How I Nailed a Problem With My Nails Without Looking It Up

It seems almost quaint now that when I was diagnosed with leukemia in 2003, my doctor said, “Stay off the internet.”

Of course, now, most of us look everything up. Sometimes it’s helpful but sometimes it’s not. The times when it is not helpful are those when you look up a problem and you find that it’s a sign of cancer. I once did it for some silly thing and my daughter told me to stop. According to Google, everything can be a sign of cancer.

Nail issues with a history of skin cancer

The reason I bring this up is that a problem related to my skin, or more specifically my nails, was concerning to me, and I did not look it up. You could put a whole long question in there and get an answer. But I didn’t exactly know how to articulate the problem. So I waited. And after a while, the answer dawned on me. It was a good exercise in using my own memory to find an answer instead of going to the internet.

To back up, I once asked my dermatologist if nails were in the purview of dermatology. She said yes. So that is why I’m going to tell you about a mysterious problem with my nails. When a little spot appeared under my thumbnail, I worried that it was cancer. I had read that you can get skin cancer under the nail. My dermatologist said it looked OK, so I let it go.

I’ve been proud of my nails. They have stayed remarkably strong throughout all that I have been through. Occasionally I get a manicure, but mostly I take care of them myself. That means letting them getting a little bit too long and then cutting them with a scissors or nail clipper and filing the rough edges. It’s the same benign neglect approach that I use with my plants.

White lines on my nail bed

About a month ago, two strange things happened to them. Some of them got little white lines along the bottom third of the nail bed. Also the bottom was a slightly different shade than the rest of them. I could have looked up white lines in nails, but I didn’t. I could have looked up discoloration in nails, but I didn’t do that either. My mind wandered to a story I heard about someone who had a bad disease. That person had said the first sign was a change in their nails. Oh no, I thought, on top of blood cancer and skin cancer, I’m now going to get something else?

Then I remembered what it might have been. And when I ran it by my dermatologist at my latest visit, she said it sounded like I was right.

Gel manicure - the cause of distress

Last June, when I had two weddings to attend, I got a gel manicure. The polish chips off so quickly after most regular manicures. I understand doing it if it’s for a special occasion, but it seems like a waste of money because it’s gone so fast. The gel, in a dark color, made me look cool, if I do say so myself. The problem with gel is that you have to go back to get it off. I probably left it on too long, maybe three weeks. I learned later that the UV light that bakes it on is not good for you. Also the chemical process of stripping it off can’t be good for you either.

The person stripping it off did a terrible job. My nails split at the top. They were disintegrating right in front of me. I was so upset. I probably should have left them alone. But I couldn’t resist pulling some apart, like the split ends at the end of my hair when I was in high school. Someone said they would take a year to recover.

My nails are cancer-free

I realized that the top three-quarters of my nail bed was fine. It was the older part that looked messed up. So I figured it out without looking it up. I wasn’t dying of anything, after all. It was just the result of the stupid gel manicure.