I had a big, ol’ puss-filled thing on my head for a couple of years. One day, I was driving down the road near Minocqua, WI and, while absent-mindedly scratching at the thing, it exploded, with pus, blood, and sebum all over the top of the car, dripping down on me, the seats, etc.
Thank God the car was a rental! 
Eeeeew!
My SO’s had one of those on his head for over 30 years. It’s the size of a golf ball; he has to have his hair cut just so to hide it. I really really really really want to drain it, just for the lulz. But then I imagine the stench, so I don’t.
Me too. That’s an odd feeling. Disgusting, yet satisfying at the same time. Sort of like blowing a booger out of your nose that reaches down to your knees.
I just farted and scared the shit out of my chinchilla.
Little guy’s on a hair trigger, I guess.
Memo to self: Never do shooters at drachillix’s house.
I was working with a friend on a military “mount out” exercise. Long hours, exhausting work. So he’s unhooking a large, full, water tank trailer called a water buffalo from the back of a truck and forgets to check to make sure the swing-down wheel is locked in place. The truck pulls away, and for some reason, he was still holding onto the trailer tongue.
When the swing-down wheel kicked out from under (because it wasn’t locked), it took him down with it, and all several thousand pounds landed on his index finger. His recoil reflex caused the meat to peel off the top half of his finger, leaving the bone exposed.
We rushed him up to medical, where the doc gave him a shot of morphine, then took out a pair of wire cutters and SNAP! Off went the piece of bone. Hurk.
My boyfriend and I were driving home from a vacation and I kept feeling something on my back under my bra strap that was bothering me. I wasn’t exactly in a position to check it out until we got home, but as soon as I got in the door I was undressing. I check out my back in the bathroom mirror and there’s this huge zit. Probably the size of a hazelnut. I swear it wasn’t there that morning.
I reach around to feel it and it explodes as soon as I touch it. I get a nice palmful of nasty greenish goop. I let out a loud “EEEW!” Which brought the boyfriend running into the room.
He finds me standing there naked from the waist up trying to wipe all the goo off my hand.
Him: “What the …?”
Me: (turns around to show off remains of zit)
Him: “Wow! (leans in to inspect closer) Looks like there might be something left in there.”
He squeezes the zit before I can tell him not to, and it explodes again, all over his shirt. He picks something off his shirt that looks like a grain of brown rice and hands it to me.
Him: “I think this is yours.”
I’m not sure what it was, it was a hard lump of something gross. I’m trying to keep from laughing as boyfriend is stripping off his shirt and heading for the laundry room. That’s what you get for squeezing someone else’s zit.
OK, you’re a nurse, I’m not. Please explain why something like that wouldn’t be removed? How could leaving something that badly infected in place be a good idea?
<thinks>
Come to that, how could something like that be left in place for 30 years without killing him?
'Cause the body is really, really good at sealing stuff off. Sometimes. It’s a sebaceous cyst, and all the goo is inside a little capsule of tissue very much like the gelcap of NyQuil. As long as the capsule stays intact, the goo isn’t going to get into the bloodstream, and it won’t infect anything. Some people get one, some people get a lot of them, and some rather few people never get one at all. He has a dozen of them, most of them as small as peas, on his arms and legs mostly. The head one is the largest by far.
It could be removed, sure. And if we bring it up to the dermatologist at the VA, it’s pretty likely that they’ll have some poor sap of an intern do it, just for the experience. But it hasn’t been done because, odd haircuts aside, it just hasn’t bothered him, so he’s never bothered it.
If you find the right YouTube video, you can see the removal process, complete with fishing out the capsule. If you don’t remove the capsule, the goo will eventually return to fill it again, more often than not.
And all joking aside, I wouldn’t try to remove something that size at home, without a doctor around. There aren’t a *lot *of risks, but because it’s so big, it would need a slice with a scalpel, not a prick with a needle, and if it were to bleed a lot (being on the scalp, that’s almost certain), I’d want someone there who could put in stitches if need be.
Oh, hey, here you go. (Uh, need I put a warning here? Graphic video of a sebaceous cyst removal, with an excellent shot of the capsule removal. Man, that sucker popped out like a dream!)
My hubby had one removed from his head at the VA, and they had a general surgeon do it.
Oh my god oh my god ohmygod. Why would I click that link? Why?
I am right there with you, Mama. :eek:
Things like that just remind me that we’re made of meat, and that makes me feel really weird.
I am not going to click that link (I’m one of those people who has no trouble with my own blood, or popping the zit of a loved one, but I’m pretty sure I’d have issues seeing it on some stranger), but I am grateful for the information. It’s really interesting about how the body can do that. Now what I’m wondering is, do you have to be careful about banging against things and the like? I mean, is it something that’s likely to pop unexpectedly if you hit it just right?
As I get older, my body does more and more annoying things that are gross in a small way. Like right before my period, I break out. Used to be just my back, but now my ladybits seem to be getting involved. There’s a couple of things down there that look (from what I’ve been able to see) rather like pimples. Unlike most pimples, though, they don’t seem to be responding to being dug at (over the years, I’ve gotten very good at pressing a nail tip to one side of a pimple and doing a sort of dig-scrape-twist motion with it that often pops the contents right out). Very annoying, but maybe just as well that I leave 'em alone considering their location close to the waste disposal system.
A few years ago I slammed my left index finger in a car door, hurt like hell but seemed OK. Two days later the tip of my finger from the joint forward swelled to about twice its normal size & turned bright red in the space of a few hours. Off to the Doc who drilled a hole though the nail with a hot needle and gave me a script for some antibiotics. I was driving to the shops with the finger on the steering wheel and sort of ‘massaging’ the infected area with my middle finger when I heard a kind of schlooorch sound & the car filled with the kind of smell that would make flies back away. My fingernail had lifted on the front and sides and a river of green-yellow pus was flooding out.
My parents lived nearby so I drove there and got cleaned up.
Of course I lost the nail except for a a small bit which stayed attached and caused the new nail to grow in badly. Had to yank the old bit of nail out with some pliers.
By the time they get that big, the capsule is generally pretty thick and unlikely to rupture spontaneously, but it sometimes does. Smaller ones do pretty frequently, usually rupturing inward, so you don’t see anything. The body generally reabsorbs the contents without ill effect; white blood cells engulf and digest any bacteria before they can do harm. I had one in my breast when I was a teenager - the doctor confirmed it was a sebaceous cyst by the way it moved in his fingers when he pushed it around. It was there for a couple of years and then one day I felt a sort of “pop”, and then it wasn’t there any more.
A similar kind of cyst without a capsule, and filled usually with just clear fluid, is a ganglion cyst, also known as a Bible Cyst or Bible Bump. Want to guess why?
The home remedy for a ganglion cyst is to whack it with a really big book, causing it to rupture. The Bible was generally the biggest, heaviest book that almost everyone had at home. It’s not really recommended anymore, now we’d rather do surgery, but back in the day, it worked well enough.
I’ve got one of those on my hand. I’m hoping, now that I have insurance again, that I’ll be able to get it taken care of. Although I suppose I could just leave it as is. It doesn’t hurt and it’s not getting in the way of anything. It’s not even all that visible.
Sebaceous cysts. Nothing more rancid smelling than one of those being expressed.
I had a nurse manager who loved expressing those things and she went at it on one of my patients. I was about 7 weeks pregnant at the time, not telling anyone and didn’t have morning sickness as much as the queasies. She expressed about 30 ccs of crap out of my patient and the smell almost made me “express” my breakfast.
Later when I told her I was pregnant, she asked about morning sickness. (She had been a midwife in Transylvania --seriously thats where she always said she was from) I said I hadn’t vomited yet but the sebaceous cyst brought me pretty close.
She grinned the most evil grin and said “well that’s what you get for keeping things secret.”
I once had to help drain an abscess on MIL’s cat (it had reached leakage point while DH and I were kitty-sitting). One of the worst smells of my life, right up there with heated cat urine or week-dead human body.
I was going to post this in my current thread about my son, but I figured this could go here instead.
During his round of nosebleeds this week my son passed clots that were the colour of liver and the size of cherry tomatoes. Out of a little tiny delicate 8 year old nose. (Yes we are seeing a specialist about this. Soon, I hope.)