Owee, yikes. Glad all is well now.

I'm cringing reading this. When I was young, I stepped on a darning needle. I swear I felt it hit my heel bone, but luckily, it didn't break off, and I was able to pull it out. Thanks for making me think of a bad memory. Lol. JK. Hope it feels better fast.

THAT is painful!

I stepped on a toothpick like that when I was a kid. Hurt like the dickens!

Ouch! Makes me cringe just thinking about it. Hope it heals quickly and without any more pain.

Ouch!. I'm glad you were quickly treated and are okay.

I used to be clumsy and used to fall over lots as I had weak ankles. I was always twisting them. And stepping and falling all over everything. I did some exercises which seemed to have cured me of that balance exercises excetera

Like you I have quite a few of I stepped on things stories but this one reminds me of your incident.

I stepped on a needle which landed in the carpet when I was a kid. My mother didn't have good vision and didn't notice . I ended up with half of it way up in my foot as it broke off against a bone and the other half stayed in the carpet. It took us awhile to find the other half in the carpet. I had two doctors working on my foot. I have the scar to prove that the first doctor had no clue what he was doing. He dug in there for quite a while. The other one came in and took it out in seconds.

So glad that you got the right doctor the first time.

(((Hugs)))))

gardengal: I'm so glad to hear it all ended well...just the sheer diameter of a toothpick: OUCH! As I read your story, I thought, "Whoa...something kinda similar happened to my son -- now 22 -- when he was 10." But when I read yeonassky's account, OMG: I am 'that mom' in your story.

One of my needles ended up in the carpet at the foot of our stairs, and DS (on the way down) was in the habit of jumping off the third step up. He felt something sting, but we didn't notice any wound beyond a pin-prick of blood. We all thought he must've just run his foot across the top of an errant staple (three kids in the house x homework x plenty of stapled sheets!). He nursed his sore foot a bit all weekend, and the pain subsided. By Monday morning, though, DS noticed the top of his foot was getting warm and pink. An ER visit (with the needle portion showing up on xray) and 30-minute surgery later, the surgeon gave me the extracted needle in a vial. I carry the guilt with me to this day! (We did eventually find the other half of the needle in our carpet.)

Bleh, I'm one giant cringe, head to toe. I am equally clumsy, and have an assortment of scars to prove it. I hope your foot feels better soon!

LOL!! The doc actually had a similar story herself about stepping on a sewing needle so she could relate.

And now that the lidocaine has worn off and it is hurting again, that is just a good excuse to lounge around for the rest of the day, taking it easy and keeping my foot elevated. I am binging on the last couple of seasons of Longmire :-))

Yikes! I am so glad you were able to get medical attention! Take care of your foot!

That sounds so painful. I used to go barefoot as a child in the summer, but don't much any more, even in the house. I hope you find a nice comfy pair of slippers that have a good sole, some house slippers have a fabric sole that isn't going to protect.

Yeeeouch!

Glad they were able to remove it without too much trouble. Sorry that happened to you, but now you have a good excuse to lounge around this weekend.

I stepped on a rather large piece of broken glass while wading in a river once and that hurt like the dickens, but I was able to pull it out and it healed on it's own. It's a rare day that I go barefoot anymore whether I'm inside or out doors.

never a dull momentt is there?

Oh, No. So odd how those things stuck into a carpet become dangerous when on any other surface they would be a bit of debris to pick up. I'm glad you had an Urgent Care close by and didn't wait until after the weekend.

I've had just one experience with Urgent Care but found them fast, efficient, professional.

I wouldn't have thought of you as accident prone. I know you are used to living very independently or I would send you Mr. Safety - DH - for a while. Ask him to trim a branch out of reach and he will have two friends and three ladders set up for a 5 minute job. You'd probably sic both the cat and the dog on him.

"I wouldn't have thought of you as accident prone"

Oh, lordy!! I am the poster child for being accident prone!! I fell down so often as a child, I developed what the doctor called 'football players knees' or post traumatic arthritis. And managed to crack a knee cap falling UP the stairs in college! My yoga instructor niece has tried to help with various balance improving exercises but I'm not sure that has done anything for the issue. I used to have terrible ear infections when little and I think I may have permanently damaged my inner ear and that has affected my balance. I even fell this summer after stepping on a puny little pine cone! I am just a klutz, plain and simple :-)

Our Urgent Care facility is very new and only a 10 minute drive away. The next closest is a good 30 minute drive. I am very impressed with them.

Ouch!

Glad the story has a happy ending. I am clumsy too. What makes a person clumsy?

i have read that lack of mobility during baby years makes one lose (or not develop) dexterity. I don’t know if this is 100% factual. But in my case, it could explain it. When I was a baby and mom went back to work, I was left in the care of a babysitter. She also cleaned house, so to make her life easier, I was kept in crib or whatever baby enclosure for hours so I would be safe while she went about her biz. I can see where that lack of mobility might have made me clumsy.

DH says his mother mom let him crawl and roam around like a puppy. He is so agile, makes me think that what I read is true.

I hope the pain will subside. Keep the foot up, and warm. Use a mirror to be sure there are no red streaks of infection.

I sympathize with not being able to see well enough to understand what's happened. It requires more suppleness and better eyesight than I have to see the bottom of my foot. I can barely see well enough to trim my toenails. Ach! Age!

morz8 -- Oh, you have a Mr. Safety, too? (I have to allow much longer to get anywhere if mine is driving. He worked in PR for Allstate early in his career. I think he took all the safety warnings in through his pores.)

I feel for you. Stepped on a nail last September... it hurts like the dickens... when you walk after...

Hope you can get around/have some crutches. Sending quick healing thoughts!

Moni

Bless you. I hope your foot heals quickly.

Oww! I too hope it heals quickly.

I walk around the house barefooted during the warm months, and I've had various objects impaled in my foot, but always managed to remove them without any problem, but I sure knew I'd done something the next day.

When I was a kid, my knee swelled up. It didn't hurt, but my parents knew something was wrong, so off to the doc. He looked at my knee, palpated it a bit, got up, went to a counter, where unbeknownst to me he palmed a scalpel, knelt down, and in one swift movement lanced the knee and squeezed out a mass of puss and a big old rose thorn before I could let out a scream. Turns out I 'acquired' the thorn while on my knees weeding my roses.

I hope your recovery is swift and uneventful.

OUCH! That hurts just reading about it! Hope you heal quickly.

I did a really stupid thing when I was about 10 or 11. It's funny now, but wasn't back then. I grew up out in the country, on a farm. There was a pile of dirt, or gravel, or something, I don't remember now exactly what it was, or why it was there. About 3 or 4 feet high. Also right there, handy, was a board about 8" wide and several feet long. "Hmmm", says I to self, "a slide!". I positioned the wood on the dirt pile, and proceeded to try to slide down it. Guess where I acquired a nice long painful splinter! Well, both my parents tried their hand at removing it with no luck at all. Back then there was no such thing as Urgent Care, but doctors did make house calls. So, he was called, and came out and removed the splinter, which was pretty good sized. There was actually some minor surgery and stitches involved in the removal. He dressed the wound with what felt like a cast, and I had to lay on my stomach for several days and nights, until he came back to check the healing process and replace that dressing with something more manageable. Seems like there were also some shots and some hefty sized pills involved. Needless to say, I never again attempted to slide down anything that wasn't intended to be used as a slide! I had an extremely tender little derriere for quite some time!

Rusty

My mother does Native beadwork and one of her needles was in the carpet. They're super thin. My dad stepped on it and had to have it surgically removed. I feel your pain. I stepped on a piece of broken glass many years ago. I ended up with 5 stitches under my foot near my toes. :(

Glad you got it out! You did the right thing by going to Urgent Care.

Many years ago when we lived in LA, I had a wonderful small room off the landing. It had multiple storage closets and a built in counter. It was a perfect sewing room! I used my husband's rug from bachelor days - a Marimekko shag rug in various greens and blues.

I told my husband and my children to NOT come in that room barefoot as it was a SEWING ROOM and there is no way on earth to not drop the occasional pin on the floor. With this shag rug, it was difficult to see any that were dropped.

Well, of course my husband paid no attention and came in there to ask me something and stepped on a pin. He sat down and pulled it out and that was it...or so he thought. Over the next few days, his foot got more and more sore. He soaked it in hot water and epsom salts. No better. It was now hurting a LOT. So, a week or so later, he finally went to our orthopedist as he was sure he had broken something in his foot. The doctor x-rayed the foot, came back in, numbed the area, and proceeded to remove PART of the pin DH had stepped on. The doctor then said it was obvious that my husband was a math teacher and not a physics teacher, or he would have looked at what he pulled out and realized that the pin had broken and part of it was still in his foot!

No, he still went barefoot even where I sewed...

Reading this thread is like nails on a chalkboard. Eek!

Gardengal, I'm happy for you that it was removed.

Gardengal - so glad you went and had it taken it out properly. That thing was huge.

Speaking of pine cones - Years ago I fell off of one when I was running - it was a really big pine cone. Result was torn ligaments in my ankle, fractured tibia and hyper-extended rotator cuff.. I was off running for 6 months because of the torn ligaments.

Gardengal, I cringe to think of how that must have hurt. Glad you found skilled people to pull it out. Hope it heals quickly.

Thanks for all your good wishes!! The foot is much better this morning and there is only slight discomfort when I walk on it. I'm pretty sure it will be back to normal in a just another day or two.

I posted this really as a cautionary tale......beware of hazards lurking about for bare feet.......not to garner sympathy, but your sympathetic responses felt pretty nice as well :-)) Thanks again!!

On a canoeing/camping trip in high school I was walking to the showers and walked past a small hawthorn tree and stepped right on hawthorn thorn on the twig on the ground. I immediately sat down and found a thorn protruding from the bottom of my foot, It was jammed in so far and hurt so much, that I couldn't pull it out. I had a friend get a pair of pliers, and laid back on the gravel driveway with my foot up in the air, he grabbed the thorn with the pliers and pulled. I think I slid across the ground a little bit before it finally came out.

Ooh, gardengal! I'm glad that you got good care at the UC center and are healing. Good for the heads up to everyone. Keep your tetanus shots current and avoid walking about barefoot, even inside. The last podiatrist I went to cautioned that it's a hazardous thing to do, even though quick and fun. There are so many little hazards lying in wait for tender feet. Some can be difficult to "see" or remove. Not everything shows up on an X-Ray.

Curl up with a warm blanket and book. You have permission to putyour feet up and relax. Glad you're on the mend.

Aside: did you know that the writer Sherwood Anderson died from a toothpick? True. (Maybe I should have offered this to jasdip's trivia quiz.)

a word to the wise...............NEVER go barefoot!

Youch! I'm sorry, GG, but happy it wasn't any worse for you. I've had to visit our closest urgent care a time or two and was very grateful that they were there.

I stopped going barefoot outside when I moved to the south (and fire ant territory), but my feet have become so darned tender in recent years that I keep something on them all the time, inside and out.

Anyone who uses pins and needles should have a stick magnet in their home. We have one in the garage for nails, screws, and the like. But I'm pretty sure that there isn't such a thing as a toothpick magnet, lol!