How long will it take for my dislocated pinky toe to heal? i dislocated my pinky toe two days ago - the joint was inverted (i.e. the toe was pointed up). i popped it back in myself a few seconds after it happened. it burned and felt numb that evening bu

You : You mean the one that went wee-wee-wee all the way home? You either fractured it or dislocated it. My guess is you fractured it based on the fact it turned back and blue. Our bones are a tremendous reservoir for blood. When you break a bone, a good amount of blood escapes out into the soft tissues, and it could take a day or two before the blood makes it to the skin where we start to see discoloration. Ice helps during the first 24 hours, after that, not much. Heat would make it worse, so other than getting the thing x-rayed to see exactly what kind of damage was done, there is not much more you can do. If the fracture involves the joint, you'll probably develop arthritis in the joint. It's a very small joint, so this won't be a disabling sort of arthritic condition, just an annoyance. You can't tape a 5th toe (or a big toe) because the 5th and 1st toes move in different directions during the gait cycle than the middle toes. So (take a deep breath now).... You can tape a 2nd to a 3rd, or a 3rd to a 4th, or a 2nd to a 3rd and a 4th, but you can't tape a 1st to a 2nd or a 4th to a 5th. (exhale now) the risk you run in running on it before it has a chance to heal is a non-union. You'll be spending the rest of your life in pain if you develop a non-union, and the only way around that is to have surgery to re-break the little guy and pin it for 6 weeks. So do yourself a favor and try and stay off the thing for a minimum of a month, and don't run for 6 weeks post-injury. If you do that, the chances are excellent your little piggy will live a long, happy and pain-free life on his way home.