They left out the “It hurts like hell” part

I’ve had a small wart on the top of my left hand for about a year now.  Shortly after it appeared I tried to get rid of it using one of those over-the-counter salacylic acid wart remover products.  Following the directions on the bottle, I applied the stuff twice a day, every day for about two weeks.  At the end of the two weeks, nothing had changed.  I knew I should go to a dermatolgist to get it taken care of, but it was pretty minor and I just never got around to scheduling an appointment.

Last night while I was at CVS with my wife, I spotted Compound W Freeze Off on one of the shelves.  The packaging on the product, claimed to freeze off warts similar to the method used by dermatologists.  Since I had had a wart successfully removed by a dermitologist years ago using the freeze method, I decided I’d give it a try.  What the heck, it was only twenty bucks.  What could go wrong?

This morning when I got up, I unpacked the product and read the instructions.  Seemed simple enough.  Stick one of the cotton swab like applicators into the holder, insert the holder into the main bottle and press down for three seconds to unlease the freezing compound.  Take the applicator out and hold it against the wart for a period of time determined by the size of the wart, and wait for up to ten days for the wart to fall magically off.

I went through the whole process, and just before I got to the point where I was to apply the applicator to the wart, it dawned on me;  before the dermitologist froze the wart he first injected something into it to numb the area.  That step appeared to be missing from this process.

Oh well.  How bad could it be?  Anyway, I had paid twenty dollars for this and I’m too cheap to waste the money.  So I applied the applicator.

Ever see one of those spy movies where the bad guy presses a lit cigarette into the flesh of the protaganist to get information out of him?  That about sums up the wart removal process.  The worst part is that I had to hold the damn thing on the wart for about fifteen seconds while the thing sizzled like I was frying bacon.  Not a good time.

After about a half hour the pain pretty much subsided although it still hurts a bit.

Before I started to write this post, I did a search to see what other people experianced while using this product.  A lot of them complained about the pain, but even worse, most of them said the wart never went away.  Bummer.

I’ll update this in a couple of weeks and let you know if the wart is around.

Posted by Al on 01/09/11 at 01:58 PM in Other