Our son’s symptom’s first appeared in late June with a full-on infection. He could hardly walk. Our primary care physician diagnosed a pilonidal cyst, put him on a round of antibiotics, and recommended surgery.
The cyst popped on its own and started to drain, so lancing was not necessary. My wife and I did a lot of research and found this website. We agreed a less invasive approach should be attempted. We did talk to two surgeons here in Indianapolis and neither were familiar with the pit-picking procedure. One said he did not recommend surgery now stating our son would not have a football season. The other was uncertain about healing time after surgery and left a lot of unknowns on the table during the discussion.
After 4 weeks, the cyst was not healing and our son was still in considerable pain. We contacted Dr. Mark Jennings in Cincinnati and made our initial visit with him a week ago, on a Monday. We can’t say enough good things about Dr. Jennings. Within 15 minutes, he’d examined our son and scheduled a pit-picking surgery for the next day. The 20-minute outpatient pit-picking surgery was performed the following morning. Just prior to the surgery, my son said his pain level was a 4 on scale of 10.
Two pits were removed along with a golf ball sized clump of hair. The cyst was the size of a racquet ball. We were able to drive two hours back home within hours of the procedure. Two days after the surgery, the pain level was down to a 1. On Sunday, our son jogged/walked on a treadmill for an hour without pain. It was the first time he’d been able to run since the symptoms started in June.
Today is Monday and he had full participation in football conditioning (less than a week since the procedure). He says he still has no pain with just a tiny bit a blood from the incision sites, which were the size of the clicker at the tip of a ball point pen.
Without reading this website and finding Dr. Jennings on the list of physicians, we are not sure where our son’s progress would be right now. We do know it’s good to see him back to his normal routine in a short period of time.