See that’s where I would be nope, band teacher needs to figure out how to get me shoes that do not cause pain.
d’oh, didn’t think about that factor…
That’s the way they fixed mine. Cut the side of the nail off, remove it at the root and put some stuff on there to keep that part from growing back. I watch that video and I got a wave of the relief that poor person must have felt.
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So is the nail permanently reshaped by the device, or do you need to periodically ‘retrain’ your nail? I’d be inclined to pack the spaces with the previously mentioned cotton and ointment, just to be sure.
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Glad i’m not the only person who wears hiking boots as their preferred daily wear. 
My current pair of hiking boots i’ve actually worn so often i’ve pretty much worn the treads off them.
Regarding your mention of ankles, i wonder if you have the same problem i do: my ankle bones are apparently much lower than most peoples, so unless shoes have a big cut-out area around the ankle, or are ‘tall’ to go over your ankle such as in boots, they hurt like hell.
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I read on Wikipedia that it takes up to a full nail growth cycle (a year and a half!) to retrain the nail.
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I have shoes that fit fine, but I pronate my stance and gait. That puts pressure on the inside edge of the big toe, and eventually it’ll ingrow.
I just had mine removed. I had had one surgery as a teenager to just correct it, but that damaged my nailbed, and last January it got infected. It was probably one of the most painful experiences ever, and I was reduced to limping on a cane. Once the antibiotics cleared that up, I went in and had the damn thing removed and the nail-bed treated with phenol to kill it off. There was too much scar tissue though, so the phenol didn’t work too well and the thing’s grown back. It didn’t grow back ingrown though, so that’s a bonus, and it’s only attached at the very base of the cuticle, so if it starts causing problems I can just pull the damn keratinous pain in the foot off again if push comes to shove.
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ouch… just ouch.
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The whole removal surgery and recovery was far less painful than the infection. So I consider it preferable.
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They tired that on both my toes when I was a teenager. Instead of one skinny nail per big toe, I got one mostly normal sized nail and a thin shard that grew alongside that I’d regularly pull out with some rubbing alcohol and needlenose pliers. I was much happier when I just had the whole thing removed, and I’m a little annoyed now that it’s grown back even though the nailbed was phenol-treated.
I had such a badly infected one when I was a kid that when they lanced the toe, it squirted. The doctor was amazed that I hadn’t come in earlier. My socks were regularly bloody. I dreaded the surgery, but they did it in a couple minutes and – holy God the relief! Epicurus was right: the highest pleasure is the absence of pain. Now, periodically, I have to dig in there with a small file and shave off the edges of the big toe, to keep it from curling under. I’m sure that’s not preferable, but it beats massive infection.
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That’s exactly how mine was after three months of marching on it. The doctor actually said, “It’s curled so deep that it’s almost touching the bone. If you’d waited another week or two, we might’ve had to amputate part of your toe.” Ingrown nails are gross and no joke! For the surgery, they numbed my toe and handed me a magazine, and said “read this. You really don’t want to see what we’re doing down there.”
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You snuck the Shining ref in with 20m to spare here.
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Tell me about it. A lot of my foot issues would clear up if I lost some weight. I’m working on it but it’s always slow going.
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That’s pretty much exactly what my husband’s big toe nails look like.
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