Cystgrrl

Warning: This is a gross entry.

Once again, I have a new idea as to what might be wrong with me.

http://www.4woman.gov/faq/pcos.htm

Would explain: the irregular cycle, the pelvic pain, the ovarian cysts, the cystic acne, the food sensitivity, the high androgen levels, and the insulin resistence I talked about like two years ago.

I’ve not been feeling all that great lately. For the last two weeks now, I’ve been having pelvic pains and had an abscess on my face. About three days ago one of the smaller cysts surfaced, and I’d never seen so much friggen pus come out of one place on my body in my life – with so little effort, to boot. It actually erupted from my stretching and flattening the skin on my cheek. The flow was EPIC, and thankfully, a dull creamish color (and not green). I was contemplating antibiotics with how long it had taken for progress.

Here’s a picture of it covered in makeup, at about medium angry-level. Thanks to the green base I used, you can’t tell how ridiculously dark and red it is. The larger cyst on the top had gotten to about twice the width shown here by this morning, with swelling and stiffness spreading nearly to my eye. The lower, smaller one surfaced and got extracted that night.

It was immensely satisfying to get some relief from it. And it was just the little one.

After about 5 days of consistent contrast therapy (alternating from ice to hot water) and lots of anti-inflammatories, the big one went this morning. Holy god damn. It’s almost worth all the pain and frustration to witness this shit, with my sick fascination of the body and how utterly weird pathologies are. I had a pencil thick stream of ooze that went all the way to my chin come out of that thing, and that was just the first wave. There were four more of continuing lesser volume.

The silver dollar sized cyst was visually flat when I was done. Fucking nuts! It felt so damn good! I was like “YEAAAAAHHH!!! THANK GOD!!! Maybe I can put my helmet on like a normal person again!”

I’m thankful that in my old age, I’ve relaxed a fair bit about my acne issues. I still complain about it, of course. It fucking sucks. Particularly when much of my life and performance requires confidence and looking decent. However, I no longer have that sick feeling of dread that I used to in my gut when this happened to me, at the thought of someone seeing me. I ran a rehearsal and posed for a shoot with this thing on my face, thanks to a lot of dont-give-a-shit, and photoshop. I’ve gone out to shows and to job interviews. And I have an overall sense of calm, that it will heal, and pass, and I just have to do the best I can to take care of it til that happens.

Hm.