it, in the shower when the stream strikes it, as I'm pulling on my pants.
• I haven't had a pedicure in months. Okay, so this is a really girly thing to complain about and a year ago it wouldn't have even crossed my mind, but it's nice to have your feet massaged and pampered.