Warts

For as long as I can remember I've had tiny white hard little warts on the inside of my finger joints.  I used to have them in almost all my joints, distals (the last joint) but when I was a teenager they almost all disappeared.

The only ones remaining are on my distal thumb joints.  They're slow-growing, and only get to bothering me every other year or so.  They always appear in exactly the same place on the joint, and nowhere else. I carefully cut away the "non-native" white hard tissue down to pink skin (where it bleeds if I dig any deeper) and after a week or so my skin is back to normal -- for a year or so.

I have tried every remedy on the planet.  Squaric acid, freezing, cutting, abrading, voodoo chants.  They come out cleanly when carefully cut out, all except a 'root' of some sort which consists of a blood vessel (which bleeds) and a nerve (which hurts) if cut too deeply.  I sometimes wonder if they'd stop coming back if I could somehow cut beyond this barrier.  But it hurts and bleeds.

I like to set up my Dremel high speed motor with a fairly smooth abrading wheel, and gently grind the skin down to the point where the nerve kicks in.  It's a funny kind of pain -- very localized, very sharp, and instantly recognizable.  It's like tooth pain, open nerve stuff, very hard to miss. The abrasive wheel removes skin slowly, while somewhat cauterizing as it goes.

That is my story for today.  Thanks for playing.

NoCoPilot wrote:

For as long as I can remember I've had tiny white hard little warts on the inside of my finger joints.

Didn't your mother tell you that would happen?

For many years, I had a wart almost 1/4" in diameter on the outside of my left thumb joint. It would grow big enough that it would tear and bleed if I stuck my hand in my pocket without taking care. I went to a dermatologist who froze it. It came back right way. Then he took a small scoop and dug it out. It came right back. Then I covered it with duct tape and left the tape there for about two weeks. Took the tape off and the wart grew back, but not as quickly. Before it got too big, I put duct tape on it again and left it for two, maybe three weeks. That was about ten years ago, and the wart has not come back. I kid you not. YMMV.

How do you propose I keep pieces of duct tape on the inside of my thumbs, when I swim every day?

They have a new thing - you can look it up on google - they're called gloves.

Urine sane.

No, I'm serious. They are called "gloves". Just look.

That's just cruel. You KNOW my mother used thalidomide.

Seriously, if you want to call bullshit on the duct tape idea, I wouldn't blame you or take offense. That was my first reaction when I heard of it. Scrounging around the internet, I found numerous positive references to it, and desperation won out over common sense. I was shocked when it worked (saved me having to swing a dead cat in the graveyard at midnight).

As far as the tape coming off when you swim or shower, remember this is duct tape, not band aids; getting it off is the hard part.

LOL. Had a pair of those 3-finger gloves in my diving days. They were weird.

I'm not as skeptical about duct tape as I am having it stay on when applied to the INSIDE of a finger joint.