I worked med-surg for a number of years, and every so often we’d get older adults admitted to the floor for peripheral vascular disease. Same thing happens: toes get dusky, then necrotic. The treatment is painting the toes with Betadine and wrapping with gauze. I never considered that this might be part of regeneration that doesn’t come to completion because of chronically poor blood flow.

There is more than one tale of nurses going in to rearrange the bedding or taking the gauze off only to find the affected toe had fallen off, and the patient not noticing it.