Okay, first, this thread will be about acne or something like it, so if you’re incredibly easily squicked, move on. Also, I’m not really asking medical advice so much as asking for opinions, so I hope it’s okay.
Background. I’m 24 and female. I don’t have the world’s clearest skin but I don’t have obvious acne. Some blackheads and enlarged pores through the T-zone, shiny skin by noon, but that’s about it. I can probably count on two hands the amount of real, honest-to-goodness pimples I’ve had in my life, but I certainly know what one looks and feels like.
But very often, at most about once every six to eight weeks, at least every three months, I get these… things.
They:
- form on the skin just in front of where my ear lobe meets my face, and sometimes down an inch or so where my jaw line starts
- are not red, at all, like a pimple would be. No colour at all, just a small lump.
- don’t feel like a pimple to the touch. They are firm.
- don’t feel like a pimple to me. I imagine almost everyone knows what one feels like, but it’s hard to describe. There’s no tenderness, nothing. No pain, nothing to make me aware of them other than if I’m washing my face or hair and my hand grazes them.
- will stick around for about two weeks if left untouched, then disappear like they were never there at all - no phantom red/purple/pink spot like a pimple sometimes leaves.
- have been appearing since I was probably 13.
- do not seem to be in any way related to my menstrual cycle. There’s no pattern to the timing.
Cosmetically, it’s no biggie. The lack of redness makes them pretty much imperceptible, and the location is pretty out of the way. But when I get annoyed with the fact they exist at all, and take a (sterilized!) needle to one to try and get rid of it, the stuff that comes out doesn’t look at all like pimple junk. It’s solid, white, not runny or puss-like.
When I’ve been at the doctor while having one on my face, I’ve asked her to look at them and she just says they’re pimples, plain and simple. Three times I’ve made appointments to see dermatologists, and all three times the thing has cleared up by the time I get the appointment, and when I describe it the dermo has said that it just sounds like a pimple, but he’d have to see to know.
Does anyone else get these or know what I’m talking about?