and his big toenail had grown over and under his foot

and had poked through the skin from the bottom

and sticking up from the middle of the foot.

(curious upbeat music)

Hi, I'm Abby.

- Hi, I'm Terry.

- Today we're gonna talk about some foot

doctor horror stories.

- Okay, my horror story came in about 1993.

I was a residency director at the time

and we had a patient who had some rather extensive

foot and ankle surgery done.

We had placed him in a plaster of Paris cast,

which is like the white cast material.

Nowadays we use fiberglass, and he came in for his first

post-op visit and I looked at his leg and his cast

and it was basically melted and I came over and I said,

"What happened?" And he said,

Well, he was feeling pretty good.

He didn't use the crutches as much as he should have

and he went swimming in the ocean the day before.

This is just a few days after his surgery.

So needless to say, we cut away the plaster cast

and he had a rather swollen and red and infected

surgical sites and had to admit him to the hospital

and what was supposed to be something

clean, neat and simple,

became a disaster.

- So one of my horror stories has to do with this

gentleman who was a police officer who apparently

had gone through a very, very, very, very horrible

divorce and for years he was not looking

into meeting anyone.

Finally, he decided that he wanted to meet someone

that would be special in his life.

He loved to walk on the beach bare feet

and take strolls with whomever was gonna be

his significant other.

The day I saw this gentleman, he had come in

because apparently his chief complaint was

very sensitive toes and so I wasn't sure exactly

what was going on.

I didn't know what had happened.

I assumed that because he was a police officer,

he had just been in boots all day long,

he had blisters or something like that.

And when I walked into the door the smell of in that room

was nauseating and when I saw his feet,

and because when I walk into the room I see my patient's

feet first, all I saw was this disgustingly red

feet that has pus oozing out of every single toe

and they were all infected and some of them

were even bleeding and I asked him what happened.

He very nonchalantly said,

"I was so embarrassed about my nails because I had fungus

"on my nails and I was so looking forward to take

"my new girlfriend out on the beach and walk bare feet

"in the sand that one night I just decided

"that because I didn't have time to go see a doctor

"to take a whole bottle of tequila, drink it all by myself

"and decided to go sit in my tub and use a wire cutter

"and I pulled every single toenail without

"any other means of anesthetizing my toes."

Basically he didn't think anything of it

and he pulled all of his nails and thought just

to take a bath and went ahead the next morning

and wrapped every single toe in toilet paper

and put his boots on and basically went to work.

By that afternoon, he had a full-blown cellulitis

with infection running up his toes, all the way

to the ankle and that's when he decided to come in.

Basically what we had to do was put him on several weeks

of antibiotics, gave him a note that he should not

be wearing his boots and he should just do desk work

for a while until the infection is all cleared up

and he healed finally and he ended up not having

beautiful looking nails, but he ended up taking

his stroll on the beach with his girlfriend

without being embarrassed because he ended up

realizing that having fungal nails is not

as disgusting as he thought it was going to be.

- Well this is not necessarily foot related.

However, I had a patient come into the office

a number of years ago.

The staff brought him from the reception area

into the examination room.

As I'm walking and pick up the routing paper,

find out who the patient is and head towards the door,

there was just something that didn't seem right,

didn't smell right.

So I walked through the door.

It was quite obvious that the patient had lost

control of their...

- Bowels.

- Pretty much, yeah.

Control of the bowels and it was a rather large mess.

Gave him as much dignity as possible

in a situation like that.

He was an elderly man and he was very thankful

and we got him all put back together again.

I did what needed to be done.

After he left, unfortunately this room had to be

quarantined for the most part because the smell

didn't go away for several days no matter what we did.

So whatever he ate stayed in the room for a while.

- In another instance I was told that I have

a couple in a room where the wife had filled out

the paperwork for the husband stating that

he scratches her in bed.

So before going into the room, I assumed that because

most of our patients, especially the ones that are elderly

come in because they can't reach their feet,

because they have very thick, deformed, rough,

flaky nails that she was basically concerned

about the fact that her husband's nails were too long

and they couldn't get them treated or he couldn't

have pedicures, whatever the reason was,

I just made an assumption that it had something

to do with his nails being too long.

He was also diabetic and that was part of the information

that I was given before going in,

so I again, assumed that it's just a simple cutting

of the nails and talking to the patient

about having their nails treated by a professional

and come in on a regular basis.

However, when I opened the door and I walked into

the room, I was just like Terry was talking about

his patient, smacked in the nose with the smell

of this infected foot that he came in with

and what was very bizarre was the fact that I saw

something sticking out from the middle of his foot

that looked like a thorn or some foreign object.

When I got closer and I actually looked at his foot,

which was also almost all black because he had

gangrene set in, apparently nobody had cut his nails

in years and his big toenail had grown over

and under his foot and had poked through the skin

from the bottom and sticking up from the middle

of the foot and it was dripping pus and a little

bit of some gooey, greenish kind of liquid.

His wife didn't have any idea what this was all about,

she just cared about the scratching in bed

and when I asked him if it hurt he just said, "No."

and because he's diabetic, he basically had no feelings

in that foot and she just asked me if I just

could cut the nail and let them go.

I unfortunately had to tell her that this is not

something we could treat, that he must probably

will have to have his leg amputated,

which unfortunately he did.

We had to take him to the ER, admit him and end

up seeing a surgeon who actually amputated his leg

below the knee.

So the moral of the stories that we just told you

is that we're hoping none of you, no matter what

the problem is, how simple you think it is,

just don't try to diagnose it and treat it yourself

with home remedies.

Just come in, we promise we will get rid of the problem

as quickly as we can.

So please go see a foot doctor

instead of treating it yourself.

(upbeat music)