It's killin' me.
You'd think that would be enough of a challenge, but no, there was more. On Friday night, we were setting up for our monthly gig at Junior's. We perform outside on a wooden deck, and as I was opening one of the guitar cases, I managed to get a splinter - a serious hunk of wood that lodged deep under a fingernail on my left hand (the hand I hold down strings with on the neck of the guitar). Behold the splinter in its unfortunate position under the nail of my middle finger:
Note that the splinter is pushed well below the white part of my nail. So, there was no pulling it out at that point. I had to perform the whole show with this piece of wood lodged under my nail.
When we got home, I trimmed back the nail as far as I could, softened it with warm water, then Johnny and I both tried to get to it using the age-old method of "dig with stick pin." We got nowhere. And since it was 1:30am at this point, we decided to let it go until morning.
The next morning, I looked on the Internet for suggestions. The first round of trial and error involved cutting a notch into the nail just above the splinter, and trying again to dig at it with a stick pin and/or tweezers. Here is how things looked after this first round:
As you can see, there is a notch above the splinter, which is still in place. Again, I got nowhere. Luckily, though, what you don't see is too much redness. So, it wasn't too inflamed and it wasn't getting infected. Back to the Internet.
After much searching, I settled on three "natural" or DIY methods to try and draw the splinter forward, since I wasn't about to cut or dig any deeper into my nail. I was pretty sure doing that would, in fact, lead to serious inflammation or infection, and I still might not get the splinter. So the methods I decided to try were:
- applying a paste of baking soda and water
- soaking the finger in apple cider vinegar
- applying a paste of epsom salt and water
Here are my results:
Baking soda and water paste - I started with this. I made the paste and applied it for about 30 minutes. It was easy and didn't hurt, but it didn't seem to do much. So, I moved on to the vinegar.
Apple cider vinegar - The theory on this method is that the tissue will swell and push the splinter out. I soaked my finger in a small cup of apple cider vinegar for 30 minutes. This actually aggravated it. It burned a little when I was doing it, and the fingertip was more red and swollen and tender when I was done. So, the swelling happened as advertised, but the splinter was still there and didn't seem more accessible. So, I abandoned this one.
Epsom salt paste - I started with just a soak on this one. I put some epsom salt into a cup of water and soaked my finger for 30 minutes. I didn't notice any movement on the splinter, but it definitely calmed the inflammation caused by the vinegar.
I returned the baking soda paste for most of the day, just because I had a bunch of it, but I didn't notice any change. In the evening, I made a paste with the epsom salt and applied that for about an hour. I then left it alone and went to bed.
On Sunday, when I woke up the finger was not in pain and had no redness, so that was good - still no sign of infection. I just left it alone for the day, and then in the evening, it looked like the splinter had, in fact, shifted forward. So, I got out the tweezers and tried again to grab it. And...SUCCESS!
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| The offending splinter |
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| My splinter-free nail |
If I had it to do over again, with the lessons learned from this experience, I think I would again trim the nail and cut the notch as close as I could over the splinter. But I think I would just do the epsom salt paste. I can't be sure which method helped pull the splinter forward (or if my finger pushed it out on its own), but the epsom salt did reduce inflammation, so if it did nothing but that, it was helpful.
If only any of the DIY cold remedies I've read about were half as effective!
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