I get ingrown hairs all the time and I’ve had ones that look like that. The body forms some kind of sheath around anything that might cause an infection…that’s probably what happened there.
A few years ago, a cyst formed on my neck, right over the jugular vein. I went to a dermotologist for treatment and they “jetted” it with anti-inflammatory meds and local anesthetic. This went on for a couple months with weekly visits. Each time, they’d be able to get a little bit of goo out of it and it would relieve the swelling. One day after a treatment, I went home and took the bandage off of it. Pus was oozing out a little so I put some pressure on it to help it drain. Then I noticed a little hair sticking out of the opening.
I grabbed it with a pair of tweezers and pulled…and pulled…and pulled some more. It was about 8 inches long and coiled up when I finally got it all the way out. Apparantly, it had ingrown a couple of years earlier and kept growing in a little coil, eventually causing an infection. It was pretty freaky.
A sac had formed around it that had to be surgically removed a few weeks later, but after I got the hair out, it quit swelling up. Very painful…hopefully it will never happen again.
I concur with the multiple ingrown hair theory. I have extensively studied ingrown hairs as I tend to shave my legs somewhat infrequently and wear tights alot in the winter. I have noticed that sometimes there will be a darker than normal hair that has some minor inflammation around the folicle. So, being somewhat of a sadist, I tug with tweezers. Usually the darker than normal hair comes out…with some lighter friends. The follicle end of the lighter hairs look decidedly unhealthy, almost as if they were rotted off. I could totally believe that coarse, dark beard hair doing the same thing would look like that picture.
I get them in 2-3 strand varieties on occasion, and I’m guessing more people have them than realize it. I first discovered mine in much the same ways as xbuckeye did, I noticed a hair that was significantly darker and slightly thicker than those around it. I pulled it out with tweezers and was able to get it to separate into strands with a bit of effort.
I always just assumed that it was from a follicle in which the anagen phase didn’t push out the old hair completely. Mine aren’t ingrown, so they don’t get as thick as your’s, but since the anagen phase for facial hair is pretty short, I can see it getting thick like that pretty quickly, if ingrown.
How does a follicle work anyway? Is that where hair material is produced? Does it have cast-off waste in it b/c it comes out through a pore? (I had to provide a hair sample for a drug test once.)
If you look at the end of the “object” in the photos, you can actually SEE where the hairs are starting to seperate into strands. Its definately multiple “fused” hairs.
Those were awesome pictures. Care to give instructions? I am tired of zit photos being all blurry.
My husband has three of these on his face. One is set more shallow than a normal whisker, the others are a bit deeper, like yours. One of them seem to be a fused hair, the others are just single wide hairs. I love it when they get long enough to harvest.
I agree that electrolysis could be of assistance. It can kill that single follicle so it won’t keep doing this. Having electolysized many many whiskers, I can tell you that whiskers can seem to so deep that they would have to be anchored in bone. Just under the chin seems to be the deepest place they are anchored.
If I say yuck, that’s a pretty good indicator that you don’t want to do a Google Image search. Just for your future reference.
At first the surgeons closed the wound, but it got infected again, the doctor opened it up again, and he was supposed to get it cleaned and bandaged a couple of times a day. I did that. For weeks. It put me off hamburger for quite a while.
My husband gets this type of ingrown hair from time to time – like a couple of hairs that fuse together and encapsulate into a big old mutant hair. His are also super hard and brittle – that shatter almost like glass. I like it when he gets one. They are lots of fun to pluck out and mess with.
Not so a pilonidal cyst. My sympathies, Lynn. ::shudders:: My son is a Hospital Corpsman working with Marines and, apparently, this charming affliction is common among the Devil Dogs. One of Nick’s jobs is to lance the suckers. Let’s just say that the lancing of these things is an unpopular task even among those who are proud to call themselves Pecker Checkers. Nick brought a buddy of his home a couple of weeks ago and they were playing the 'try to gross each other out" game. Tales of these cysts were prominant. I finally had to tell them that the kitchen was closed if they kept up with the cyst stories. And I have a pretty strong stomach!
I spared you guys the worst of their stories, BTW, but I’ve decided to share two of them, just to prove that I wasn’t overreacting. I’ll put them in spoiler boxes, so as not to offend the squeamish:
Nick says the drainage from his personal worst case looked like “curdled chocolate milk.” And it smelled even worse than it looked. It smelled, according to Nick, like “curdled chocolate milk that had been mixed with liquid shit, swallowed, and then vomited.”
Nick’s friend responded by telling about… the time he lanced a similar monster and his assistant leaned over the patient to get a better look. The cyst was a gusher and spurted right into the assistant’s face. That was when I told them the kitchen was closed if they didn’t cut it out – I had been making omelettes for breakfast.
I get this all the time on the same spot on my chin. It comes out alot easier than a regular hair. It’s a group of seperate hairs that are clumped together and it seems like a small splinter coming out of your face. Nothing about it seems ingrown. Next time you get it, try running your finger nail along it lengthwise. I do this and I’m able to get the hairs to split apart (it’s almost as if they’re glued together) and there’s usually about five or six of them.
After writing the above, I remembered posting about this before:
My name is Andrew as well and this happens to me pretty much every month. Mine dont really have a waxy “Sheath” but is pretty waxy all together. It may have a sheath but due to the shape of my hair it isn’t noticable. I agree that it isn’t a bunch of smaller hairs that can be split apart. Yours looks a little different than mine because my facial hair has a cow-lick right where this thing grows and so it looks more like a claw with a big root and flat spot where I tweeze it out. I do say though it is one of the best feelings in the world pulling these things out as they can become quite uncomfortable under the skin being close to a centimeter long and that thick. I have yet to bring any of my specimens into my dermatologist as I haven’t had an appointment since they started growing a couple years back. That being said I have quite the collection at home as I usually save them when I pull them at home I am not personally too worried about it at the moment but if I get a ton more in the future on my neck I will probably have laser treatment so no hair grows and I hopefully wont even have to worry about it at all.
That’s what I get periodically; I usually don’t notice them until they turn into a large pimple/boil, and at some point when it won’t go away, I go digging with tweezers and yank the fucker out, and then the pimple will finally go away.
I am not personally too worried about it at the moment but if I get a ton more in the future on my neck I will probably have laser treatment so no hair grows and I hopefully wont even have to worry about it at all.