Be the change you want to see.

so it's two weeks tomorrow that the dratted thing softened and ruptured and started oozing.

i started "managing" it by squeezing and massaging the ooze out of it.
the ooze is called keratin, it fills most epethelial cysts with some sebum or skin oil.

uhhh after four days of massaging and hot compresses and bandaids i researched these cysts and one of the things all the websites agreed on was NO TOUCHY but OOPS TOO LaTE and it was feeling tender and i couldnt tell if it was sore from me poking at it (and it hopefully trying to heal) or maybe from starting to feel infected? so i made sure to clean it thoroughly again and bandage it with neosporin...

then last weekend i was reminded about hydrocolloid bandages, and using them was fascinating. as it draws material out, it makes the surface of the bandage look like soft contained pus. Like ready to squeeze. only you CANNOT squeeze because it's a bandage.

seriously given my long storied history on poking picking and peeling, these hydrocolloid bandaids are a gift from the gods. i can massage over them but cannot actually poke the healing wound directly. i get the fun!pain but not the infection risk!

score!

and then like just night before last i finally really read the box for the hydrocolloid bandages, along with recommended use instructions. i had been peeling them off at the 24 hour mark, but it turns out you don't have to. they say since they're waterproof and seal in place that you can leave them on for literally DAYS. they say you can leave them off till they basically FALL OFF when their job is done. "product is designed to fall off on its own" it even says!

I actually was able to go in the hot tub yesterday with this waterproof bandage, and it felt really good.

so it's been on for ~48 hours now, and the cyst isn't aching anymore when I shift from vertical to horizontal and vice versa. That's a nice improvement. Been massaging the hard edges of the cyst, partly because fun!pain and partly because massage has been easing the pain.

I have great faith in massage. it's changed my life. sure it won't fix EVERYTHING but it's helped me so much over the years. and I've also previously resolved a crazy painful cyst on my inner labia by way of a massage technique, the same technique I describe in my previous cyst related post.

so i have this bandage, and a hard ring of tissue that's the margins of this cyst. It makes sense to me that cysts return after surgery... if you miss even a little bit of the keratin (which is the hard protein stuff in fingernails and claws and horns) of course the body would encyst it again. Plus the trauma to the skin and flesh that is having surgery... one of the risk factors for making cysts get bigger was trauma, soooooo.

so i'm feeling better, less pain in the thing, less itching and annoyance, and i'm curious about how it will resolve.

gonna hydrate thoroughly this morning (afternoon? whatever), maybe get a warm compress on it again, and have a relatively mellow rest of my afternoon.

i have a book club book to read for four, let's see if I can finish it. ;)

Just had a massage focused on my hand/arm that's still healing up from our NYE car wreck. She started at my neck, chiseled some out of my shoulders and pectorals, went down my right arm and my biceps/triceps, the muscles that wrap around the elbow, the stuff in between the long radius and ulna, stretched the right places in my hand and wrist, gods bless her. Did a little under my shoulder blades which also helped.
So much better.
Now I want to have a day doing physical things.

Got a brilliant deep tissue massage yesterday, meant to come home, eat, and then either go out to the gym or do yoga style stuff and light weightlifting at home. In the recent past, that's distributed the soreness from the massage and incorporated the virtue of the body work INTO my body.

what happened INSTEAD is, for whatever reason, I sat and read and did exercises in my motivation-discovery workbook. Which was productive, but my body stiffened up something good.

PRO: I found myself seeking intuitive movement throughout the evening, once I discovered my new stiffness. I found myself doing new things and old things - at one point I was in the kitchen, balanced on one foot and one hand with the other foot WAY up over my head, opening my hips and stretching and activating the gluteal muscles... cross-wise stretches... loose twisty movements with feet planted and arms flying loosely to wrap around me... bits of yoga on the carpet in the bedroom. So my body KNOWS how to sort this kind of thing.

CON: ...I'm still incredibly sore today. Feeling bruised. Nothing that will get in my way, but it's a thing to remember: make preparations to go directly to the gym, for 20 minutes if nothing else, and sweat that soreness out of the body. Ay yi yi.