Warts and all that duct tape

We have the cure for warts. Yuck! OK, for me the subject and discussion of warts is disgusting. Yes, I'm a father and as all parents do, I have dealt with many unappealing substances: diaper changing, vomit, blood, scabs, pus, baby food, you name it. But when it comes to warts, I'd rather not think about it.

Last summer my daughter got three huge warts on her feet. These were big, like pads. Yuck! We spent a lot of time putting over-the-counter acid drops (and the accompanying foul smelling solvent) on her feet nightly. When this failed to work, we visited her (now former) pediatrician who said it might go away itself within a year. But now that winter is here and we've been trying to squeeze into winter boots, ski boots, and skates, we needed a solution and a second opinion. This time her (current) pediatrician recommended duct tape.

Here's what you do. First, use an emory board to file down the top (dead skin) on the wart. You do this aggressively until the filing gets annoying. Discard the used emory board. Then apply any over-the-counter wart stuff. Then place a small square of duct tape (the grey stuff will do, although I did find clear duct tape) over this. You leave it on until it falls off. Several days if it possible. If it falls off, you repeat all this until the wart is gone. For us this took all of a week!

Apparently, a study showed that duct tape occlusion was more effective, safer, and cheaper than freezing the suckers as is commonly done.

A quick web search even shows that the wart-remover isn't even needed, but if you want to ue it, we found it is now available as a stick (looks just like lip balm). But as my daughter says, it's best not to get the two confused.