They involve much of the fascinating grossness of zits and cysts, but with added challenges! You’ve got to keep your tongue out of the way, maintain proper lighting on the tonsil, and wield a Q-tip or toothbrush simultaneously, with only two hands. And of course, during the careful mining process, you have to overcome the gag reflex and also avoid swallowing the nasties, because then fascinating gross just becomes disgusting, vomit-inducing gross. (Did I mention they smell like old gym socks?)
Tonsilloliths usually have threads of their own, they’re so special.
To get the thread back on pimples, I get these great pimple/cyst things on my sides fairly often. They’re usually deep under the skin, and hurt like hell when squeezed, and will go away on their own if I let them.
But that’s no fun. If they’re close to a hair follicle, I squeeze them out. Lovely explosions of off-white gunk followed by gunky blood.
Probably just a little goo left over by some fetishist who eats peanut-butter and [toe]jam sandwiches by day, and has his way with your feet at night when you are asleep.
Well, I just recently discovered that my fiance is a shameless zit hunter. I was scratching at an annoying painful one on my back that I couldn’t quite get leverage on. She noticed, immediately pinned me down, squeezed with me writhing and screaming in pain until the sucker popped. She then ran laps through the house with the gunk on the tip of her finger, cackling with glee like she’d just animated Frankenstein.
I was raised to be a pore miner. I believe it’s the only reason my parents had kids. Sure enough, my sister pimples well, but I? I have flair. Since I was old enough to operate the alcohol-cotton ball-sterilyed needle tools of the trade, I have been the official Nit-picker/Pimpler of my childhood home. (Hey, we were poor! Other kids got to play baseball, but NO not us!) My brother is the official splinter remover - we all had our jobs to do.
Several really interesting ones but generally small, quick ones - I was good at my job. No one got anything REALLY nasty while I was on watch. But my mom had a couple of Old Faithfuls - on her jaw, on the back of her neck, and on her side. The one on her side is dry and just has to be dug out from time to time. But the ones on her face and neck had to be worked on at least once a month. That was fine until I went to college. I was only home once every 6 months or so… Then they started getting deeper.
Then when I got married, whoa boy! BIG, REALLY BIG. So big that Mom’s jaw would have a visible lump. I would come in and work on them a little - wait a few hours (for them to ripen) and then ewwww. The smell was unbelievable. I mean really foul. Fetid. It truly did smell like rotting meat. The pimples would be squiggly and spurty - I’d have to cover myself in towels to work on them. Totally disgusting - but strangely facinating.
She finally went to the surgeon last year and had them removed. I had been keeping them cleaned for 30 years. The doctor was amazed that she had let them go that long - you shouldn’t mess with inflamed sebaceous cysts. So they were cut out and then stitched up. And you can barely see the scars.
I never get spots, so I guess i’m lucky.
But on the other hand I do get rashes and blisters because i’m allergic to alot of things.
so I guess we’re kinda even huh?
I only recently found out the copiously icky bumps on my husband’s shoulder are sebaceous cysts, thanks to SDMB. They are pretty darn malodorous, but I love to operate on them. He’s more offended by the stink than I am.
This is the reason I’m addicted to the SDMB. The education you get here on the boards is second to none. I wonder if there are any institutions of higher learning who grant degrees for pore mining?
I like your thinking, MercyStreet. After the six month road show, we get a TV show which lasts for seven years, enough for syndication, which gets us our first fortune. Then we write, produce and direct 10 motion pictures. And to think it all started with a thread full of zit stories.
Had one IN my eyebrow once… couldn’t really see it, as it was covered with hair, but everytime I raised my eyebrow when someone said or did something stupid(I’m still in high school, so believe me, that was often) I would feel it… it was almost painful.
So, that night, I decided to make it go away. I pop it, and out comes a nice, plentiful amount of pimple juice. But that wasn’t all… oh no. About 12 of my eyebrow hairs came out too… It took almost a month to grow back in… People asked me if I had an accident with a razor…
I noticed my first zits when I was in the 7th grade. It was during gym class and somehow I found myself in the locker room alone. I looked in the mirror and saw 2 zits on my nose and they were filled with green gook. I didn’t know what to do but to pop them. There was a loud snap and then ooze. It was gross. I am scarred for life over this.
My most memorable zit was a blackhead on my hip that I swear was there for a couple years. Try as I might to squeeze, nothing happened. Just kept getting bigger and itchier. Finally, inspiration struck. I took a large paper clip, and bent it to get a digging tool. To my surprise, I was able to poke my surgical tool into that clogged pore UP TO THE BEND IN THE PAPER CLIP!. I scraped that clip around the outside of that pore, and then squeezed. Much like hardened toothpaste, it slowly came out of that pore in one large lump roughly the size of a pistachio nut. I marvelled at that precious lump for a moment, smelling its waxy perfume. Finally I crushed and rolled it between my fingers, and put it to my nostrils to such in that precious dead bacterial aroma. Then it was over. Did I have the mother lode? Sadly, that pore has never again borne fruit.
