Aimee Walker
The woman with the world’s longest nails has answered the one question she’s always asked.
Diana Armstong, from Minnesota, U.S.A., hasn’t trimmed her exceptionally long talons since 1997.
The last time her nails were measured, they were collectively 42 feet long and 10.4 inches.
Armstrong refuses to cut her talons for a heartbreaking and sentimental reason.
The mom hasn’t trimmed her nails since the tragic death of her 16-year-old daughter Latisha, who died from an asthma attack in 1997.
Opening up, Armstrong said (per the Daily Star): “That was the worst day of my life.
“The day before, she’d spent time polishing and filling my nails, so after that, I just couldn’t cut my nails off.”
Latisha would manicure her mom’s then-average-sized nails every weekend before her passing.
The mom said she kept the reason why ‘to myself for years,’ adding: “My nails are a part of me. I can’t ever imagine cutting them off.”
After learning the reason behind Armstrong’s long talons, her daughter Rania said: “If that’s her way of holding on to her, then I accept.”
Nowadays, Armstrong’s grandchildren act as her manicurists, with each nail taking ‘about 10 hours to polish’ and a woodwork tool being used to file them. She says it takes up to ten nail polish bottles to paint her talons and ‘four days’ to complete!
But this isn’t the only way the mom’s extra-long nails have impacted her life.
Armstrong struggles to zip her pants and jacket and needs a knife to open soda cans.
The world record holder can no longer drive as her nails left her with no choice but ‘to stick my hand out the window,’ and she has to use the biggest stall when going to public bathrooms.
“When I go to a public restroom, I go to the stall that is the biggest. If someone is in that stall I have to wait until they’ve finished and then go in because I can’t use the smaller ones because my nails are longer than them,” Armstrong told Guinness World Records.
She was recognized by the franchise earlier this year in an Instagram post.
View this post on Instagram
It reads: “Diana Armstrong from Minnesota, U.S.A, holds the record for the longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female) and the longest fingernails on a pair of hands ever (female).
“Measuring 1,306.58 cm (42 ft 10.4 in) the combined length of Diana’s fingernails is longer than a standard yellow school bus!
“Diana has been growing her fingernails for over 25 years!
“Diana last cut her nails in 1997. But shortly after, a tragic accident rocked her family and she vowed to never trim them again.”
Like others with extremely long nails, Armstong finds she’s always asked one (rather nosy) question in particular.
People want to know how she goes to the toilet – but the mom insists ‘It’ll be the same as anyone else going to the bathroom.’
She explains: “… Just I work with my nails probably in a different way they’d work with theirs. I use a lot of toilet paper. I don’t wrap it around my hand like some people do, I can’t do it like that, because it ain’t going to work that way.”
Armstrong adds that when washing her hands, she does one at a time as she can’t pour soap into her hands and rub them together.
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