I'm horrified at pilonidal cyst

Please be reassured. Get an urgent referral from your GP to a Colorectal Surgeon. They will evaluate what is best for your son and put any concerns you may have at ease. The cysts and sinuses can be very unpleasant and cause a great deal of pain and discomfort, often interfering with daily activities. My 23 year old son was diagonosed with multiple pilonidal sinuses six months ago. Following an emergency incision and drainage for an abscess nine weeks ago the wound healed within two weeks. However the pain, bleeding and infection reappeared. He was strongly advised to undergo wide open excision which was undertaken three weeks ago. This has left a significant wound. He has had a couple of complications with heavy blood loss which involved a further admission and infection which resulted in yet another admission. Hopefully he is now on the road to recovery, albeit a very long road with several weeks of daily nurse dressings. He is happy again and cannot wait to get back to playing football :-)

Hello everyone...last week it came back...I was totally gutted for my boy.

I caught it before it became infected, I just knew it was gonna come back.

Thankfully he can't feel it but he hates me checking on it.

It drained yesterday and the sinus is a little bit smaller but I just know even when it's healed again it will come back.

The healed skin is so thin it will keep breaking down

He's referee for surgery but he's not urgent at the moment

Hi. My son has a high tolerance for pain as well. We've been dealing with a pilonidal cyst with one sinus for about a 1.5 years (that I'm aware of...could've been there much longer). We had it removed last week and it seems to be healing okay. Last summer we had it cleaned, as your Dr has done. But as you can see, that doesn't work. It will continue to fill up and bust open ever so often. The dr we went to removed it completely this time leaving it open to heal. That is the hardest part. Like you, I've never heard of such a thing before. You'd think it could be lanced through an incision and go away, but this thing does not! So it has to be cut out. The other thing I've never seen before is a wound left open to heal. That is scary for a mom but my son has been a soldier! He's dealing with it and keeping a straight face. I suggest finding a dr who has experience with this. Dr's can be nice and ready to cut, but if they have no idea about how to get rid of the sinus tracks it will come back. This time I'm praying we got the entire thing. It's been 10 days and he's laying on his stomach daily. He not moving around much except in the house. By next Monday, which will be 2 weeks, I'll know more and be able to share. The hardest thing is not knowing how long it takes to heal. I had surgery with stitches several years ago and within 10 days I was back at work. Within 3 weeks you could barely notice anything except the scars. I'm hoping that within 3 weeks he will be healed and back in the gym.

Another thing to do is to get laser hair removal over the entire butt. We're going to be aggressive with that as well. It takes several months to get the hair dissolved under the skin so be patient. Definitely start laser hair removal immediately.

Any updates on your end?

Hi! I am SO SORRY to hear about your son!! In 2008 I had surgery for a really bad pilonidal cyst. I am an unusual case because I am female! I also have a skin disorder called Hidradenitis Suppurative (HS). HS is boils and lesions where there are sweat glands; at the base of the neck and hairline, under the arms, under the breasts, inner thighs, groin, and the buttock. There are multiple stages of HS, and unfortunately I am in stage 3, which is constant boils and sinus tracking. Unfortunately the HS masked the symptoms of the pilondal cyst!! Every time it appeared I treated it like my HS, and then left it alone. It probably grew for a few years, until one day it abcessed!!! I couldn't bear to have anything touch it, not even a piece of cloth from clothing or a sheet that we used to drap over me so I could lay on the couch and pull my bottoms down but still be covered!!! On Monday my boyfriend took me to my Dr who sent me straight to the emergency room!!! I had never heard of a pilondal cyst and was completely shocked!! I was also a bit in denial thinking I knew more than the Dr and that when he took me to surgery he would see that it was just a really bad HS boil!!! Boy was I wrong!!!! ;-) There the Dr said this would require two surgeries. One to drain the infection and a second to remove the cyst. So they performed the surgery and when I woke I from anesthesia I felt SO MUCH relief!!! I took a week off work to be fully recovered and I took a one month supply of antibiotics to make sure we got rid of the infection completely before going forward with the removal surgery. I had the second surgery about a month and a half after the first surgery. The surgeon said my cyst was bigger than a baseball but smaller than a softball!!!! That's HUGE!!! While I was still under anesthesia the surgeon put a wound vacuum on the opening, they wanted it to heal from the inside out. I playfully called it my tail because of the location it was coming out of from. :-) I had a nurse that came to my house 3 times a week, Mon, Wed, and Fri, and she changed the wound vac dressing. For a while I could only get comfortable laying down but after a week or two I was able to sit up. I took a total of 3 months off work. Once my wound was so small that they switched from the wound vac to having it packed by hand I went back to work. I am SO GLAD that I had such a wonderful surgeon since I have not had any reoccurrence of the cyst!!