I have what is likely to be a Pilonidal cyst. I don’t know for sure- the earliest I can see my doc is Tuesday morning. Basically it hurts to sit and I can definitely feel some kind of little ‘bump’ near my tailbone region. This is irritating because sitting is rather important to my job (bus driver). Painkillers and adjusting my sitting posture have helped somewhat, but I want to get better.
Through the questionable wisdom of wikipedia the descriptions of a Pilonidal cyst seemed pretty consistent. In fact, they said GI’s used to get it a lot from riding in jeeps all the time which makes sense since I spend 8-10 hours a day driving a bus, and lately I’ve been working 6-7 days a week.
Anyway embarassment aside has any one else had to deal with this pain in the…(too easy : ) How was the recovery? It sucks this is happening now since right now I am trying to make as much overtime as possible and save up before I’m laid off, so I don’t like the idea of having to be on transitional work (75% pay if an injury/illness precludes driving) but then again might as well make the most out of my health insurance while I still have it!
I had one when I was 15-16 yrs old. As I recall,it was out-patient surgery and it wasnt long to get back to normal…25 years later,no problems,just a minor scar.
I had one removed from my tailbone when I was 17. I think I had it removed about a week before band camp (yes, band camp). During band camp I could march just fine but I couldn’t do what is called “five to five” which is taking huge steps to go 5 yards in 5 paces. Too much of a stretch for my incision.
And, not to be nasty but…when you have a cyst removed your body works overtime to fill the empty hole with more fluid. So being that I was working out 5 hours a day in the hot sun, I had the worst leaky, messy incision. Luckilly two of my friends’ moms were on staff and they were nurses. So at every break I had to take a shower and have them re-bandage me. They had to fill the hole with gauze and then tape it up.
Not sure how it is for someone on a normal schedule that doesn’t involve a ton of marching…but I recommend buying some heavy flow menstrual pads to stick over the wound so you don’t leak through your pants if you are going right back to work (yes, I know you are a guy). You also will want to implore a girlfriend or your mom to help patch you up if needed.
You may not need any of this but I would prepare for the worst so you are not caught off guard.
The actual pain of recovery was minimal. The leaking was the only thing I remember. 10+ years later I do have a doozy of a scar. I believe some nerves were damaged because I can’t feel the area, although sometimes it itches like crazy which is not pleasant.
Mine was growing for quite a while before I had it removed, tho. So yours might not be half as bad as mine.
I also had one removed when I was 17. That was way back in '79.
I was in hospital for 3 days and there was not that much pain afterwards. It was a bit tender to sit for a while.
I do remember my first bowel movement after surgery was challenging. There was a great deal of bright red blood on the paper. When I tried to stand up I got dizzy and fainted. But after that all was fine.
When my ex had one removed, they packed the empty cyst and put him on antibiotics. The packing gradually came out over the course of the week. They kind of have to heal from the inside out. You don’t want the incision to really close until the inside has had a chance to heal…if that makes sense!
I had one when I was a sophomore in High School. Doctor drained it and sent me on my merry way. A couple years later before I left for college, I voluntarily had it removed. I didn’t want to deal w/ the same pain alone at college.
I stayed overnight in the hospital, all in all not too bad, but one thing stands out in my mind. I had a difficult time immediately after the surgery sitting down for obvious reasons. Nurse came in to take blood pressure and vitals, so I kinda leaned half way on the bed to allow her to do her job. She asked why I didn’t just sit on the bed to make it easier, I went off on her real good. It was obvious that she didn’t have a clue why I was in the hospital.
At that moment, it was just extremely frustrating and it all came out onto this nurse. I’m still kinda ashamed for going off.
I had surgery for mine about six years ago; it flared up three times over the course of a couple of years and finally they told me they were going to do surgery on it because draining it wasn’t obviously working.
The pain it caused me prior to surgery far outweighed any post-op pain; my boyfriend at the time cleaned it twice a day with saline and I had to keep it bandaged, but since they cauterized the whole incision (about the size of an ice-cream scoop’s worth of flesh missing) I didn’t really feel much of anything.
I will say that I never actually LOOKED at it while it was healing. I knew it would freak me out. My boyfriend told me it looked like somebody had shot me in the ass.
Like I said though, cleaning it was uncomfortable (you will want help with that) but no actual pain. I went into the ER barely able to walk because of the pain, and I came out with a large chunk of my ass missing…and virtually no pain. Thank God for cauterization!
There’s a half-dollar sized scar left now. It tingled for several years afterwards–it would get oddly itchy–but they tell me that was just the damaged/burned nerves.
You definitely want to get it taken care of ASAP; they only get worse with time.
If yours is not chronic they may just drain it…I will warn you that draining it was FAR more painful than the surgery. Like peel-me-off-the-ceiling painful. And then they stuff it full of gauze which has to be changed daily; that’s pretty painful also. (They want it to heal from the bottom up.) They gave me a shot of Novacaine prior to the draining which was extraordinarily painful, and it didn’t help at all.
You don’t realize how many freakin’ nerves you have in that region until you test them.
Good luck! It sounds like you’re getting it taken care of early…if you can still sit at all, you’re not as bad off as I was. So my fingers are crossed for you.
There is a website all about them. The pain is typically caused by the pressure on nerves near the tail bone. Sometimes a lancing will be all that is needed, sometimes repeated surgeries are required, sometimes doctors will try antibiotics only and no lancing, at least not until it comes to a head on its own. You may find hot compresses on the bump will relieve the pain a bit as well as help it come to a head while you are waiting for the doctor. The other thing to do is keep the area clean and dry. The ideal thing to happen is that it comes to a head without a severe infection of the entire area.
David Sedaris details his partner draining a pilonidal cyst like boil on his (David’s) behind. The account is quite compelling and vivid.
The thing to keep in mind is that sometimes these cysts make tunnels instead of coming to a head near the surface, so if your doctor just looks at it and says that it can’t be lanced yet, it hasn’t come to a head, find out if he has some plan for if it doesn’t do so in a certain time frame.
Well I find out tomorrow morning the case. Yesterday at work (9 hour shift driving the bus, ughhh :o ) it hurt but I wasn’t in agony, basically I tried to sit in a position where I wasn’t putting pressure on it, and any chance I had a break or even 2 minutes to kill at a timepoint I would get out of the seat and stand to keep pressure off it. Yeah, the passengers were a little :dubious: about me getting out of the seat every 10 minutes all day.
Now, I have plenty of sick time saved up- like a month’s worth. I might be getting laid off this summer and I’m not sure exactly what they are going to do with my sick time if that happens. I’m hoping it doesn’t just go away ie they pay it toward me like some kind of severance or simply save it for me for when I get re-hired (its probably I’ll get laid off but rehired in a year or so).
If it just gets saved then I’ll definitely make the most out of it and use that to recover. But I definitely want to get it dealt with. Medical issue+possible layoffs in the future is stressful. Its WAY cheaper to deal with this now, when the doc visit is 5 bucks, and hacking out the little abomination growing out of my rump (feels like I’m growing a tail at this point ) is another 5 bucks, along with 10 bucks for whatever painkillers I’ll need. I obviously don’t want it to happen when I’m laid off and have to pay 400+ for COBRA coverage.
I too had one when I was in my teens, but back in the days before the Web gave us all access to TMI, I didn’t really know what it was. I felt only mild soreness in the area, and a bit of blood on toilet paper pressed against the area. Squatting over a mirror, I was baffled/mildly horrified by what I saw: “What the hell’s that? Some sort of vestigal twin appendage? Like some people are born with extra limbs, I got a second anus?”
Figuring that doctors would have noticed and someone would have mentioned such a thing when I was a kid, I decided that it was some sort of wound. A cotton swab probe came back a bit bloody, so I started using swabs to coat the interior with Neosporin. After a week or so, when there no longer seemed to be blood inside, I more or less forgot about it, and over the years it apparently healed shut.
Good luck, Incubus. Never had the cyst, but did fall & bruise my tailbone when I was a kid. As someone upthread mentioned, you never know how many nerves you have there until…
Humorous aside: Many years ago, we had a young blonde surfer boy intern who had to take a week off from the job to have his pilonidal cyst dealt with. My department created a big “get well” poster and sent it to him at the hospital addressed to “Steve the Intern, AKA Lance Boyle”
Hey, if nothing else, perhaps you’ll wind up with a keen new username.
Do people tend to get these kinds of cysts in their mid teens? I had one removed when I was 15 and my experiences were similar to what others have written here. I did have one incident where it started bleeding profusely and I had to go in and have it cauterized.
The pain wasn’t too bad, and within a few days I was walking around normally. The most embarrassing part was having to have my mom dress the affected area with gauze to soak up the fluids.
) How was the recovery? It sucks this is happening now since right now I am trying to make as much overtime as possible and save up before I’m laid off, so I don’t like the idea of having to be on transitional work (75% pay if an injury/illness precludes driving) but then again might as well make the most out of my health insurance while I still have it!
