Nail picking lands Sydney woman in emergency department with severe infection

A 23-year-old woman has revealed how a common act landed her in the emergency department, labelling it “traumatising”.

Gabi Amoils said she’s always been a nail picker. But earlier this year, after picking at one of her nails, within two days the finger started feeling “pretty bad and so sore”.

“I remember me and my friends were playing Twister and I couldn’t even put my hand on the spot,” the Sydney woman told news.com.au. “It was so sore.”

Amoils was debating going to the doctor. She soaked her finger in boiled salt water, but it didn’t help the budding infection in her finger.

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Traumatising to say the least #er

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However, five days after she initially picked her nail she gave in and went to the doctor as it had become too painful.

Amoils had the same infection – paronychia – seven months prior. She was given antibiotics by her doctor the first time she had it and it worked well. So, she was given the same course of treatment.

“I thought, okay it will just go away like last time. But she told me to keeping taking photos of it to monitor my finger,” she said.

“And over the weekend it doubled in size. It was so painful and so bad.”

After the weekend, she went back to the doctor on her lunch break. She was told she needed to go to the emergency department as they didn’t have the tools to deal with it at the GP’s office.

“At the doctor, she basically did the same thing as the emergency room. We soaked my finger in hot water for 15 minutes to soften it,” she said.

“But this particular doctor’s office didn’t have the utensils to cut it open so we kept trying to poke it with a needle to get it to burst.”

Essentially, the same thing happened at the hospital. However, they had the tools to cut it open, allowing the infection to be drained.

“I didn’t smell it, but the doctor said it had the most foul smell because it had brewing in there for over a week,” she said.

“Two millimetres of pus came out.”

Amoils said her finger is “so fine” now that a month has passed since the infection, saying if anyone looked at it they wouldn’t be able to tell anything had happened.

However, she can notice the skin is slightly damaged still.

“It took about two weeks for it to heal,” she said.

She shared what had happened to social media, never imagining a video intended to update her friends on the “traumatic” event would rack up 3.8 million views.

“The main comment that I get is, ‘Shame, that looks so painful. I’ve had it before, I hope you’re recovering well’,” she said.

“The second option is ‘this is not an emergency’ and the third is advice on how to fix it.”

Amoils emphasised it was not her choice to go to the emergency department. It was her first time going, and she only did so because her GP advised her to.