A Teen’s Advice on Fungus

I want to give a shout out to all you teens, guys, out there.  O.K., I guess we could include the girls; they have this fungus problem too.  But you adults well………….if my Mom saw this she would think me rude not to also include you old folks. Besides it is time you realize that us teens have some good ideas.

When did I get my toenail fungus?  Don’t know, I just remember seeing it one day while I was in the showers at school.  It was after one of our basketball games and my best friend “announced” it for all to hear.  I was so embarrassed, especially seeing that this so called friend had it also.  Now, when was it that a 16 year old guy shared such fun information with his Mom?  Not this guy!  So I was very p’ed off when, the following summer, at my parent’s pool party, one of my mother’s friends pointed it out to her.  And she had to scream it for all to hear; you’d think I had the Plague or something.  People actually came out of the pool!!  After that my horrified mother took control of my fungus.

First Mom dragged me to the foot doctor for the obligatory nail scraping.  He told me I had a mold type of fungus.  “Don’t they make penicillin out of molds” I asked the Doctor?  I thought I had injected a bit of humor into my plight.  My mother kicked me in the shins.  That big mouth friend of my mother knew about nail fungus as she had it also, went to this doctor, and was taking some kind of pills for it.  But (thankfully I found out later) I was too young to take pills because of side effects.  The doctor advised my mother against over the counter medications and suggested to her that she use some long used remedies.  These he thought would keep my fungus from going completely wild until I would turn 18 and able to take the pills.

Do you know what these “long used remedies” are?  Except for one the rest were a trial!  Vicks VapoRub, the stuff used on kids for my toe, I don’t think so.  How about soaking your foot in vinegar and water, you want to try that?  I did, once, and went to school smelling like a pickle.  The only one that appealed to me was soaking my foot in BEER!  That I liked, actually it was the amount I drank, while I conscientiously soaked my foot that was the best part.  After a few weeks of soaking, or maybe it was the number of friends willing to sit with me while I had to endure this terrible therapy, that my mother realized that there was no improvement.  End of the beer.

So she decided to forgo the advice of the doctor and we started on the OTC solutions.  There are quite a few out there and good old Mom had me try every one of them.  It must have cost her a fortune.  And being a kid, or a teen, I had a hard time doing all she wanted me to do.  How does a guy stop and dab their toes 6 times a day?  Most teachers frown on that during their classes.  Mom was interested in the stuff in the medicine and I know she didn’t like it that she couldn’t look up some of the names for the stuff.  And in all of this her good friend, who blew the whistle on me, who kept telling Mom that her pills were working so well, came down with a bleeding stomach ulcer, probably from the pills.  So exit the pills.  It was when I overheard a conversation some of my female classmates were having with a teacher that I heard all about Fungavir.

What my teacher had to say was the beginning of the end for my fungus.   Fungavir is an altogether different ball game from anything else in the drug store when it comes to fighting fungus.  First my Mom liked that it was more potent than anything else we had tried.  She liked that they have just improved the formula, making it stronger means it should work faster and for my Mom’s poor wallet make the full therapy cheaper.  She liked that she could actually read all the ingredients and look up their properties.  I like that it was only three times a day, morning, noon and night (OK I’ll admit, sometimes it didn’t get done at noon or I did it twice in an evening) but it worked.  Or maybe it was because I actually saw a difference, an improvement, in a couple of weeks that gave me the drive to continue it.  OK, my Mom did a lot to “encourage” me.  But the real fun came the following summer when my parents again entertained by pool side.  Of course I had to show my sparkling clear nails to my Mom’s big mouth friend and of course I had to recommend Fungavir.  How else could a teen get even?