A Kmart Australia shopper tells: ‘My thumb almost got amputated after hell with fake nails’

A Kmart shopper has spoken out about a terrifying experience with fake nails that nearly had her thumb amputated.

Queensland mom Beth Jozey shared on TikTok that she only uses Kmart’s hugely popular $5 Press-On Nails after the alarming incident at a local nail salon.

SEE ABOVE: Kmart shopper shares her horrific nailing experience

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The Kmart fan shared their incredible experience that took place in 2020 in a series of videos that have now garnered millions of views.

“I almost had my thumb amputated and now I only wear Kmart press-on nails,” she said in the first of her viral videos.

Jozey explained that she has been getting fake nails at local salons “religiously” for the past 11 years.

As the country prepared for the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020, she had decided to get her nails done one last time.

“The actual salon was beautiful,” she said.

“It looked really clean and the people who worked there all wore the same uniform, they all looked nice and clean. As I said, I had no problems at all.

“The lady who did my nails was really nice… and the nails looked beautiful.”

Looking back, however, Jozey said there were some red flags about some hygiene practices in the salon.

“I noticed that they took gear from the other small units for your hand when they didn’t have it at their table,” she said.

“So my best friend sat next to me and they used a drill on her and then immediately swapped it over to me.

“But I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

She said it didn’t go down until the next day.

“The next day, in the evening … my nails started to hurt really, everyone,” she said.

“It has happened to me before that acrylic has become very tight.

“But especially to [my left] Thumbs…it was so painful in that one corner but it felt like an ingrown nail.”

Jozey said the nail area was starting to look red and hurt more, but she figured maybe some “glue” had turned to stuff under the nail.

Two days later, the situation worsened during a trip to her mother’s house.

“I was going to get a cup of coffee from my mom’s outdoor table and I literally dropped it because the pressure to grab the cup was on my thumb,” she said.

“I’ve never felt pain like this before… and my mom was like, ‘No, you need to go to the hospital with this right away.'”

At the hospital, Jozey was told she had a serious infection in the nail bed of her thumb.

“They took my blood work and it came back as such a severe infection that they immediately transferred me to the other hospital for surgery, then and there,” she said.

“They tried to empty it with a syringe … but it was too clogged, there were too many infections.”

After the surgery, doctors told Jozey how close she came to losing her thumb.

“They ended up draining an absurd amount of pus and infection from my thumb,” she said.

“And they said if I left it longer to go to the hospital, it would have gotten right into my bones and into my bloodstream and I would have ended up losing my thumb.”

Since that day, Jozey said, she’s switched to Kmart Nails — and she’s never looked back.

“So the moral of the story is that now I only wear press nails because I’m never going to go and have my nails done again,” she said.

“Not even my favorite place I’ve been to before is too sketchy. If you ever see them grabbing equipment from another station, you have to say, “Housewife, can you please disinfect that?” ‘Cause you might lose your thumb like me.

“I’m not done with my nails yet, but these are the gorgeous Kmart nails. Love them – $5 a pack, these last me about two weeks. Love.”