{"id":627280,"date":"2026-04-24T06:09:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/627280\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T06:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:09:16","slug":"perth-woman-warns-about-pedicure-safety-after-severe-infection-almost-costs-her-a-toe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/627280\/","title":{"rendered":"Perth woman warns about pedicure safety after severe infection almost costs her a toe"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Perth woman says she almost lost her toe from a potentially fatal infection after having a pedicure at an Ellenbrook nail salon.<\/p>\n

Warning: This story contains images that some readers may find distressing.<\/p>\n

Kyla Willcox said a beautician vigorously filed a callus under her big toe with a pumice stone during a pedicure last week.<\/p>\n

She said her big toe became painful to walk on two days later.<\/p>\n

“There was a big bruise where she’d been filing it and so I just like kept an eye on it,” Ms Willcox said.<\/p>\n

“I woke up about three o’clock in the morning and I was freezing cold, like almost shaking, so I put lots of blankets on me.<\/p>\n

“I was so sweaty and I just felt so sick, unbelievably sick.<\/p>\n

“I knew that something was wrong with my toe because my toe was like really red and it was like going a bit like black underneath.”<\/p>\n

\"Foot<\/p>\n

Kyla Willcox’s pedicure involved using a pumice stone on the skin on her big toe. (Supplied: Kyla Willcox)<\/p>\n

Ms Willcox went to hospital later that morning, was immediately admitted and had X-rays and bloods tests.<\/p>\n

She was stunned by what doctors told her.<\/p>\n

“They said that it was the start of sepsis and it was very lucky that I actually came into hospital when I did,” she said.<\/p>\n

“When they drained my toe, it was so full of pus and everything. It was disgusting. They said if it’s in the bone, that will have to be amputated.”<\/p>\n

Luckily, doctors saved her toe.<\/p>\n

Call for greater safety regulation<\/p>\n

Sepsis is a condition that occurs when the body has an extreme response to an infection.<\/p>\n

If left untreated, it can be fatal in as little as 12 hours.<\/p>\n

Ms Willcox said doctors told her instruments used in the pedicure could have caused her initial infection.<\/p>\n

“They definitely think that it was caused by the pedicure,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I go there all the time, and I just thought that they had to clean things, but the doctors and other people have said to me that they don’t actually have to sterilise all their things individually.<\/p>\n

“I think the fact that the tools and everything were sitting in the trolley, the lady didn’t open them up, like sterilised instruments. They were just kind of in a trolley.”<\/p>\n

\"Foot<\/p>\n

Doctors told Kyla Willcox her toe had become septic.\u00a0 (Supplied: Kyla Willcox)<\/p>\n

She said she wanted to warn others and urged anyone using nail bars to ensure correct hygiene protocols were being followed.<\/p>\n

She also questioned whether nail bars needed to be better regulated.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been going and having my nails done for so long \u2026 I just thought that it was common sense that things would get sterilised and everything,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But I’ve since found out that that’s not the case at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think beauty therapists and salons have to be strict with their hygiene, but not so much the nail bars that you see in the shops.”<\/p>\n

Ms Willcox said she was being treated with large doses of antibiotics and remained in hospital.<\/p>\n

“I’ve just been so sick, and now my veins are really irritated,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I got a blood clot and I’m irritated in my veins and everything from all the antibiotics.”<\/p>\n

Ms Willcox said she had lodged a complaint with the City of Swan.<\/p>\n

\"Underside<\/p>\n

Kyla Willcox’s says her toe would have been amputated if the infection had reached the bone. (Supplied: Kyla Willcox)<\/p>\n

In a statement, City of Swan chief executive Stephen Cain said the council had received Ms Willcox’s complaint about a nail bar and an environmental health officer was investigating.<\/p>\n

“Nail salons, businesses that carry out body piercing, tattooing and some other beauty therapy procedures are regulated by the Health (Skin Penetration Procedure) Regulations 1998,” Mr Cain said.<\/p>\n

He said nail salons had to register with their local government and were periodically inspected by environmental health officers to assess compliance with regulations.<\/p>\n

Sepsis can be fatal<\/p>\n

East Metropolitan Health Service clinical microbiologist David New said that while he did not know the details of Ms Willcox’s case, most skin infections came from bacteria that lived on the skin naturally.<\/p>\n

“The instruments that they used may simply have eroded the skin or broken the skin and allowed [Ms Willcox’s] own bacteria to get in to where they shouldn’t be,” Dr New said.<\/p>\n

Dr New said while sterilisation to the level of surgical instruments probably was not necessary for pedicures, good hygiene and disinfection were “always paramount”.<\/p>\n

He said it was fortunate Ms Willcox sought treatment when she did.<\/p>\n

“Sepsis is actually the body’s own life-threatening response to the presence of infection, normally bacteria,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It sounds like Kyla got to hospital just in time.”<\/p>\n

Podiatrist Robert Mullins, who delivers infection control workshops to the sector, said infections after nail treatments were rare but not unheard of.<\/p>\n

He said anyone with cracked skin who needed treatment should see a podiatrist, where sterilisation of instruments was more tightly regulated than in nail salons.<\/p>\n

“[In a podiatry clinic] every single instrument should be cleaned, disinfected, sterilised and packaged in a way that it can’t break that sterilisation,” Mr Mullins said.<\/p>\n

“It should be opened in front of the client and then either disposed of if it’s single-use or put back in for reprocessing.”<\/p>\n

Asked if she would get another pedicure, Ms Wilcox said, “Absolutely not.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Perth woman says she almost lost her toe from a potentially fatal infection after having a pedicure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,304047,137,41792,304046,304044,304045,46,110149],"class_list":["post-627280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-city-of-swan","tag-health","tag-infection","tag-kyla-willcox","tag-nail-bar","tag-pedicure","tag-perth","tag-sepsis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}