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.
