So remember back on July 19th where I briefly mentioned having a splinter in my foot? You're not going to believe this.
So when I first stepped on the splinter, I felt a slight pain when it first went in, but I checked my foot after and didn't see anything, and I didn't feel any pain after that so I thought "hmm, maybe I just randomly stepped on something sharp but it didn't enter the skin". About a week later is when that area on my foot started to feel painful. This was the beginning of my trials and tribulations.
The pain felt like someone was stabbing my foot with a needle every time I took a step. First, I tried clipping away at the skin with finger nail clippers, but I could not see anything past the initial layer of skin. The pain would go away for a few days and I would think "ok, maybe I got it", but then next week the pain would be back and the skin around the area would be tough. I rinse/repeated this process for the first 2 or 3 weeks or so. I never saw anything at all, just skin and more skin no matter how long I dug into my foot. I even used a magnifying glass - saw nothing.
One morning I woke up and the pain was so bad, I couldn't walk on it and had to miss work that day. I went on Google and searched "how do you remove a splinter". Sites were like "soak it in this chemical" and "soak it in that chemical". Tried epsom salt and some other weird stuff, then dug a hole into my foot again. Saw nothing. Removing the hard skin made it less painful, but full pain returned soon after. So I was like "hmm, I wonder if this could get infected if it stays in there for a long time, maybe I should see a doctor about getting this removed", so I Google "doctor remove splinter" and on one of the first links, some guy was talking about the cost of those procedures.
Which is around $300.
So at this point I decide I'll fight a war of attrition against the splinter. I'll just keep chipping at it week after week. Eventually it'll tire itself out and surrender. Finally, just a few hours ago when I was in the bathtub playing with myself, I felt the pain again and when I went to pick at my feet, the skin felt a bit more loose. I scratched off the first layer of skin and then held my feet up to my face to get a closer look and could see a small black dot.
I grab a pair of small scissors and start viciously tearing at the flesh on my foot. As shards of my skin fly in random directions, I can begin to see slightly more of the splinter. I switch weapons - this time, I start stabbing the area with a needle. After 10 minutes of mutilating myself, I'm finally able to pull it out.
It was not wood. It was not glass. It was not plastic. It was not a frog. It was not the Nexus. It wasn't even Yut Puts butt.
Are you ready? You're going to think I'm trolling when I say this, but what caused me so much discomfort from July 29th until today was a 1/4 inch long strand of hair. You have no idea how blown my mind was when I realized a god damn strand of hair somehow buried itself deep into my foot as I was walking through my house back in July. I don't even understand it. I Googled "hair splinters" and apparently it's an actual thing. I'm not the only person to get a hair splinter. Like, I don't even know how to feel about this.
A strand. Of hair.
God.
Lesson learned: Wear slippers.
I have a similar story (not hair though), where I had a piece of firewood fall out of my hand as I was walking (without shoes, whoops) and I stepped on it before it finished falling causing my foot to scrape along the edge of it. I picked up three or four splinters and managed to get all of them but one, that had somehow managed to get into the side of my foot and not the bottom, and I couldn't see it at all.
Being someone who has spent most of their life going barefoot, and growing up in the desert, I was pretty used to digging stuff out of the bottom of my feet, and by this point in my life the bottoms are basically like leather and things rarely get deep enough to be a problem, unfortunately the sides of my feet are fragile little snowflakes like they should be.
I dug in with a needle (always best to use a needle, you want to dig a hole not clear the surface away), and managed to hit the head of the splinter but just couldn't get it to budge -- I assumed it was just a little sliver in at an awkward angle.
So I spent the next few weeks digging at it after showers (when your skin has absorbed the moisture there's a bigger gap), the whole time my foot was killing me, barely able to walk on it.
It was *exactly* three weeks to the day that I had obtained my little friend, I was in the shower and my foot was being especially itchy (not painful), so I started frantically scratching at the hole I had kept consistently dug down to the head of this splinter and with the most horrible sound, and pleasant feeling of release this splinter literally comes popping straight up out of my foot, like I hit the eject button.
This little bastard was TWO INCHES LONG, no wonder it was so painful, it wasn't just pushing through surface layers of skin, it was deep into the fat and muscle.
Moral of the story: Keep at splinters that won't come out, because eventually, the path of least resistance will be taken and it'll be pushed out.
My brother once got a piece of a wicker basket stuck in his arm while falling off a ladder and the only way to do anything about it without cutting a giant slit in his arm was letting it fester out naturally, and jesus, when it did I almost threw up, the sound, smell, and look of the thing just sliding out of his arm on its own was gut wrenching. He said it felt "really awesome" when it happened though.