18-Year-Old Almost Loses Her Finger Due To Oral Compulsive Habit

Nail-biting a.k.a. onychophagy is an oral compulsive habit that is very common, especially among children and youngsters. An 18-year-old girl from Texas nearly lost her finger due to this habit.

Lauren Nichols, a college student revealed on a TikTok video that she almost needed to have one of her fingertips amputated and warned viewers to stop biting their nails as it could lead to dangerous consequences.

To my fellow nail biters, stop what you are doing,” Nichols says at the start of her video. "I almost had to get the tip of my finger amputated because I bite my nails," mentioned Yahoo Lifestyle.

Nichols shared a series of increasingly painful-looking pictures to show how her condition worsened within a week.

It started when she woke up on January 8 with a green spot on her cuticle which she mistook for a bruise. She was diagnosed with ‘paronychia’ an infection that occurs in the cuticles around fingernails and toenails. Despite taking antibiotics, her condition didn’t improve but worsened. When she consulted her doctor the following day, she was told that she might have to undergo surgery.

"[My doctor] told me that he has to amputate the tips of people’s fingers because the infection gets too bad and that I’m lucky I came when I did,” she told BuzzFeed.

Even though she got better after the procedure, she didn’t take the outcome lightly. She revealed that she has now quit biting her nails. She had uploaded the video on TikTok in order to educate people about the ill effects of nail-biting habit.

The video has more than 2.3 million likes and 22,000 comments where people have been sharing their own experiences with similar infections.

Nail-biting becomes a way to relieve stress in some individuals. But it soon becomes a habit. Mental health professionals often regard the habit as a symptom of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(OCD) since one with the habit simply cannot stop doing it despite being aware of what they have been doing.