I am unable to hook my camera to my computer at the moment, I will post some new pics in my next post. Although things are pretty much the same after my efforts I like seeing a couple of things actually looking better than they did before (some spots are worse...).

It can be difficult to scrape keratin out from under the nail depending on how the infection looks. In my pointer finger for example I have now two 2-mm wide canals of yellow keratin where the nail is detached from the nail bed, almost all the way back to the cuticle. I tried something unusual:

A microdrill. A small hand-drill for household and industry purposes which I happen to have drills for that are tiny. I don't know, but maybe 0,20 mm thick. With this, I went to work....

With the drill on low to medium speed I inserted it under the nail, directed along the underside of the nail. With some care I went from side to side, and further in. I scraped the underside of the nail and the top of the naked finger. When the nail is detached from the finger you kind of have two nails growing. On the finger you get a semi-soft skin tissue that grows along with the nail, and eventually you can tear the tip off just like you do cut the nail. I rubbed the drill on this surface, scraping off tissue until, well, it was uncomfortable. I also went back as far as I could from the fingertip and scraped until it felt uncomfortable, then I knew I was about to get into healthy tissue with functioning nerves. The drill worked excellently by continuously pulling loose tissue back and out, I have sworn by the vinegar soak before, but now I got LOTS of stuff out that I couldnt get to before.


Happy with having no unnecessary goo hanging around under my nails, I altered my daily treatment slightly. For a couple of months I have used a used small glass dispenser to apply pure vinegar on the nails and also underneath, since it fills up the empty area I am hoping for some of it to spread to the nail matrix and battle the infection there. Anyway, I noticed a couple of depressions in the outgrowing nail surface and suspected the pure vinegar may be too much for the nail.

I switched to a household preservative that has some good words for it when it comes to battling nail fungus, sodium benzoate. It is not acidic, it is on the "wrong" end of the PH scale, but it is a presevative and keeps moulds and fungus off jam and beetroot, so I figured it would be an excellent choice for keeping fungus busy.