I think I can shed a little light on this.

When I was younger, this would happen to me a lot. We were poor when I was growing up, so we had to make due with what we had for as long as possible. This never happened in the summer because I grew up in the south and almost never wore shoes in the summer. But once shoe season rolled around again, the ingrown toenails came back.

I would wear shoes that were far too small for me because my mom couldn't afford new ones. When the ingrown toenail would start, I would play "bedroom surgeon" with a pair of nail clippers and some needle-nose pliers. I'd clip the nail and peel it back as far as I could, and then rip it out with the pliers. As you can imagine, this was a really bad idea that just resulted in it getting worse the next time. On rare occasions it would work, but most of the time it would just be a temporary relief (accompanied by a lot of bleeding). I would continue my self-removal for months at a time until it eventually just got to be too bad for me to cut out on my own, and we had to go to the doctor's office to spend money that we didn't have (no insurance... poor people, remember?) to remove an ingrown toenail. When the doctor was done, I had a thin bit of nail down the middle of the toe, but nothing on the left or right, due to the removal.

The smell is horrible. I can't describe it, because I've never smelled anything else like it. The toe oozes and bleeds all day, so my socks would stick to it when I got undressed for my bath at night. Even the slightest bump against anything caused excruciating pain and increased bleeding/oozing. Someone stomped on it once and I was in tears for what seemed like an eternity. My calf was throbbing from the pain.

This is why I have absolutely no problem with socialized medicine in America. I know first hand what can happen when you don't have insurance and can't afford a simple toenail removal procedure. I had to be on antibiotics for 2 weeks just to kill the infection so that the doctor could remove mine.

Edit

Looking at the picture again, I remembered something else. You see how the skin is all shiny and pink on the right, but it's dull and flat on the left? The left side is several layers of dead skin. I used to peel the dead skin off in chunks, not unlike peeling a scab. Doing so allowed the infected flesh to expand a bit more, and it was a mild relief to the pain. Unfortunately, peeling it off required touching the toe, which caused little bursts of pain every time I put any pressure on it. I learned to be very, very careful when picking at the dead skin. Eventually I was able to peel it back with minimal pressure on the toe itself.

None of this edit helps explain the toenail, but I figured that being /r/WTF, someone might enjoy a couple more disgusting details.