Sebaceous Cyst drained but still hard; is this normal?

red hair novocaine image

lightyagam

I have a sebaceous cyst on my earlobe. I didn't notice it before two days ago when it started hurting. I went to the doctor today and he said it was an infected cyst and that he could put some Novocaine on it and drain it. Prior to this, much of what I read about cysts said that if you drain them, as opposed to removing them, they can come back. I expressed my concern of this to my doctor, and he said that that is true, but when the cyst is infected, the husk of the cyst is like wet toilet paper and can't be removed. So I let him drain it. He stuck a needle in it after numbing it and declared it shouldn't be a problem anymore. He gave me antibiotics to take for 5 days. When I got home, I discovered.... the cyst still appeared to be there. There was still a hard ball in my earlobe that was painful to the touch, pain from the draining aside. I am very confused. He said that he completely drained the cyst. So does the hard ball go away soon? Or was my doctor wrong about how to treat the cyst? Should I go to another doctor to get it looked at?

Answer
If he had tried to cut it out while infected, it would have spread the infection.
A sebaceous cyst is a hard ball of fat. Wait until the infection disappears, and don't touch it, you will reinfect it. When it is not red and hot, go back to the doctor and he can excise it. it should pop out, and the 'skin', encapsulation will be pulled out after it.
On the soft ear this is not a problem, if it is on the skull, where the skin is tight, this has to done in the dermatone, in the direction of the growth of the hair, so it does not 'plucker' the skin.
Don't pick, poke or squeeze it.
The doctor was following careful precedure.

I have a huge mole on my shoulder... and it's changing, and quite frankly, I'm worried.?

Leigh

I've had this mole on my shoulder since I must have been four years old, and, it's always been the same size and shape (just smaller than the average sized chocolate chip, not quite the width of a grown female's pinky nail, but not quite small either). Also, I've always had a few light hairs that grow out of it. But about six months ago it started changing color as well as began bulging out a little. It began getting paler and more skin-color rather than its usual dark brown. It's always been soft to touch like skin, but has recently gotten thicker-feeling. Also as far as the bulging, every now and then it will inflate then ooze a clear, watery ooze, then it would be normal again. Not a lot of ooze, though, just a little.

Just now, however, I felt it and it was really swollen, and really cold, and hard, and really pale, almost transparent. It was a little wet from the clear ooze so I gave it a little squeeze like a zit and a little more came out. So, and I probably shouldn't have done this, but, I squeezed it hard enough to completely drain it, and it started bleeding a little. It oozed enough water to drench the tips of my fingers. It then returned to it's usual self (and by usual I mean to the state it has become recently, not before six months ago). But it is red now from blood just under the skin's surface.

Should I be alarmed?

Answer
I don't mean to scare you but that is one of the classic textbook signs. You should show it to a doctor. Doctors don't even bother these days to do a biopsy, he'll just take it off right there in the office. It's about a ten-minute thing, a few squirts of novocaine, trace around it with a knife, and two or three stitches. Then the little lump of tissue goes to a lab to be examined under a microscope for cancer cells.

Good luck!

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