Would you go to urgent care for this (picture in the details) or would you try taking care of it yourself?

I might want a Doctors opinion on it, if Polispourin didn’t take it away in a couple of days.

Does it hurt.
Is it hot to touch.
Is it red-it looks dark in the picture, but not red.
Is stuff coming out of it.
Is it a penetrating wound or superficial.

From the picture, would not bother with urgent care.

My cousin in the Pacific NW posted this. It’s a wound her grown son has. She hasn’t told me yet how he got it. She says it does hurt to touch, but it just doesn’t look infected to me either. If it were me I’d soak it in very warm water in someway, and see if it would drain on its own.Then I’d keep it really clean with soap and water for about a week.

It’s just an ingrown hair and all the doc would do is give you antibiotics which don’t just get rid of ingrown hairs, been there this summer actually. Just keep messing with it and it eventually pops like a zit.

(Mine was about 3 inches out and swollen on my leg)

Yuk.
(NSFW?)

I would have tried that too @KNOWITALL.

Only NSFW if you work at a restaurant @rebbel. ~
Do you guys think I should put a warning on it?

@rebbel Not NSFW, just a ingrown hair.

@Dutchess It’s painful and annoying more than anything. Luckily I just emailed my doc and he called in antibiotics and said if it got backed up more to go to urgent care and have it popped. Yuck.

*I also heard that baking soda and toothpaste can draw out the pus so it’s more easily poppable.

Maybe a gross warning?

I’ll flag it to edit, but I didn’t really see it as that gross. It doesn’t even look infected. I’ve seen a lot, lot worse. Maybe that’s why.

@Dutchess_III Me, too. Like a brown recluse bite that takes out whole chunks of skin and tissue…this is nothing.
@rebbel You must be a city guy…haha!

I was bitten by a brown recluse a couple of months ago.

@Dutchess_III Yikes, sorry. My uncle was a brown recluse magnet.

LOL! Black widows are really bad this year, too.
The bite wasn’t too bad. The top of my foot just started itching like OMG bad! The kind that you just want to claw your way into the skin, you know? It took a couple of weeks to start healing, and it’s almost gone now.

@Dutchess_III Good, I’ve heard horror stories. One older guy at our church when I was teen, put on his jacket and didn’t shake it out and got bit on the back. It was horrible and he lost a lot of his back since he didn’t realize he’d been bitten for awhile.

My son was bitten by one when he was little. I didn’t know at the time what bit him. But after the scary stuff started posting on Facebook (which is way over exaggerated…most of the wounds they show are from MRSA infections, not spider bites,) then I knew. It just kept sloughing the skin off of the wound for about a week and that’s the hallmark of a brown recluse. That and the wound looks like it’s “running downhill.” :(. I just kept it really clean with soap and water and it finally healed.
I was bitten in September and you can still barely see the mark.

She said she put some tree leave oil (or something) on it and it reduced the swelling and the pain….

If it needs draining maybe apply a poultice of fatback and kerosene to draw out the pizin’ then slather it with mupirocin and put a band aid on it.

WTH @rojo?!

@Dutchess Fatback poultice…I havent heard that one! Even in Missouri lol

Works great to take the poison out of mesquite thorns

@rojo..how?

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is a Bot. It’s not pleasant to think about, but it’s a possibility. Bot flies lay eggs on damp clothing, and then people put the clothing back on, and the larvae will burrow into soft tissue. There could be a large maggot in that hole. If a animal is in there, it can be removed with tweezers, or something. Then it would be wise to start antibiotics…

Givin it’s proximity to the waistband, I would hypothesize that it could certainly be an ingrown hair, as mentioned above.

So no one knows what caused the “wound”. You can’t tell from the photo at just what stage of healing the “wound” has arrived. What’s the point in speculating over it? Get the details from the victim, then proceed accordingly.

She figures ingrown hair, too. Above I mentioned that she put tree leaf oil (or something) and that is reducing the swelling and the pain. I’d be more concerned about it causing a worse infection.