Fix-it failure

It's expected of moms to be able to fix most anything, right? Fix dinner, fix the rip in pink bunny, fix the movie on the tv, and most of all fix the boo boos. I've spent the last 15 years successfully fixing almost all of my girls' boo boos. I've fixed so many tummy aches, headaches, and stuffy noses, that's there's too many to count. I've fixed scraped knees, bumped noggins and iced a few fat lips. I've fixed toothaches, tended to stitches and doled out more medicine than I care to remember. They count on me to fix them and I almost always do.

So for over a week now, my oldest daughter has been fighting an ingrown toenail. Every day I've been constantly nagging at her to tend to it. I've been barking instructions every night after practice and even texting her during the day to change the bandage and lather on the salve. I've been on her hide about soaking it in Epson salt water and cleaning it with peroxide, and I've given her multiple examples with the nail clippers on how to retrieve that nasty ingrown booger.

Hesitantly, after additional harping on my end, she's forced herself to pause her favorite teen show every evening, and to tend to her toe issue. She's taken time away from her precious evening hours to soak the toe, clean the toenail, and dig away at the hidden dagger but to no avail. In fact, it has only gotten worse. This morning, she awoke to an entirely red toe and a juicy little abscess growing next to the toenail, complaining that her whole foot hurt. Great! What happened to my home remedies? I thought I was fixing it?

So I did a little research and apparently ... you're NOT supposed to dig at ingrown nails and you are NOT, in case, EVER supposed to poke at the swelling to relieve the pressure. It appears that doing those things actually spreads the infection, making the issue terribly worse. Ahhhh?! I did not know that. I guess there are other, more appropriate and safer measures to treating ingrown nails so that they don't become infected turn red and form abscesses. News to me!

So ... off to the doctor we went today. And before he could barely start asking what was wrong, I fully admitted that I had officially failed as a mother this time and my attempts to "fix" my child's problem resulted in a disaster and I took all the blame for the wound, which he described perfectly as an "angry toe". Yes, he was right. If her poor toe could talk, I'm sure it would have screamed a few choice words at me. "Knock it off, Lady! We don't fix things with raw bacon and hot knives these days!" Kinda what comes to mind....

Anyway, one short visit to the Doc and we're getting her all taken care of. Thanks to my crazy ideas on how to fix it, she's now on antibiotics and facing possibly total nail removal.

Way to go, me! Maybe I'll just stick to the simple fixes and steer clear of the unknown areas that lead to major infections and surgeries; cause this "fix it" was a total failure!