I’m 45 years old, and I was cured of this approximately 17 years ago.
I don’t know what made me think of this today, but I was reliving some awful memories, I suppose, and ended up here.
I started with the pain when I was about 23 or 24. It was paralyzing when I hit it just right, I remember the pain being shocking. I had a hard time sitting down, of course.
So, I went to the doc, and told him I thought I had a hemorrhoid. After all, I couldn’t sit down, and the people on the hemorrhoid commercials couldn’t either. He got a laugh out of that and said, no, I have some sort of a cyst. He never said anything about “pilonidal.” He sent me to a plastic surgeon, who did a quick procedure to remove it. he never said “pilonidal” either.
Within a few weeks, it was back. I suffered with it for a few years, and finally couldn’t take any more. A friend’s father, a doctor, recommended I see a general surgeon. Dr. Nadaraja had zero bedside manner, but was my savior. He explained what I had, which was the first time I heard the word “pilonidal.” He told me what he was going to do, and it would be weeks of recovery, and painful repacking of the incision, which was all true. And he fixed it. I actually ended up with a second cyst, not pilondial but nearby, and in a subsequent surgery, he fixed that. I have never had a problem again. I also got a new GP.
Find a surgeon with experience on these, deal with laying on your stomach for a month while it heals, and this is a fixable condition.