TIFU by realizing my chronic medical issue was my fault, and a pedicure helped me solve it.

I've suffered from canker sores most of my life (white painful mouth sores). Sometimes multiple at once, sometimes they'd be in the back of my throat or on my uvula, which was especially painful and made swallowing and breathing awful. I would have at least one a month, sometimes more. It was rare for me to have zero.

I saw so many doctors about this. Canker sores are, unfortunately, caused by a wide array of things and it's different for each person. Not super well understood by the medical community.

Too much citrus? I had an addiction to orange soda, so that checks out. Too much stress? I raised my siblings while my parents were never home, so that checks out too.

My favorite medical interaction was an 80+ year old doctor I met at my college who said, in his younger years, he tried to learn more about them. So he just started prescribing random things to people to see what actually helped. Steroids had the highest success rate at treating them, so he gave me a prescription and sent me on my way.

It worked like a charm. Less than 2 days and they were gone. And he had specifically prescribed me extra for "the next time" I had them really bad. He was my favorite.

So I graduate college, move in with my significant other, and the sores start to slowly decrease. I rack my brain trying to figure it out and just resign myself to it having always been stress-caused.

Well, at one point, my partner catches me chewing my toenails. I'm very flexible and have a lot of nervous habits. Fingernails chewing is one, but toenail chewing is another. They express their disgust but it's not a deal breaker and we move on. I do it less because I try to hide it.

But eventually we start getting pedicures together, partially for fun, partially as a way to get me to stop. I won't chew my pretty gel-painted toenails.

And then... The canker sores stop completely. And they don't return.

But I have to know, was that really the cause?

In between pedicures, I go back to chewing my toenails, FOR SCIENCE. Sure enough, I get a canker sore days later.

So I've since stopped entirely, but I so desperately want to tell other people plagued by this chronic issue that it might just be their fault, and caused by something they'd never volunteer to a doctor or connect on their own.

TL;DR: Was plagued by mouth sores my whole life, also chewed my toenails my whole life. Got a pedicure to stop myself from chewing and the sores stopped as well. No doctor ever made this connection in my decades of hunting for an answer.