The banana peel story
26 year old Nicolette is a full-time dancer and dance instructor, and spends a lot of time on her feet. “Dancing is a passion for me, and my dream is that when I get married, my husband and I will dance during our wedding,” she told LiveWell.
About 2 months ago, she found a growth on her left sole. Needless to say, she had to stop dancing for a while, as simply walking around made it extremely painful.

“The pain was so bad, I couldn’t even walk, let alone dance. And as you know the thin shoes we use for dancing don’t really offer much protection for my feet. Imagine having to do a plie or worse, landing on my wart from a jump,” she said.
A plie is a ballet movement in which the knees are bent outward, with the back held straight. “So during that time, instead of dancing, I just taught classes instead.”

And despite her boyfriend’s good humoured attempt to cheer her up by naming her wart, she was not at all amused. “Soon after I discovered Bernard, I found another one. The vile things were mutiplying!”

“If we can send men to the moon, why can’t we cure warts?”
Distraught at having her passion eroded by a simple wart, she sought help first from the pharmacy. “They didn’t work,” she revealed about the over the counter medications available to treat warts. “I felt so helpless. I’ve frozen them, put acid on them, and scraped at them with a pumice stone. What more can I do?”

Things got worse when her family doctor told her that he may have to surgically remove the warts after treatment with salicylic acid failed. “I hate blood, and he said it was definitely going to involve some blood,” she said, traumatised by the memory.

Nicolette had plantar warts, which appear only on the soles of the feet. Plantar warts that appear in clusters are often particularly difficult to treat.

Wart happened next
During those two months, she sought out many home remedies that she had read about on the Internet and in magazines. One of them was the banana peel treatment. The instructions read as such:

“Cut banana peel to appropriate size to cover the wart completely. Place the meat side (inside part of banana) over the wart and hold it in place with bandaid or other way (usually duct tape is prescribed). Keep it on as long as possible. Replace banana peel as required. The wart should disappear within two to three weeks. Good luck.”

Good luck, indeed. She needed it. Nicolette’s warts did not disappear despite buying the best bananas she could afford, and she eventually submitted herself to the inevitable. Her best friend accompanied her to the outpatient surgery, where she had her warts frozen off with cryotherapy. LW