Surgery has gotten a lot safer in the last couple decades however, there are still risks. General anesthesia used to be ten times more dangerous than it is now but it's still not zero.

Why would you use general anesthesia for bunion removal? Wouldn't local be fine?

You might want to read up on what it is. It’s not like scraping a callus off the side of your foot.

Even mild may involve removal of bone and realignment of muscles, tendons, and ligaments surrounding the joint.

Source: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-t...

Your link has: "Most bunion surgery is performed under ankle block anesthesia, in which your foot is numb, but you are awake. Occasionally, general or spinal anesthesia is used."

I do not know. But they do according the source I linked.

Seems plausible. My relative died after getting a small cut on her toe which led to a staph infection that spread to her kidneys. Symptoms aren't necessarily as obviously tied to such an origin as one would think, and can be easily overlooked for too long.

I know a person who got a hairline fracture on his foot from dropping a knife on his steel toe cap boot - the metal knife handle hit the boot, not the blade.

6 weeks later, he was getting amputated above the knee due to sepsis - had he left it another week or two, he’d be dead.

Did you mean to say that the metal knife handle hit the boot, but not the steel toe? As in the soft part of the boot?

I've had some ankle fractures I didn't know about in the past, thankfully they didn't lead to more than a few weeks of inactivity, but have had absolutely miserable infections from a mild shin scrape and achillies cut.

Ah yes, it hit the boot (which was steel toe capped) but I believe where the laces are, the top of the guys foot basically (no anatomy expert, but from a quick search it looks like a ‘tarsal’).

Tragic really, he worked in a sharpening factory and spent his life doing this as a career, had many cuts and wounds over his years and a completely invisible injury took almost his entire leg.