Ashley Noel (9/4/2014) – my surgery (12/22/2014) was not bad at all. I have not had to take many pain pills and no narcotics.
Several others (Cyn, Russel) have noted experiences not too bad, like mine. Tom (8/31/2014) – see above. My wound was left open. The surgery part was a breeze and for several days had zero pain due to the long-acting numbing medicine. The worst pain was removing the packing, and I think I figured that out on day 8 (today).
Here’s how: Stand in the shower and wet the packing. Then take your fingers and gather the packing together (the part that sticks out) like you are wringing the water out of it. Repeat this several times. Now slowly move the packing back and forth while also doing the wringing motion. The idea is to gracefully detach the gauze from the wound, which at least on my first try worked very well. I could not tell that it was actually almost all the way out, and when I did the final “yank” there was no pain – it was nearly all the way out.
See Aman Rishi’s post and Day 5. That is exactly when the packing pain started getting bad. Tyler (8-9-2014) – run hot water on it in the shower for extended periods of time while holding your buttocks apart. Helped me tremendously before surgery. Nancy (7/30/2014) – I have read that these cysts never go away on their own which makes sense to me if they are caused from hair growing inside the skin. I hope yours is truly gone, however, no matter what they say. Maybe it was not a true pilonidal cyst??