Will my nail grow normally after this?

April 18, 2024 8:31 AM

I was attacked by a dog and among my other injuries was a puncture right on the nail bed of my fingernail—like, right exactly on the cuticle. Is the nail going to grow normally after this?
posted by HotToddy to Health & Fitness (18 answers total)

I've had my nail bed punctured in a similar place by a tool before and it grew normally. It was just a matter of waiting for the damaged spot to be displaced enough by new growth that I could trim it off.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:46 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]

I once had to get stitches through my fingernail and it still grows entirely normally.
posted by hepta at 8:49 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]

What the previous two posters said. I smashed my thumb with a staple hammer and had to pull a big staple out of my nail. The damaged area eventually grew out and it's been over 20 years of normal thumbnail.
posted by mrphancy at 8:56 AM on April 18

I once pushed my hand into a pocket with a technical pencil in it, and the lead punctured the base of the cuticle and stuck, then snapped off. I got it out and was left with a neat hole through the nail. It took ~4 months to reach the top of the nail iirc.
posted by biffa at 9:58 AM on April 18

I once sewed through my fingernail with a sewing machine. Nail grew back!
posted by mochapickle at 10:14 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]

About 25 years ago I got a cut about 1/4” above where my thumb nail in my left hand sits - so just above the cuticle. I have had an indention in my nail ever since. It looks like a small line that grows with my nail. Nobody has remarked on it, and it causes me no issues.
posted by kabong the wiser at 10:17 AM on April 18

This is horrific, don't stop!!
posted by Iteki at 10:29 AM on April 18 [12 favorites]

I cut the top joint of my index finger almost clean off when I was a teenager, straight through the joint and severed the tendons, a right mess. To reattach it they had to dig around the base of the nail and into the nail bed, and with the pinning, stitches and subsequent infections the nail was pretty thoroughly messed up for a long time. It still grows slower than my other nails, but over the course of a few years things did straighten out and it now looks more or less normal. Fingers are pretty tough, and can come back from some big injuries!
posted by tomsk at 10:31 AM on April 18

An ex once got thoroughly stomped in the big toe playing basketball. The whole nail turned black and for a time seemed to be floating atop some sticky, black, occasionally leaky sludge. One day all the gunk just fell right off to reveal a new, nearly full-length nail (looking very normal).
posted by Glinn at 10:41 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]

I slammed my finger in a door and the entire nail fell off. The new nail grew in totally fine.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:58 AM on April 18

Some may be a little confused about the question. Damage to the nail above the bed (puncture, compression, etc.) will typically heal on its own, even though it may take several months depending on the extent of the damage. Nails grow back unless the cell matrix under the bed (under the cuticle at the base of the nail) is permanently killed off. For ingrown nails, for instance, phenol or another mild acid is used to burn away those cells, where you do not want the nail to grow back.

Given where you mention you are hurt, you might need to see an actual doctor to gauge the extent of damage to the underlying nail matrix. I'd be more worried about diseases such as tetanus and rabies from a dog bite, to be honest, but a doctor (or better, one who specializes in treating hands) will be best able to assess your situation.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:03 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Okay, I see that "matrix" is what I should have said. Carry on with the fun horror stories regardless, but yeah, I'm specifically asking about damage to the cell matrix. And yes, I can ask about it when I go to get my stitches removed but would like to hear personal experience with this too.
posted by HotToddy at 12:05 PM on April 18

My mom had a big 4mm chunk of the nail matrix removed for a melanoma biopsy (get yourself checked out if you grow a brown stripe in a fingernail!) Unlike most people in the thread, it took her a few years for the nail bed to grow back into the center from the healthy parts at the edges, and she had a weak splitty area for a long time. What helped her retrain the nail to grow in straight was to wear a glue-on fake nail (or the old teabag + nail glue repair) as a reinforcement. That seemed to decrease a lot of setbacks from peeling or weird corners poking up or the halves trying to curl in the wrong direction.
posted by fountainofdoubt at 3:11 PM on April 18 [1 favorite]

Sewing machine needle through the left index finger in 2021. The nail was fine once the damaged bit grew out.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:30 PM on April 18 [1 favorite]

I am a dedicated runner and until I figured out the appropriate shoes, socks, and bodyglide to apply, I would get bad blisters on two of my toes that rubbed together, the infamous "runner's toe". The blisters grew under the toenail, dislodged it from the nail matrix, and went black from the blood built up in them. Eventually, one and than the other nail grew loose. Eventually, when I picked at them, they peeled clean off, with brand new nails underneath. It was surprisingly not very painful.
posted by fortitude25 at 3:56 PM on April 18

I totally destroyed my nail long ago, what remained was removed and I needed 11 stitches on the nailbed... it took three months to grow out enough to safely not wear a bandaid for padding over it, and six to be a normal length.

Even though I was warned it might not grow out normally, it did.
Your odds are good, especially if it doesn't get infected, and you treat it gently and give it protected time to heal.
posted by stormyteal at 8:00 PM on April 18

I lost an entire fingernail as a child with an additional deep gash to the matrix. The nail grew back over the next 4-6 months but the damage to the matrix is reflected in the shape of the white of my nail--it has an indent and the white part has an exact matching "outdent."
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 10:59 PM on April 19

I smashed my thumb in a car door from just above the joint to the end of the thumb and tore the matrix. The hand specialist had to take off the nail, sew the matrix together and stick the nail back on (technically in) my thumbnail. The nail popped off a few months later and my thumb was naked for a couple months. Thankfully, the new nail grew back just fine.

The doctor was pretty clear that unless he did that procedure, the nail would grow kind of split in two where the matrix was torn. If you've not seen a hand specialist, I'd make an effort to get an appointment with one (not an orthopedist - a hand specialist). Best of luck.
posted by dancinglamb at 5:19 AM on April 20