Sole Searing

I'm limping today and a colleague at work asked the cause of it.

"Had some warts fried off my foot by my doctor."

I might as well of shot her ass full of dry ice as apply it to my foot for the reaction she gave. Only partially recovering, she said, "Oh, well you're certainly open enough about it." She then weakly smiled and moved on. This is a woman with an excellent sense of irony.

Have I been asleep since the Dark Ages receded? -- not sure that's even an accurate allusion. Were warts feared in Christianity's hey day? Anyway, are people still ashamed of warts? Who knew? Better, who gives a fuck? I have half a mind (so tempting to stop the sentence there, eh?) to go pull my socks off for a wee dance on the woman's desk.

But that it would hurt at the moment.

In case you don't know, dry ice (see the oh so witty reference above) is used to burn warts back to the hell from which they arise. Well, okay, actually warts are viral and burning them off simply removes their surface manifestation. The body eventually defeats the virus, but that can take many many years and the warts are free to raise a wee polyp when they will.

So, my doctor takes a scalpel to scrape the surface covering off the wart and then takes this industrial, out-of-context looking can of dry ice and blasts the warts. OHIP only pays for wart removal on the feet (plantar warts) so this blasting was administered to my left foot in two places on the meaty part of my foot below my middle toes.

Yah, hurts like hell. Akin to someone figuring out how to burn ice cubes while holding them to the sole of your foot.

I think Benny (my doc) was a bit over zealous this time as one of the burn sites developed a wonderfully bulbous blister, which has been more like walking on a marble than was the wart.

But we're not done. One application is never enough. Wait a couple of weeks to let the wart show renewed growth, return to holder of dry ice, and repeat.

Hold on a second to the image of the fire ice applied to skin. Now let me tell you about a friend who had genital warts on his dick. Yup, burn baby, burn.

steve