Warts and All.

Literally. I used to have warts like you would not believe. At worst i think i counted ten on my hands.

I remember having one on my knee that i was really self concious about when I was in intermediate school, I would always hold my knee with my hand, thus spreading it to my hand, then i became self conscious of the wart on my hand, and I would fold my pink-y down to cover it, from there, really they took on a life of their own.

By fifth form it became particularly bad. With nearly six on one hand, and four on the other, (not to mention two MONSTROUS ones). I used wart paint, and I also started getting them burnt off, with dry ice. My mum would take me to the nurse, and tell me how brave i was. The nurses who treated the wee troop of warts would apologize as i winced with pain, would comment on how this seemed like a fairly extreme case, and would discuss how no one quite knows how to get rid of them. Then I would spend the few days after the burning, dealing with blisters as well as warts. But it seemed to have an opposite effect. The monstrous ones grew from the burning, I think they grew on the scar tissue, one even grew in a crescent shape curling on top of my finger.

This all, conveniently, occurred around the same time i met jack. He was the first (and only) boy to hold my, wart encrusted hand. i would wear band-aids wrapped around my fingers to hide the warts, partially out of repulsion and embarrassment, and partially to make sure it wouldn't spread to anyone else.

I knew something had to change when a wart arrived on my chin. Yes, they had reached my face. That was it. The warts could interfere with my holding of jacks hand, and could cause me shame, but they were not going to take over my face and turn me into Tree Man.
I saw a cosmetic surgeon, thinking that was the only other possible path to take, but being abnormally squeamish i couldn't face it. I covered my face wart up with tonnes and tonnes of concealer and made up new answers to "oh hey Jayne you've got a bit of food or something on your chin".

Now i really don't know what made my warts go away, or what treatment helped. I am just relieved that they did. I like to think that they got scared away, or maybe the warts became sympathetic to me and decided to scamper off to some other poor unassuming child. But i will never forget those warts.

To Jack, thank you for holding my hand, despite the warts, and for ignoring the wart on my chin. And even though you would nag me about why i wore so many band-aids, you never said anything, even when you knew, and you never made me feel embarrassed.

And now, i quite like my hands. But I wish I took photos of my crescent warts, maybe just one.

Its not really as if having warts was a life changing ordeal, but i'm sure not a lot of people get centimeter wide warts. And only witches get them on their face, right?


p.s. google Tree man. woah.