For context, my recent health crisis involving several ongoing visits to the ER and 2 ambulance rides, started on an ambulance stretcher going to hospital for a massive abscess on my buttocks, a little bit above and to the right of the anus. An abscess is basically a welt, but this welt was totally enormous and was making like half my butt really red and painful. It was a crazy day. The abscess burst and I was bleeding profusely. The doctors were totally worried about what may have caused it, because recurrently over the past 8 months or so it had been coming back once a month ish and then going down again. Previously it was about 2 inches in diameter and very painful, but nowhere near as bad as the final time when I broke down and called the ambulance. And it kept on getting better on its own and then coming back.
Previously I had talked to my doctor about it and we had identified that it looks like there's a cyst which is at the root of it all. Every time it went down again there was always a small little lump left, which would be the cyst. A cyst is just a collection of benign things like mucus, calcium, skin cells, etc. It's not inherently an infection but it can rupture around the sides causing an abscess around it. The doctor offered to arrange a surgery to remove it but I was afraid of that surgery and didn't get it. But I felt bad for not having done anything about it once I landed in the ER. Anyway, the ER doctors also weren't sure if possibly it was caused by a fistula. A fistula is when an anal gland on the anal channel gets infected and then pushes with pressure through the buttocks to create a new tunnel which ends up at the outer buttocks, thus forming an abscess there from another source. So we had to search for that possibility too.
My highest hopes from a realistic standpoint had been that it would not be a fistula — but now I'm amazed that the MRI has confirmed that it is also not a cyst at all. At times, I had felt the cyst, on many occasions. You can feel and study the difference between a cyst and an abscess. It's a round, fairly painless little lump that tends to swell up and go down again now and then but without pain to the swelling. I'm sure I had noticed that on several occasions throughout my history with this issue. So, considering that I'm having so many miracles lately, I believe it's another miracle for sure. And the abscess has also stopped flaring up ever since that ER visit.
Now, if it ever flares up again, what I'll have to conclude then is that it was originally caused by a hair follicle becoming infected and exploding with extreme infection around it. And that's what I had originally assumed until I noticed the cyst in that exact spot. So if it does come back with the abscess, we are back to the hair follicle explanation, although it remains a miracle that there is no cyst (or fistula of course) and therefore no need for surgery. It's mindblowing to be able to cross of one more of the many surgeries that I had been advised by doctors would be coming up for me now. And just incase anyone's curious about this miracle post, I'll be sure to update it if I ever get the abscess again, just so you know the extent of the miracle. But I'm expecting it not to come back.
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