Hi everyone ! my name is Abdelrahman, i am from Cairo,Egypt. i have had Pilonidal cyst for the past 6 months or so, tried antibiotics for 3 weeks and it did some progress but the cyst itself didn't disappear, only the bleeding and pus coming out of it. finally after finishing college i decided to take the open wound excision head on like a boss, i did the procedure last Thursday 5-July-2012 and i am now on the 5th day post-op. the entire procedure took about an hour and a half in which i was completely asleep, complete anesthetization is perfect for this kind of procedures where the surgeon has to play around in the butt area until every bit of infection is removed. i had my first wound pack changed 48 hours post-op by the surgeon himself, my mother is a Doctor so she was there but she was very surprised at the size of the wound, she thought he had removed some skin that was infected but did not expect the wound to be that deep and long. i had my second packing changed today but a couple of hours ago i bleed, not much but it was noticeable, apparently the nurse pulled a gauge so hard that it actually damaged the wound a little bit. my mother decided to change the packing for me for a couple of weeks until it's safe to do it on my own, god bless her. i am thinking of making a picture album to show the progress and to see the wound myself because i haven't seen it till now. i am also a bit hairy in these parts, the surgeon did remove some hair with the scalp before operating around the wound place but now i want to get the entire area cleansed of hair. any suggestions concerning post-op hair removal? i am thinking shaving? but not too keen on a razor next to an open deep wound. thank you and any tips on seating positions, exercises or diets would be very helpful !! and also about those soaking baths before pack changing, isn't tap water supposed to be filled with bacteria and such? is it dangerous to soak in it with an open wound? i wish u all a quick recovery and thank you for an amazing support group !
I am going to tell you right now that I cannot tell you for sure what will heal you 100% because I never healed from my open-wound procedure. I had the open wound for 4.5 months before I opted to have the cleft lift and get rid of the wound and the top of my cleft all together. I can, however, tell you what worked for me in the 4.5 months that I had the wound because I did make much progress, my progress just stopped and refused to keep going at some point.. The entire time I had this wound, it was completely healthy and clean and never really caused me too many problems after the initial pain and grossness. The bleeding is completely normal, especially if it was only your second dressing change. As long as it is not profusely bleeding, there is no need to worry. The size of the wound shouldn't worry you too much either because some people that get the excision do have a lot excised, but the body can handle almost always handle it. As for hair, I am not hairy so I did not shave or do hair removal at all during any of this process. Most people on here have their parent or spouse shave the area for them and then pluck the hairs that are too close/in the wound to shave, and in your case I would ask your mother to do it. I know that might be a bit weird but if she's already doing your dressing changes then I don't see why she can't do that too. Do a search on the forum about shaving and I know you'll come up with some great advice and guides since hair is a big thing when dealing with healing/preventing recurrence. Seating positions... order a coccyx cushion. People on here swear by them. They will help you sit normally and much more comfortably. As for me, I found that I was able to sit normally for the most part (I was in school when dealing with this, 5 classes 3 days a week.. long periods of sitting) except toward the end of the day I always experienced discomfort. It wasn't normally pain, just discomfort and maybe sometimes a very dull pain. It's nothing you can't deal with while healing and as long as you don't take 4.5 months to heal then you'll get used to it and it'll be better before you know it. Sleeping I suggest just not to sleep on your back whether you can comfortable or not, I don't know.. I just don't advise it. You can't control your movements in your sleep and you don't want to irritate the wound, esp if it's as big as you say it is. I never once did soaking baths but if you want to read up on that I'd suggest just the pilonidal.org website (aside from the forum). She explains so much stuff on there and soaks are one of them. I always thought what you are thinking.. bacteria, etc. Why would you want to soak in your own dirt when you're trying to keep it clean? I don't know. Exercise I can't help with because I was advised to cut off all exercising when I had my first surgery and I did. Every time I disobeyed this, I only did things that would not strain my bottom half (which is very limiting). For your diet- up your intake of protein. Take your vitamins. The pilonidal.org website has a list of stuff you should do with your diet and vitamin intake... follow it as well as you can. I saw my progress spike when I upped my intake of protein to 60g a day (I'm a vegetarian so this was ridiculously hard) and started taking vitamin c tablets every day. If you have any other questions feel free to ask but that's overall what I can help with. Good luck on healing.
