The importance of cuticles...

...or why Helly has been in a foul mood since Friday.

Before I go on, I am just going to warn you that there are pictures in this blog post that aren't pretty. If you are half an hour either side of a meal then come back later!

You may remember me moaning on about a bad finger a while back. I had an infection under my nail, and it was so sore. I have no idea how it got there, all I know is that it was so painful I wanted my finger cut off. Slight exagerration, ok. But it was sore. It took two lots of strong antibiotics to clear it and I few weeks after the infection healed I realised I was going to lose my nail. Well, on Friday, after sporting a rather attractive bit of medical tape wrapped around it for the last few weeks, I manned up and got Mr NN to pull it off. It didn't hurt as much as I thought, but I was still gutted. It looks disgusting. I thought I'd share with you what went on.

I noticed that on one side of my nail there didn't seem to be any cuticle, and then it started getting sore. I never ever cut my cuticles, so I don't know what made it recede. I can only speculate that it was something to do with the horrific gel nails I had done just before Christmas. You can just see in this picture that the cuticle is missing on one side of my nail.

It got worse and worse and I eventually went to the doctor. The first set of antibiotics didn't help so a few days later I got some more, by then the nail looked like this. Beware:

 

Once the infection cleared, all was well again, apart from the absence of cuticle. Until I noticed the nail was lose at the bottom. It got loser and loser, and the nail came away from the nail bed from the infected side.



You can see in this picture that the root isn't attached to the bottom and it is just growing out at the attached side.



It's been coming off for weeks, getting loser and loser with less and less nail actually attached to the nail bed. Until last Friday night...

 

Ew! So, moral of the story? Look after your cuticles! Unless you happen to think deformed ET-esque fingers are attractive... I just want to emphasise that I NEVER cut my cuticles. They get gently pushed back with cuticle oil every once in a while but I never cut them. So they really are delicate things, and very important in keeping your nails healthy!

Now, I am going to ask for quick-new-nail-growing vibes please, because I am not digging going around like this:

Barry M Magnetic Blue on the other fingers, post soon!

A girl in Superdrug grimaced when she saw it the other day, and after she'd served me she got out the alcohol gel hand rub stuff! I know it's not pretty but I'm not a leper!
Hx

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