About 3 weeks ago, though. I started to notice a patch growing on the toenail with the characteristic, yellow, fungal look to it. It is nice that the Curanail package comes with it's little book of toenail files, but frankly I don't think they work very well at removing the old nail. As I tried to remove this little infected patch I scraped up the skin surrounding the nail and didn't even do a very good job. I decided to use my dremel, which may sound crazy. But, I got a set of precision rotary files and I use it on low speed...and it works great. I mean it's really great at removing old toenail carefully, thoroughly, and precisely. You don't want to press down too hard or hold it in one place too long or it will build up heat. But if you go slowly and gently, it works really well.
Below the toenail has been pretty much filed down all the way down and was very cleanly removed. I didn't have any bleeding or pain, but I used the dremel on a medium-low speed (speed 4 on the dremel xpr400) and I was very slow and cautious. Also, remember, my nail was so far gone that I had no feeling or bleeding in it before if I just took clippers and chomped off the whole nail. You may have to be more careful with a nail that's not surrounded with so much dead tissue from being infected for years.
And you can see below that after the toenail is completely filed down and the lacquer is applied, it looks pretty normal. I wear flip flops and don't even think about it, whereas the nasty yellow nail that was there before was a little unsightly. So even if all this nonsense doesn't cure the fungus, during treatment the toe is at least cosmetically pretty normal-looking.
