Why doesn't it hurt?

[fivemack]

I've had the misfortune to have verrucas on my feet for the last year or so, on which I've tried a wide range of over-the-counter remedies which don't work. Scholl's verruca-removing pads seem to have been designed by someone utterly unaware of the idea of socks - the plaster sticks to the socks, moves, and applies skin-dissolving salicylic acid to something other than the verruca; the various brands of salicylic acid with plasticiser take impractically long to set, even if you wave your feet in the air with gay abandon for several minutes.

So I've tried something which liquifies dimethyl ether by heat-of-evaporation of propane (possibly the other way round - it's an aerosol can with those ingredients); the cryogen soaks up into a little foam stick which you then apply to your feet. It's probably seventy degrees colder than ambient.

I wonder why this is so much psychologically easier than a model where you heated a little brand in vigorously-boiling water and then applied it to the feet.

This method doesn't work either; I'll have to go to a GP and ask for proper removal with liquid nitrogen. Which is 200 degrees below ambient, equivalent to heating the little brand in a gas flame; I've had this done before, it hurt, but it didn't hurt anything like as much as you'd have imagined the brand would.

Am I missing something obvious, or is this simply that you can visualise hot-burns more easily than cold-burns?

Comments

[taimatsu]

I wonder if people who live in icy climates (Alaska, say) feel differently about this. If you live somewhere where cold-burns are a possibilty in general, then you might be more keen to avoid them in this situation. Here, cold-burns are not an everyday possibility, but hot-burns are, so we know what they are like and are used to avoiding them.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

*Sympathy*

I take it these fiends are actually in a location which causes you discomfort to walk upon? I had some frozen when I was a child, and I recall it being one of the more unpleasant and painful experiences of my childhood. (As such, I suspect that if I get one again, unless it hurts, I shall leave it alone, wait for it to depart of its own accord - they do eventually- and just wear a verruca sock when I go swimming.)

Never realised it was salicylic acid they used... vile stuff shudder

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've had liquid N applied to a finger, and while it wasn't exactly pleasant, it's not at the level that I'd demand anaesthetic if it were required again (for that matter I think I could perfectly easily do it to myself). It is curious that cold burns seem easier than hot ones; I wonder if it's something do with having spent (at least) several millions years evolving in a hot climate, where cold burns would have presumably been unheard of, and only routinly encountered very cold temperatures in the last hundred K years or so.

[lnr]

I have to say if they're not somewhere that actually hurts the thing that works best on them seems to be to leave them completely alone. Freezing them out only seemed to work at all when they did it viciously enough to be *really* painful. And most other things seemed to just make them multiply IME.

Re:

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

That's the problem really, they are multiplying (and moving over to the other foot), and the one on the side of my right little toe gets quite inconvenient ... adds a new refinement of discomfort when a sharp stone gets into my boots. Also their existence worries people I'm staying with, and they make swimming anti-social.

I just want to get rid of the damned things, and if it's uncomfortable then so be it; it probably won't be more uncomfortable than the burn on the base of my foot that I got by misreading the instructions on one of the paint-on products.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Bazuka? Works a treat for me.