How do you get rid of extremely stubborn plantar warts?

Try the banana peel method! My son had a mosaic plantar on his big toe. Overall it was probably about the size of a grape, or larger. He was getting to the point where he could barely wear shoes anymore. I took him to a podiatrist, who couldn't get rid of it. We tried compound-w and duct tape and...everything. Last month I said, "There has to be a natural way to get rid of that sucker", as everyone in my family laughed at me. So I googled and found http://www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/bananapeel.html. In past AskMe plantar wart threads the banana peel cure has been mentioned, but it never really registered. So I explained to my son (18) how to do it. Keep in mind that he had the wart for about 2 years, it was growing larger all the time, and he had taken to cutting it every night until he bled. He put a piece of banana peel on it, and covered it with duct tape. He didn't understand the part about changing it every day, so left the same banana peel on the wart for four days. When he took the peel off, the wart was totally dead. Supposedly the potassium in the peel goes all the way to the roots. When we put the peel on, the wart was white and segmented and clustered. When he took it off four days later, the whole wart was black. It was obvious it was dead. I was actually speechless when I saw what had happened in only 4 days. That was last month. Every day the area healed a little more, and now, today, there is just a slight bit of peely skin left, like you would see if you peeled a bit after a sunburn. The toe is perfectly smooth, and totally healed, and a normal shape. My son also had a smaller wart on the sole of his foot, and one on a finger. When he saw what the peel had done, he applied peels to those as well. Both are gone.

I was once like you! I had mosaic warts that went up between the toes and all over the bottom of my forefoot, especially the padding under the big toe. Various at-home and at-doctor freezing and salicyclic acid treatments only made them seem to get worse. And worse. It was a pretty fucking huge area of big warts and lots of tiny little warts. I went to a dermatologist, and they suggested the laser. I figured, what the hell. It's the bottom of my foot and I doubt the scarring will be that bad (I admittedly did not do a whole lot of research on possible side-effects). Well, that shit hurt, especially the Novacaine shots to the bottom of my foot. My skin was all black and charred for a week. Some of the warts were gone once everything had healed, but not all. And then, a couple of months later, I was clear. Like the dermatologist predicted, the laser provided enough of a shock that it killed the virus and cleared the area, though it was a gradual process. I have no scars. I have had no complications, and no further warts. If I were you, I would seriously reconsider the laser.

kinda related: i had a bad case of flatwarts on my hand--several large ones and lots of small ones. i successfully used embalming fluid (the doctor talked about 'pickling' the warts). what really made it work is that after applying the goop on the warts, I sealed my hand inside a plastic glove. it made the treatment much more intense.

A roommate used fresh crushed garlic on plantar warts successfully. Took several weeks of 2x daily application of crushed garlic and a bandaid.

I had really bad plantar warts and ended up doing multiple freezing treatments over a year to knocck them down. I also had my wife curse them. I think the freezing worked best, but the cursing was always entertaining. "you suck wart, we want you gone!"

I've had freezing, and that's worked okay, but wasn't permanent. Eventually I got to the point where a cautery wand was used. It hurt, but it got the job done.

I had a persistent plantar wart. I tried duct tape, and then my dermo did several rounds of freezing, then a couple rounds of bleomycin. Finally ended up getting it excised. The small scar that remains does not bother me in the least (whereas the wart was fairly painful to walk on). Unless you have problems with keloids or some other hyper-scarring, I wouldn't rule out surgery.

thanks for the tips everyone! if you have any advice for seeking out a specialist I'd really appreciate that, too. I've had no luck finding a resource to find one. (I'd be looking for someone with a lot of experience with treating this, or someone who I could go to for laser or surgery who'd give me the lowest chance of side effects.) nataliedanger - Aldara is the name of topical steroid I mentioned above, but I had forgotten the name. (thanks!) I never did cover the area with a band-aid, I wonder if that might have helped things. (I was trying to use it and duct tape, but the tape never stuck b/c the cream was so greasy. so then the dermatologist told me to not worry about the tape, but the cream never seemed to have an effect, sadly.) oats and schroedinger - thanks for the insight on the surgery and laser. I'm still hesitant (especially since the laser sounds so painful!) but I will give them more consideration. iconomy - I have heard about the banana peel method before, but I do wonder whether it is just a placebo effect... but I think I will make this my next attempt. it is cheap and painless, if a little messy and complicated to work into my daily life. (do you keep it on all day?)

A wart is an opportunistic viral infection. It starts when a virus gets into a little cut or weak spot in your skin. It sticks around when it has established a blood supply. Cutting a wart does not work! You're just making more places for the viruses to embed themselves. That's why freezing, burning, and acid are the preferred treatments. I had a wart for years. Compound-W did squat for me. I used Duoplant twice a day for several months and that did the trick for me. The banana peel method sounds like a joke (What kind of shoes do you make with banana peels? Slippers!), but I might try it the next time I have a problematic wart.