I used to have warts on my fingers. Everyone was polite to me and no one (except one of my kids) would say “Yewww, you have warts!” so I would nonchalantly treat them from time to time with prescription wart medicine, over the counter wart medicine, and even getting them burned off at the doctor’s office.

It would look like the black hole of Calcutta for a while and seem to go away…… then they would return and grow to a stronger wart colony, happy to be back on my hands, left index finger, and right calf.

I started to think I would have warts the rest of my life like familiar slightly gross pets to torture from time to time with ineffective treatments.

Then, one day I read about one that was like an old wives tale – kind of like duct tape on warts (you can try that but my warts were super warts and not affected by the duct tape at all).

The therapy was as simple as castor oil and baking soda. Yup, castor oil and baking soda.

Wash area with soap and water, pat dry but allow wart to remain moist. With a clean sterilized needle, scratch the surface of the wart or mole only, concentrating on the center. Then, use an emery board to file the wart or mole smooth – a few strokes should do it. Make a paste with the castor oil and baking soda – just enough for one application (because you will make a fresh mixture each time.) Apply to wart or mole, it might sting a little. Let it sit for a while, then put a little extra dab on it and cover with a bandaid to keep it from getting messy as well as keeping it castor oil moist.

Repeat at least 3 times per day for as long as it takes – make sure you wash the area with soap and water and pat dry before applying paste. You do not need to scratch or sand the surface again. It will look quite ugly, like an eruption of ugly the way Compound W makes it look. It may take weeks, so don’t get discouraged. Mine took 6 weeks, and I was determined to see it through.

It seemed to get bigger and stay bigger at first, and then slowly the wart started to get a little smaller. All the while it was ugly! White dead looking skin and lots of oil soaked bandaids.

A smaller one that I had on my leg came off after just 2 weeks, and each day I thought the bigger ones on my finger would fall off, but they held on and held on for weeks longer, and then one day, I peeled off the bandaid, and the last vestiges of those familiar warts fell off, and I was left with a wrinkled wounded looking finger without warts! It was almost concave where the warts used to be, and it was beautiful!

I have been wart free ever since. Free at last, free at last. Maybe not as huge a milestone as Martin Luther King, but it did feel and look great.

I have heard for external genital warts (yikes! I didn’t have those) you skip the baking soda and scratching and just use a cotton swab to apply castor oil.

Did you know that warts are highly contagious? I hope I didn’t infect anyone while I had warts. If I did, I owe them a bottle of castor oil.