I am not asking for medical advice. There is nothing you bunch of rubes could say to impact how I would handle a medical situation.
I have an in-grown whisker on my neck. I have gotten them many times before. Normally I can’t help myself from squeezing the gooey grossness out at least once a day, which means they last forever. On the times when I have had enough discipline NOT to squeeze, I find the infection brings the whisker to the top, it pops out, and is healed within days.
So what have you done with in-grown whiskers/hairs in the past? Squeeze? Leave them alone? Dig at 'em with a pair of scissors and a knitting needle?
I haven’t squeezed this thing in 24 hours and I feel like their is a golf ball on my neck!
I feel your pain. I have a spot on my chin and a spot on my neck that are prone to the little buggers.
What’s weird is the hair itself. I have two types of facial hair: Normal brownish blond and jet black 8 gauge wire. Seriously, those few and far between black hairs are several times thicker than the others, and those are always the ones that go weird on me.
I usually pop or nick them if they head up and then work the offending hair out. It never fails that it’s actually anywhere from 4 to 12 of the damn things bundled together and fused with the goo from the infection like a sheaf of wheat. I pulled out one clump that was just over a millimeter across.
If it doesn’t head, I just leave it alone, as past experience has amply demonstrated no good is going to come from futzing with it.
For some reason my boyfriend gets them on his back. Luckily he has me to attack the little bastards with my fingernails. “Stop hurting me!!” “Hold still!”
You know that’s a really good way to start an infection? There’s all kinds of crap under your nails that’s just looking for a good home to raise a family.
If you must deal with 'em, sterilize the area, then use a sterilized needle and/or tweezers.
Get some pointed Tweezerman tweezers. They’re expensive but they WORK. Many tweezers don’t meet exactly at the point, whereas Tweezermans do.
My husband has very thick, somewhat curly hair, and is very hairy all over. It is my duty and pleasure to remove all ingrown hairs, plus any hairs that grow in and around his ears. I also remove blackheads and zits on him (as well as on my own body). If I don’t remove the ingrown hairs, they’ll never grow out, and will just get bigger and more painful as time passes. Sometimes he’s come to me in desperation because he’s tried to let an ingrown hair resolve on its own, but alas, it never does. Then I grab the big greasy pliers, and a large tapestry needle, and have him hold them and reflect upon these tools for a while before I start digging with the tweezers and lancet. He says I have a cruel streak.
I also know my limits. He’s had a couple of boils that I immediately recognized as something that needed a real doctor’s care, and probably antibiotics. In cases like these, I limit my torturing of him to simply hounding him to make and keep a doctor’s appointment.
I simply don’t have your discipline. I have kind of a hard time distinguishing an ingrown from a basic zit so I end up mistrating the ingrown until I realize what it is. And then it’s too late and I get a nasty achy dot on one side of my chin or the other, sometimes on my jaw, for a few weeks.
And yeah, it’s always a shock when I pull out the monster impacted hairball. And sometimes it’s worth all the struggle just to have that miniscule trophy.
I’m intrigued by these rogue follicles. I still remember the first time I squeezed a pimple and ended up with an inch-long hair in my fingers: interesting and fascinating. It was silky smooth and totally unexpected. Sort of like giving birth when you don’t know you’re pregnant. OK, really terrible analogy.
Over the years I’ve had my share and I pop the hidden buggers whenever possible. Sometimes though, they won’t rise to the surface and all you get is the liquid manifestation until the hair reaches critical mass and rears its ugly head weeks later.
I’ve gone after them with pins, needles, finger nails, and just about anything else pointy or scrapey.
I don’t get many any more, but occasionally the bottom left corner of my mouth has ingrown moustache hairs. I dig them out with a pin and shave them off at the pass. Smug in my knowledge that the pricks will be back in due course.
No, it’s perfect! You just star in awe –How did that fit in me?!
These threads are such a guilty pleasure. While I’m definitely not turned on, sexually, I’m half nauseous and half salivating. I think have a real problem.
At the first site (sometimes just a red blemish), I go in after it with a needle heated by lighter. Sometimes it takes some probing and fishing, but when the offending hair pops out, the satisfaction is awesome.
Then I take a tweezer and yank the little bastard out.
I’ve had a few ingrown eyelashes. I use a new lancet when I go after something like that, so it’s sterile. Heating a metal thing in flame will cause carbon, and I don’t want any carbon in my wounds, as that’s one way of tattooing myself. At any rate, I’ve managed to remove my ingrown eyelashes, but I usually have to spend a day using warm wet compresses to help soften the skin. If I have a stye as well as an ingrown eyelash, I use tweezers to pop it, and generally the infection is in one waxy lump, and extracting it is very painful.
I’m sure that all the medical professionals who are reading this thread are shuddering at the thought of my home surgery attempts.
I was weak. I went at it hard today. I have a flat top stove, and I put a safety pin and a pair of tweezers on it on full blast for 5 minutes to sterilize it.
I didn’t find the hair. Just made a lot of bloody gook.I do have lancets so I will try that in a bit.
I hope I didn’t start an infection. I was quite enthusiastic in my excavation.
How do you use the tweezers to pop the stye? I have one in my eye right now that refuses to do anything but irritate me, but as much as I enjoy digging out a zit of sorts, I fear putting sharp metal things near my eyes.
I am very, very nearsighted, and I have excellent fine motor control, most of the time. These two things matter very much when talking about this subject. Most people cannot focus on things as closely as I can.
After applying a warm moist compress and soaking the tweezer tips in alcohol, I examine the stye to see if it has a thin film over the infection. If it does, I carefully remove the film. Sometimes the stye is in the form of a waxy lump, which I can gently tug out with the tweezers. More usually, I need to put the tweezer tips on either side of the stye and squeeze HARD. This hurts like hell, but I can usually get the infected material to pop out. Once I get the core out, the stye will usually resolve within a day or so. Sometimes I have to remove the scab and pop out the crud after a couple of days, if the stye doesn’t dissolve after I’ve popped out most of the crud the first time.
I don’t recommend this method to others, but it does work for me. And as I said, I am extremely nearsighted, so I can see precisely what I’m doing.
How screwed up am I that I am now wishing for an ingrown hair or a sty to go after? Or, better, a boyfriend with ingrown hairs that I can go after? sigh
There’s a pimple on the back of my neck, and my girlfriend has been eyeing it for the past couple days. She approaches it like Indiana Jones approached the golden idol, before the giant rock chased him out.
