complich8′s journal

So, Something involving a sebaceous cyst I’ve had for a while happened last night. And it’s pretty gross, so I’m going to hide it behind a “more” link.

If you read it and it grosses you out, it’s your own damned fault. Seriously, just quit now.

You sure? You still have time to back out of this …

Ok. So about two years ago, I grew two or three sebaceous cysts on my scalp. As with most sebaceous cysts, there was no obvious reason, but I think Pantene is the culprit, because it’s waxy and doesn’t rinse clean.

Well, a sebaceous cyst is when a sebaceous gland (which is basically an oil gland) gets clogged, wraps up on itself and turns into a little fluid-filled pocket. Sizes can vary, and often the gland keeps fueling it and it grows over time.

Well, my cyst was pretty normal. It was just an annoying bump. Occasionally it’d get bigger, occasionally it’d get smaller. But because it near my hairline, when it got bigger it’d kind of pop up through my hair, which I didn’t like.

Well, one day about 3 or 4 weeks ago now, it swelled particularly large and got what looked like a whitehead or an ingrown hair on top of it. So I grabbed a needle and poked the whitehead part, and got a LOT of leakage. To my shock, I apparently managed to pierce the cyst sack itself, and it drained probably a good ounce or so of yellowish-white nasty goo with a kind of bad smell to it. (Told ya it’d be gross).

Ever since then, that wound has occasionally leaked similar yellowish-white nasty goo, and sometimes just clear pus, and sometimes blood. When it wasn’t leaking, the area around it (which used to be swollen) felt like an air pocket, like a drained blister sort of. Poking lightly got a clicking sound, just like you’d think a wet air pocket would make.

I’ve been thinking about seeing a doctor about this, because I was pretty sure that the cyst wasn’t dealt with, and as long as it kept draining like that the puncture probably wasn’t going to heal up, and that’s not a pleasant thought… So I was thinking of hitting a doctor up this week (now that MR is over).

Well, round about last night 9:30 pm or so, it started leaking a bit again, and I looked in the mirror and tried to squeeze out the last of the white goo to make it stop. It sort of felt like a clot-like thing came out into my hair, and when I wrangled that out, it turned out to be about half of a taco-shaped shell of similar composition to that white discharge, except a lot tougher. I was surprised to find that … and a little more poking at it got another one, pretty much perfectly matched to it, to come out. Overall size was about the length of a dime, and 2/3 of the height, or so.

I think that that was the actual cyst membrane that ruptured a fairly long while back. Now the spot is a bit tender (which it’s only been once, when it formed the actual whitehead), and doesn’t make a squish sound when I poke at it. No further signs of discharge, no swelling, no strange hard spots. I think that yesterday night amounted to the end of that cyst, entirely. At least I hope so.

So, I’m going to continue putting off that doctor visit. I have another fairly sizeable (about pea-sized) cyst back a couple inches from my ear, that I’ll have to have looked at sometime, but it’s not acting up so I think it’s fine on its own for a while.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 11:24 pm and is filed under life and times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.