I had an appointment with the orthopaedic foot specialist today, and it seems my journey might be coming full circle. Having had a black toe as the first sign of something being wrong (albeit I didn’t appreciate that being the case at the time), I imagine my big toes are once again going to be blackened – although hopefully only temporarily – in 3-4 months when they take the nails out and remove the nail beds. The surgeon did put it much nicer than this might come across, but he basically said he could remove a third of the nails and nail beds from each side, and leave a third in the middle if I was worried about how it would look, but it basically boiled down to the facts that, given I’m not female and therefore probably don’t paint them, and I’m over 50, does it really matter what my toes look like? So that’s it, I’m on the waiting list for surgery.