Typhoid Mary's
More than Warts

Blog Hero - Tree Man of Indonesia

To start at the beginning of the wart saga, click here.

I’d like to take a break from my rather mundane story (seriously, are you guys really reading this blog?) and tell you about someone who truly suffers from warts: Tree Man.

I have been fascinated by the Tree Man, who lives in rural Indonesia, for some time. Dede is in his mid-thirties and seems like your average Joe fisherman who just wants to live a normal life. Tragically, he has out of control warts (understatement of the century).  Due to a weakened immune system (he’s only 100 lbs., at least 20 of which are warts, has Hep B, and osteoperosis, among other issues), the HPV virus, which causes warts, has been able to grown unchecked on Dede.

Fortunately, Dede has been getting treatment in Indonesia from both local doctors and a dermo from Univ of Maryland who has been traveling from USandA to see Dede in Indonesia.  Read more about him here from this very trusted source of quality journalism, CNN or here, UK’s Telegraph.

A young-Obama-in-Jakarta fist pump to you, Tree Man. I feel about an ounce of your pain.

I almost went to Indonesia by accident once. Was flying from Brisbane to Cairns (or vis versa?) and there was a lot of confusion about which line I should be in. It really wasn’t clear. I got in the line of people going to Jakarta and got all the way through to the jetway. No one even looked at my boarding pass. Realized just in time when everyone looked a little more like this

than like this

.

Crikey! Oh well. Would have been very cool to have gone to Indonesia without planning on it.

Warts - a journey

To start at the beginning of the wart saga, click here.

Part Five - Adventures with Holistic Hippie Nonsense

As someone who is continuously plagued by things that ruled and ruined lives of my brave predecessor Bostonians like Abigail Adams (seriously, that HBO series where she battles small pox gives my blog the finger), I am a fan of using the best the 21st century has to offer to combat warts, rats, sars, tarts, etc.

However, there are times when we should all consider a return to what nature has to offer. I will hint to you here, that while my earth mama remedies didn’t do much except make a lot of messes, I was getting closer to a cure with this train of though. Modern medicine is really at its best when it remembers that we’ve got everything we need right here on planet earth.

1) Salt Pork.

S. is a true how-d’you-like-them-apples Bostonian. He spent some time in a Thai prison, and was an Army medic, so he knows a lot about the human body (that’s what she said).  In other words, a good person to know.  I called S. when I performed self surgery on the wart (see part four) and thought my foot was going to fall off. He was very supportive, and offered to come over to my house to look at my festering foot. Thanks, S!

When I first told S. about my warts, he recommended a tried and true method of his uncle - salt pork.

According to S., his uncle is a true wart warrior, a man who did his owe hack-out of a wart, then poured salicidic acid right in the open hole that was left in his foot to burn out any remaining virus.

At this point in the game, I was not ready to be this badass. S. suggested I strap a piece of salt pork to my wart, wrap it up, and call it a night. So I did.

Hmmm. Next day, pork was gross. Foot was the same. Continued in the way for a few more nights, sleeping next to my husband, piece of dead hog tied to my foot. Fun stuff, very sexy.  Gave up. Sorry S.

2.) Bollywarts - Adventures with Turmeric.

According to a number of websites (OK, more like 2 or 3) some people have cured their warts using raw turmeric.  Check out how creepy this stuff looks - like toes, or worms.

For those of you unfamiliar with turmeric, it is a wonderroot. It’s used as an antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, helps with gastrointestinal nightmares, is soothing in tea, and is currently being examined in studies on Alzheimer’s and liver disease.  One blog instructed me to make a paste of it using olive oil, roll a little ball of this paste, and tape it to my foot. I did this, and left it there for a few days, using some serious tape that was shower-proof.

The result? Interesting. First of all, my wart was yellow now. Actually, more like orange.  So was all the skin around it - like my whole foot, really. I washed and washed but it succeeded in dyeing my foot pretty permanently. The wart, however, did seem to be a little less warty. Like it was not happy being orange. Promising? I decided to do it again.

However, after a week or two of the turmeric treatment, I had sufficiently dyed my sheets in various places with my turmeric foot, as well as ruined all of my cotton socks. No jai ho here.

3.) Really really hot salty water.

I read that super-hot temperatures can actually kill the virus of the wart in the foot. At this point in the battle of the warts, it was finals season of American Idol. Guilty pleasure - I wanted to see who would win, Gokey or the adorable Allison, or that crazy bitch Adam or heartthrob kid Allen. So I watched the show while dipping my feet in hades-hot salt water soaks. Managed to scald my feet while suffering through more cracked out Laker girl critiques. Not sure what was more painful. For me, for you, it just wasn’t the right choice. Warts remained. It was time to call in the big dogs - the dermatologists.

Warts - a journey

To start at the beginning of the wart saga, click here.

Part Four - Living Room Surgery (beware, gory post, not for pansy stomachs)

At this point, I had weakened the wart considerably. True, it was still there, but an interesting thing was happening. I could pick at it, and it began to come out! I was still focusing on the motherwart at this point; after a few days of steady picking, I could see a lot of the wart. I could pull it part-way out of my foot, roll it around, etc. It looked like a tapioca ball. But it was still attached to my foot. Just didn’t want to let go. And too much pulling on it proved that it would be a painful affair to dislodge the wart from my foot.

Obviously, drinking would solve this problem. After an interesting night of moderate revelry, I solicited buddy J. to yank out the wart. J. has had his own medical experiements - he once participated in a testosterone study that involved smearing an estrogen gel on his arms every day for a year. Through this study, J. apparently experienced the joys of being a menopausal woman. A good lesson in empathy, but overall, a traumatic couple of months. As evidence of his insane mood swings, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to spend the $1000 he got from the study on an archery set, or a nice set of Analon pots and pans for his kitchen. He went for the pots.

Long story short, J. agreed to pull the wart out of my foot with tweezers. It was about 2 in the morning. My husband had already gone to sleep. We burned the tweezers with a match (that’s sterile, right?) dipped it in alcohol (definitely sterile), and took a shot of vodka. “Ready?” Before I could answer, J. gripped the wart and pulled, fast.

It was like uncorking a bottle of champagne. A fountain of red blood squirted everywhere. We contemplated whether or not we got the whole thing, but it was impossible to tell with all the blood everywhere.

The next day, my foot was pulsing something fierce and I couldn’t really walk on it. But soon, the wound healed, and there was a scab. And then the scab fell off, and the wart came back, bigger and badder than ever.

Part Four Again - Another Living Room Surgery

I attempted this method again about 4 months later. The wart seemed ready to go again. This time, my husband pulled it out. And it bled like crazy, and healed, and grew back.

Conclusion: After doing some further research, I discovered that this method of surgery is not a good idea (duh). First, it’s quite easy to get an infection, since a flame is not technically hot enough to sterilize metal instruments. And it’s usually recommended to do this type of thing in a doctor’s office. Second, warts have deep roots, and it’s pretty impossible to get them all out without going under the knife of a real doctor who will numb you up and really dig in there. This usually involves stitches. But even this method is not recommended - it’s very difficult for the doc to get all the root.  If he doesn’t, the wart is liable to grow back in the scar tissue, making it even more difficult/ impossible to remove.

Warts - a journey

Part 2- Freezing the warts.

I decided not to mess around and went to my doctor who froze the warts with a canister of liquid nitrogen. It didn’t hurt too much. The warts turned white. I went about my life doing things that have nothing to do with warts. Nothing happened.

Over the course of 3 years, I had the warts frozen every time I went to the doctor, which was about 3 or 4 times. Usually it was for something else, and then, hoping to milk a little more out of the copay, I’d shove my foot in the doctor’s face, “what do you think of these?” and she’d bring out the freezer gun.  
Conclusion on this method: freezing of plantar warts doesn’t work. I’ve done some research on other blogs, and they have had similar nonresults with their well-established plantars and freezing.  Don’t waste your money, unless the wart is on the softer skin of the finger.

Part 3 - Ongoing battle with paininthearse, over-the-counter stuff and duct tape.

For about 2 years, between freezings, I treated the wart with a barage of over-the-counter remedies, none of which worked. I’ll list them here.

1) Doctor Scholl’s plantar tape things with bandaids. These are little sticky circles of adhesive with salicidic acid on them, which you afix to the wart and then cover with a nice soft round adhesive pad. You are supposed to stick these on and leave them for a few days or longer.The wart gets no oxygen and the skin becomes white and soft. You can then schluff off the wart with a blade or pumice stone.

The problem: Oh, where to begin. Sticky stuff? Doesn’t really stick if you plan on bathing yourself. Since i do bathe regularly, embarassing scenes ensued. Here’s one:

Typhoid Mary visiting friend’s house to meet new baby. Has kicked off flip flops at the door. Somehow, gross wart-bandaid has detached from my foot and is stuck on the carpet. We put baby on a blanket that’s laid on the carpet. When baby is picked up again, she has wart tape stuck to cute blanket with lambs on it. “Ew, what’s this?” exclaims alarmed new mom. “Oh oops. I think that’s my wart bandaging. Sorry. Don’t think I got any on your fresh out infant.”

Another problem: salicidic acid isn’t strong enough on it’s own. And self-schuffing? Only good if you know how to sterilize a blade (and have a deft hand with a blade - not me - see what happens when I attempt this later on). Or if you are mad crazy with a pumice stone. Which is kind of like cutting a carrot with a plastic knife. Doesn’t freaking work

.

2) Dr. Scholl’s Freeze Away

This expensive stuff seemed like a good alternative to going to the doctor and paying a $20 copay each time. You buy this stuff and feel like you’ve got the power. The power to freeze. Ooooh yeah. It tells you not to aim it on good skin, puppies, babies, etc. So here I was, freezing my own warts. What’s up now, bitches.

The problem: See previous section of this post. Freezing does nothing.  After another $20 (how much this self-freezing stuff costs), I was still warty.

3) Duct tape

Usually I trust my life to this stuff. Amazing, right? I know you all agree. You were there in college when I made that duct tape skirt for the pimps’n hoes party. Really, what were we thinking?

Duct tape can dominate anything. So i wore it on my foot, cutting little squares every morning, until I got really tired of doing this after about a week or two, and gave up. Apparently, this will work on fingers. Feet, however, are a no go unless you have serious patience.

Warts - a journey

To begin the blog, it is only appropriate to discuss my perilous and infinite journey with the dreaded plantar wart. In this section and others, I will chronicle how the warts came to be, and the various methods with which I fought them.  The good news is, the warts are currently in retreat (as of writing, July 2009) and for those of you suffering from warts, I hope you will find my various experiments with wart treatments a way to expdite your own wart war.

Part 1 - Birth of the Wart

If I had only known then what I know now. One fine evening having a glass of wine at a fellow lady’s house, L., I showed her the bumpy cauliflower looking thing on my heel that was annoying the shite out of me. I thought it was a callous. It was late summer. I had been wearing cheapass flipflops all over town. I figured the bumpy thing was a callous and it would go away in the winter. So I let the thing grow, touched it a lot, and little by little, it got bigger. That, my lovely friend L. said in her impeccable Horsham, England accent, is a plantar wart.

According to one medical website, plantar warts can be avoided. Medicine.net says, “To avoid plantar warts, a child should be taught never to wear someone else’s shoes. If a child gets plantar warts, they should be treated by a doctor. Plantar warts can be far more of a problem than common warts.” I practiced foot binding for about 5 years during my time in outer Mongolia, so my feet are stupid-tiny, I can’t really share shoes with anyone except nine-year-olds and ponies.  Sharing shoes was not the cause. Maybe I’ll never know what was. But either way, I was about to discover how much of a problem the wart could become.

But first, I decided to continue to ignore the thing. So went another year. So grew another 2 warts. By the next summer, I had one on my big toe and another on my heel. But the motherwart was really the one i wanted out. The one on my sole that throbbed sometimes at night after a long day. The gross one.

Check out this drawing of a foot seriously jacked up by warts. Luckily, even the motherwart didn’t look this narsty (but maybe I am just used to them…)