snif … I feel right at home here now. I used to think I was weird for enjoying a good zit-poppin, but no longer!
I ain’t got nothin’ that could possibly compare with Broomstick’s Mighty Morphin Pimple of Oozing Death, but I just wanted to mention that I can top the sinus infection story waaaay at the beginning of this thread. When I was younger I too had long strings of goo coming out of my nose, not unlike the sticky thingummies you can get from vending machines. I was pulling 'em out of my nose constantly. For a week and a half. Man did that suck! I went through more Kleenex …
This thread has made me happier than you can imagine. I love zits.
My personal gross-out story involves the area where my right nostril meets my face. There’s a slightly deep crevice there that I never really looked at. Well, I was on some sort of skin medication (I can’t remember the name, I was on so many) that dried my skin out quite badly. One night I was going through my picking/popping routine when I came across the aforementioned crevice, positively respendent with an array of blackheads, whiteheads, and headless bumps. I let out a Valkyriesque yelp of glee and got to work. Most of the blackheads weren’t that exciting, but I popped a few mini-whiteheads and these tiny little hard yellow balls came out. I carefully examined them and set them aside before attempting to take down the largest whitehead, the one most closely resembling a really good zit.
Well, it took a looong time but I finally positioned my fingers correctly and shot a hard little wad of gunk onto the mirror. It was a slightly maleable ball, about three millimeters in size, and quite fun to play with. But when I went back to excavate some more, I realized that by popping this old nasty zit, I had somehow disrupted the foundation of my nose crack. The whole area was gaping wide open and bleeding. It was red and raw looking, and I could see some more pimples sacs hiding inside the wound. I had to mess with them, so I washed my hands and stuck my fingers in the would to try and get to them. It was pretty pointless, so I just put some Neosporin on it and left it alone. When people asked, I told them I just had really dry skin.
Maybe three or four days later I go to the dermatologist for my monthly visit. He could not believe what I had done to my face. He poked at it, stared at it (as if in reverence) and finally prescribed me some antibacterial cream. It didn’t really look so bad when you looked at me, but when I pushed my right nostril to the left and exposed my crack it was horrible, very deep and nasty. The doc told me not to play with it or push the nostril aside unless I was applying the cream, but I really couldn’t help staring at it. I managed to not pick it anymore, but boy did I kill some time just peering at that crack in the mirror.
I had that bloody crevice on my face for a week or so before it healed. It was pretty nasty, though it’s got nothing on Broomstick’s Giant Face Zit From Hell.
If Broomstick is considered the winner in the zit story contest going on, maybe we can have a “first runner up” or an “honorable mention” category. Although she is a latecomer to the thread I would nominate Nacho4Sara for one of those awards, on the strength of her telling us how she “played around” with a 3 millimeter zit that had some malleability.
Eggles, I knew I couldn’t tell the whole saga in one go - there are limits to the amount of text you can post at one time on these boards. Also, there’s this thing called “my life” that keeps interfering with my hobbies. And then my hobbies interfere with my posting.
Medstar, thanks for the emu oil tip, but the redness has faded and the scar color matches the rest of my face. I wouldn’t descibe it as “raised”. I think I got off real lucky with that.
I’ve had other boils, pimples, zits, and eruptions, but nothing quite like that ever again!
By the way - since I finished the story I have been afflicted with some sort of nasty upper respiratory thing, so I am snorting out and coughing up Yellow Nasty while re-reading this entire thread. Really adds to the atmosphere. But it’s clearing up now, and not worth mentioning compared to the rubber cement sinus crud or underarm play-dough factories.
Odd, I didn’t notice this post before. I have recurring sebaceous cysts in my armpits, one per pit. A day or so after popping the one in my right pit (not much squeezing involved, I had to do little more than just touch it!), the one in the left returned. I popped that one too, it’s still there but is much smaller now. I’ve been meaning to try those nose strips to clear the gunk out of my nose pores.
Opal, you’d be welcome to come pop any zit you find on me if UDD doesn’t mind.
Reading one of the other threads on this topic, I noticed that another poster has one of the same problems I have—horrible, hard lumps in one’s earlobe.
I got my ears pierced when I was 15 and have had those monsters ever since. It took a YEAR for my ears to heal completely—at times, the lobe would be so swollen the earring had been completely surrounded by flesh. After all the trouble I went to, I discovered my skin’s so sensitive I can’t wear earrings.
Anyway, I periodically get these painful, pea-sized lumps in my lobes or further along the rim of the ear (in the cartilage). When I pop them, the pus flies out with an unbelievable force. If they weren’t so painful, I would take far more joy in the explosion.
I avoided this thread the first couple of days it was up because I was worried it would be too gross. Turns out it wasn’t that bad; I ate lunch while reading.
I also note that almost all of the stories involve dealing with one’s own body’s secretions. Except for the odd spouse, you’re all coping with your own blood, pus, and so on. What I’m about to add doesn’t really top anyone’s story, but I do feel it’s worth mentioning.
In college, I had a roommate who…
…wait for it…
…left his pimple squeezin’s on our bathroom mirror for me to find.
And not just one or two a week; I’m talkin’ dozens. Three or four a day minimum. The guy was absolutely impervious to criticism; I’d say, “Hey, could you not do that?” and he’d say, “Oh, sure,” and then he’d erase the conversation from his mental database. If I didn’t clean 'em off, they would have been there when the landlord was setting up for the next tenant.
Okay, this tale requires a little personal background information… when I was younger, I used to break a lot of bones. I mean, a LOT of bones. As a result, when I was quite young, I had steel rods put into both femurs to help keep them growing straight, act as in internal splint, and so on. As I grew, I’d have to have the rods replaced periodically as my leg would grow longer than the rod. Until the time of this story (hint, hint,) I had had this kind of operation 3 times on each leg. Anyway…
When I was about 12 or 13, I broke my left leg about an inch or two above the knee. Being quite the coward when came to pain, I thought to myself, “While I should probably go to the hospital for this, it’s gonna really hurt and I’m really not looking forward to being in another cast, so… .” So, I didn’t go. Instead, I put on a splint and decided it would heal on its own. Reasonable expectation, VERY poor judgement.
After about 6 to 8 weeks, it had healed and I could remove the splint, getting back to a semblance of a normal life. As I’m sure you can guess, although the bone healed, it healed rather crooked. To give you an idea of what it was like, my left leg continued straight down from the hip until you got to about two inches from the knee. At this point, Mr. Left Leg made a 45 degree jog toward Mr. Right Leg. Now here’s the catch… due to where the leg broke, the end of the afore mentioned steel rod stuck out of the bone and began to rub against the flesh of my thigh from the inside.
Now we fast forward a couple of years. Don’t know if there was a specific triggering event, or if the rod just decided, “To hell with this, I want out,” but I suddenly found that my leg was really sore, and really swollen. “Hmm, wonder what’s causing that?”, I innocently pondered. Well, back goes the splint, and back I go to bed rest for a couple of days (any excuse to get out of school, right?) That’s going okay until I’m sitting in bed watching TV (dad’s still at work,) and it occurs to me, “Y’know, something doesn’t feel quite right. Dare I say, something feels kinda wet down there.” I popped off the sweat pants, opened up the splint, and beheld a mass of thick, grayish yellow pus attempting to cement my skin to the padding of the splint. Suffice it to say, the sight scared the bejesus out of my 14 year old mind.
In the period of a couple of weeks, I went through a couple of rounds of swelling, leaking, healing, swelling, leaking, healing until I finally got it fixed. It was quite interesting as, during the healing episodes when the swelling was down, I could see the shape of the rod under the skin.
Long story short, if there’s anything worse than externally leaking puss from an internal wound, it’s having the doctor try to squeeze the puss pockets out of your thigh as he tries to clean the wound.
Maybe some day I’ll share the tale of getting it all fixed.
My, this thread has degenerated way beyond pimples, hasn’t it? Here’s my pus sqeezing story.
I was working for a week on the trauma ward at a large military hospital as part of my training. I didn’t have much to do except transport patients and specimens, as the nurses didn’t want me doing any of the procedures I’d been doing for 6 months before my training started. I wasn’t qualified, since I was in training. Huh?
One patient in particular had a bad injury – he’d come close to losing a leg in a forklift accident. The inner part of his thigh was flayed wide open from groin to knee in the accident, and he was undergoing daily physical therapy prior to getting skin grafts.
I took him down to PT for his daily whirlpool, and stayed with him for company. I wasn’t busy, he needed cheering up, being alone and far from home with a serious injury, and it was pretty cool to look at his wound. There was no flesh covering the musculature of most of his thigh. The inner part was all gone, along with most of the front and back sides. Only the outer portion had been saved – the accident had ripped the flesh from the inner area, but merely crushed the outer thigh against a crate.
The physical therapy tech lowers him into the tank and turns it on, and we’re thinking about tracking down a chess set to occupy us while he soaks. Just then, his doctor comes in, he was doing rounds with about 5 med students, and wants to show them the wound.
We shut off the tank and raise him up. The entire area is glistening and clean, it looks like a model or illustration. The med students ohh and ahh, and the doctor points out 7 muscle groups and attachment points. Pretty cool. The doctor asks the guy, ‘How do you feel? We want to do the skin grafts soon.’, and the patient answers back that he’s all for that.
Then, he mentions that this red spot on his outer thigh itches like crazy all the time – could the doctor look at it? Of course, no problem. The doctor peers down at this innocuous dot. Nothing striking about it. He reaches out with his hand, and feels it. ‘Feels a little warm – might be an infected cyst.’ Putting on a glove, he tries to ‘express’ the cyst. That means squeeze it.
He squeezed a little, nothing. Squeezed harder, still nothing. Then he really racked down on it.
The doctor and the 5 med students are focused on this dot on the outer thigh. What they can’t see is the cupful of green pus that gushes out between all those muscle groups on the inner thigh.
‘Doctor, it’s coming out over here’! ‘What’? Looking and squeezing again – another cupful of green pus.
The smell is coming now, and the patient is moaning in pain. Green, pudding-like pus is dripping off the leg, into the bath, which has a scum of pus on it. Some of the med students turn away in horror, I think one is puking. Another student is fascinated – can’t get enough. Either a future pathologist, or psycho killer, I guess.
There was no way to measure it, but I’d estimate we got out nearly a quart before the doctor decided to take the show to the OR. All this time they’d been treating this awful open wound with the greatest of care, this tiny puncture was festering. It was several months before the patient finally got his skin grafts.
i am watching the screen with glazed eyes, and frequent giggles emanate from my gut.
Mother Straight has accused me of visiting a porn site.
Anyways…
I have a story of a boil/carbuncle thingy on my nuts, but it sure can’t top Broomstick’s megazit!
Here goes…
One afternoon I felt this sharp pain in my very personal regions.
Expecting a plucked short-n-curly, I instead found what appeared
to be a third testicle trying to push through the nut-sac.
I knew this…thing …would have to be lanced, lest the micro-
organisms festering in the pus-head migrate to the jewels.
Also knowing that I could do the same thing a doctor would do for
serious money, I got out the tools:
Tossing back a shot to steel my nerves, I first wiped the enire area with alcohol, winced as I plucked three hairs from the growth, and, with the Jack kicking in, scored the head and squeezed.
I lay on the floor, convulsing with my eyes rolled up in my head
for about two minuites, before looking at the bloody mess.
Blood, pus, a dolop of squeezin’ which looked like a kernel of corn,
and a wound-up mass of ingrown hair.
I squirted anbesol, neosporin, and liquid styptic into the wound,
and, discovering I couldn’t walk without jiggling my naughty-bits
around, proceeded to lay on the spot till my mother came home.
Looking at the mess she saw, I cut her off with “Don’t ask.”
Dear god, that just made me physically gag. I think you just described one of my worse fears - having gaping, open cracks in my skin that I can look into…dry wretches
But anyways, everyone thinks I’m gross for being so darn excited about pore strips and squeezing blackheads and such. My girlfriend has some pretty wide blackheads on her nose, but never lets me squeeze them - pure torture. I think I may have to attack her nose in the middle of the night.
I’ve worked out that there are certain types of pimples:
The really sore ones that are underneath the skin and won’t pop, no matter how much you squeeze them. Then one glorious day, a big ball of goo pops out onto the nearest surface.
White heads. They’re pretty boring.
The blackheady type ones that pop out a hard bit of dried up pus.
Teeny tiny ones that ooze out the longest thinnest line of white goo…those things can go on for ages, making a pile on the skin.
Actually, that story came from me. For some reason, SDMB was of the opinion that I was A2Steve (who sits in the next office over.)
As for parents, yeah, I have parents. But when you’ve been busted up as many times as I have, the scenario becomes old hat. Besides, not every break requires a trip to the emergency room (this one did, but I opted to hide that fact. Live and learn.)
Oh, and here’s one more squirting pus story to start off the weekend. Years ago, my sister had five warts on both hands. She had them burned off and each one became a large blister: one clear, one pink, one red, one purple, one black. Each one was a squirter and, really, how could sis resist? So, one morning she pressed the pink one, which was really big. Well, this happened to be at the table and it went into our dad’s coffee.
Well, you know that dads can be cranky and she didn’t want to hear any whining about how he now had to get more coffee and a clean cup and all. So she didn’t tell him. And he drank it.
