Even aliens get huge zits.
They are medically known as skin abscesses, but we call them boils. I happen to call mine Herman. We’ve all had them: monster zit looking things that move into our faces and start raiding our proverbial refrigerators. They pop up overnight — quite literally — on chins and noses and foreheads. We attack with power scrubs and sea salt soaks and Qtips. They retaliate by getting bigger. They ooze green stuff and blood, and if you ignore them, they won’t go away.
Herman and I met in early October. He popped up just above my nose ring. At the time, I wore a stud and noticed that my piercing kind of hurt and looked a little red. I thought it was a pimple and pretty much ignored it, since the piercing had been healed for quite some time. Or so I thought.
I decided it was high time to get the actual nose ring I wanted instead of a stupid stud, so I went on a hunt at the mall. I finally found a ring that I’m not allergic to at the tattoo and piercing shop. One guy helped me pick out a ring and then their piercer put it in for me (see the TwitPic of it that day here). He told me that I have a keloid scar — a scar formed when new skin continues to scar even after healing — and recommended that I clean it with a tea tree oil based wash and put vitamin E oil on it to help break up the scar tissue. I went crazy trying to find the stuff he recommended, but could only find a Burt’s Bees tea tree oil blemish stick and Burt’s Bees vitamin E and lemon oil. I tried those for a few days and nothing seemed to happen, so next paycheck I went back to the shop and bought their tea tree oil aftercare wash. I asked them again what they thought the thing near my piercing was, and they again said it was a keloid. I didn’t think so, though, so I did hours of research when I got home.
See, keloids are hard, solid, dark or skin colored in appearance, and generally don’t hurt. The thing on my nose was soft, filled with some kind of liquid, and hurt like crazy. A few hours later, I determined that it was actually a boil. Luckily, most websites recommended the tea tree oil treatment, as well as hot compresses and sea salt soaks to draw out the infection — which is what I’ve now been doing, for weeks. This thing has been on my face for a month and recently moved in its wife Ethel and their baby Sweet Pea.
The Boil Family
It’s now to the point where strangers are asking me about Herman, and it’s embarrassing (luckily, Ethel and Sweet Pea are hidden by my glasses). The thing is, if it just looked like a pimple, I’d be okay with that. But sometimes it starts to ooze and then crusts over, and I walk around looking like I have some kind of disease. I’ve managed to nearly get rid of it twice; it got really dry and flat, and I vowed to continue cleaning the crap out of it lest it come back… but it came back anyway.
My boil is like fucking Dracula.
Herman Boil
I keep doing sea salt soaks. I keep washing it with tea tree oil. It bursts after the hot sea salt soak compresses, so then I clean it out with either more sea salt soak water, or the tea tree oil aftercare wash. Sometimes, after draining pus, it also drains blood, which is supposed to be a good thing, according to my research… so why won’t it go away?
Ethel and Sweet Pea Boil
I give up. Well, not really; it is, after all, my face. Like Casey said, if it wasn’t on my face, I wouldn’t care so much.
Requisite goofball shot.
(Yes, that is how I look in the morning after washing my face and draining a boil for the nineteen-millionth time.)
Have you ever had a boil? How did you make it go away? Have I reached that point where I need to cry “uncle” and get an antibiotic?
