I injured my toe playing racquetball in February. It's what, October now, and I'm still trying to recover. First, I lost the big toenail after about a month after it got all infected and nasty. Eww. That took fully three weeks before I could even walk in dress shoes. Then, as the nail grew back it caused a bit of trouble occasionally, until 6 weeks ago when the right side of the nail became ingrown and I had to have it cut out and burned with acid. Eww again. Two weeks to recover from that, and now the left side is ingrown and the nail is coming off once more.
Every time I start to get active again this stupid toe puts the brakes on. I have a doctor's appointment to remove the nail and treat any infection tomorrow. More pain, yay!
Apparently this is a pretty common problem among ultrarunners. Some guys just pull them off with pliers, others
had both "big" (technical podiatry term) toe nails permanently removed and haven't regretted it one bit. He anesthetized the toes with a shot, yanked the nails, and put acid on the nail bed to kill nail growth.Double eww.
This site says that sometimes you will loose the nail after having the ingrown part removed.
I just want the problems to end.

