Hi all, hope is not lost! I am recovering from a successful pilonidal cyst removal and here is my story. As a 20 year old college student, a pilonidal cyst was the last thing I needed. I had pain in my tailbone area so intense I couldn’t walk. I was confined to laying on my stomach for a week before I saw a doctor at the university health center. She knew exactly what I had, and told me I had a pilonidal abscess. She told me it was too big for them to drain there, so she gave me the number of a doctor to call and told me to contact him immediately. I also received pain medication.
Within a week and a half I had an appointment with Dr. Arbutina with Tyrone Hospital in Pennsylvania. He told me he couldn’t tell if I had a pilonidal or not since the area was so swollen. So I made my appointment to come back in a month. Eventually the area calmed. I never had draining. I went back to the doctor and he said I did in fact have a pilonidal and we scheduled surgery. Last Friday, I had surgery to remove my pilonidal cyst at Tyrone Hospital. I could not have asked for a better group of doctors to take care of me!
My surgery lasted about an hour and a half total. I was put under local anesthesia (I was OUT), and they injected blue dye into the pilonidal pore. They then opened me up through an inch and a half slit and removed the area of the blue dye. I woke up, was wheeled back to my hospital room and hung out for about forty minutes before being discharged. And I had no pain! (And my insurance covered the whole thing, thank goodness).
Aftercare told me to leave the original packing and “butt pad” on for three days. After three days, my boyfriend helped me remove the five feet of gauze from the wound. It was the most painful part of the whole process, but I survived. I do not have stitches, I have an open healing, so I have to have help removing and replacing the packing each day. It is day 6 and I’m sore, but the healing is going as planned and I’m fine to go to classes and such. No complications or infection! My experience has been a quick one. We opted to take care of the problem before it developed further and I’m confident it will pay off in the future.