It all started about 15 years ago. I was at a girl scout camp for a long weekend, and decided I wanted to move my cot out of one tent, and into another.
Mind you, the tents were about 3 feet off the ground. As I grabbed my cot, I stepped off the back platform, and landed directly on the ground, on my tailbone. I wound up being okay. But, flash forward until about a year ago. Around my period I’d start getting this odd pain right around my tailbone. I never really thought anything of it. I figured I was either sitting to hard, or that it was just a sensitive spot on the body.
Last week I started to learn otherwise. I never thought pilonidal cyst at first, because my fiance has had them, and I’ve had to change and pack his wound multiple times after he’d have it lanced. Mine was not quite in the same spot (his was off to the left of the tailbone) and not nearly as big as the ones I’d seen him get.
Last Sunday it started. Sharp pains around my tailbone when I’d be sitting on hard surfaces. I figured it was the usually hormonal stuff. By Tuesday night, I was in a considerable amount of pain, and decided that Wednesday I’d go to the ER to have it looked at. The doctor that diagnosed me with a “small” pilonidal cyst, wrote me a prescription for clindamycin and told me to take 4 200 mg tablets of ibuprofen every 6 hours. The antibiotics did absolutely nothing for me.
By Friday night I was in the worst pain I’d ever experienced. That night I literally hopped in the shower every hour or so for about 15 minutes just to let the water hit it and get some sort of relief. I spent all of Saturday in bed, because it was the only thing I could physically do. I was incapable of sitting, standing…anything really, except laying on my belly. I took a 3-hour nap around 3, and my fiance woke me up to check on me. I was very pale and drenched in sweat. He decided then and there that I needed to go back to the ER. This time the doctor lanced it. It was literally the best feeling in the world, which was quickly followed by the worst. The doctor wanted to make sure that the entire contents were out, and began digging around in my wound with the surgical scissors. Talk about pain. Although that part was horrible, I’d do it all over again, because being about to sit and not be in constant pain is amazing.
Here I am almost 3 days post-lancing. I feel so much better. It’s like night and day. I have another 5 doses of antibiotics left, and still have some swelling at the incision site, however my pain on a scale of 1-10 is probably at a 1.5 now…where as Saturday it was at a solid 9.
So basically, moral of the story is, if you’re debating whether to have an infected cyst lanced or not, I’d absolutely have to say yes. I know chances are this little monster will come back, but it’s such a relief to be about to do things I took for granted again.