Dead toenails?

I am not sure what the heck happened to my left foot but over the last few weeks the big toenail turned black, like it had dried blood under it but I do not remember smashing it. Since my wife has been giving me a hard time about it I decided last night to take a closer look at it and while I keep myself very well groomed (I cannot STAND long nails) I decided to see if I could trim the nail back any further then it already was.

During this exercise I noticed that my nail had no feeling at all. You know how usually if you try to trim to far you can feel it? Well not this time which kind of told me that the nail was dead to some extent. I worked on it for a bit trying to clean the blood from under it when I realized I could fit the file all the way under it and to the cuticle. It was then that I decided that I needed to excise as much of the dead nail as I could and then put on a triple anti-biotic ointment and a bandage for a few days to prevent an infection.

I started to clear away the dead nail and when I got about half way down the toe I uncovered what appeared to be a blister of some sort. The clipper accidentally snipped a part and the clear liquid (water) you see under burn blisters ran out. I finished clearing out much of the nail and wiped out the blood and other fluids, applied a healthy dose of the ointment and then put on some waterproof bandaids for the day.

I ended up leaving the outer portion of the nail on, like a big "U" as it was still alive and I could not cut it out without some pain but the middle of the nail is gone.

Now I have no idea what happened or what I did to cause the problem in the first place and I was quite surprised to find that most of the nail was dead. I think I have lost on nail in my life and that was when I was a kid and smashed my hand with a ballpeen hammer, of course then you expected the something like that to happen.

I feel like I am falling apart bit by bit. Each day it is a new ache or pain or something else "breaks." It is perhaps more frustrating because before all of this I was very healthy and while I am not able to continue a regimen of physical activity I have been able to keep myself healthy by eating properly and doing the limited exercises that I can do. We will see what happens.