Fun With Cysts

Kansas used to have a small, normal skin tag over her right hip.

It has grown in recent months, from a flat, empty sac, to a protruding lump the size of a grape.

It was still flesh-colored and clearly not bothering her, so I just opted to watch it.

I watched it become flaky on the outside.

Then, two weeks ago, I was petting her,and a huge chunk of it came off in my hand.

I grabbed a flashlight to investigate, and found a very deep, dry hole where the piece in my hand used to fit

Oh.

Apparently, the skin tag had become a pus-filled cyst, at some point, and had now been around so long that the body had gone through the process of dealing with it, drying it out and pushing it on through.

I showed it to DH, and he then held the flashlight while I squeezed, and sqeezed,

and squeezed...

You get the idea.

It was very dry, and not the simple process that these videos, which popped up in my FB news feed last week, even though I never typed a word about such things, would lead you to believe.  Each one of those videos, BTW, seems to feature a different type/stage of the process, with the resulting issue varying quite a bit. Still, I think hers was normal, all things considered. I've continued to monitor things and have expressed it again a time or two. Yesterday she really started messing with it, after having zero interest, so I brought the warm compresses back out for a lengthy duration, then had DH hold her while I squeezed much harder than ever before.

Turns out it wasn't as empty and healing as previously believed, so, we're back to opening it up on a regular basis with warm compresses again. Still, when it isn't inflamed from being messed with, it's relatively flat and doesn't seem to be filled with anything.

If yesterday's results are any indication, though, there's probably still more to come.