Becca Jane St Clair

It’s been a year. Well, really more than a year, so we’ll go back to Summer 2025. We were in Germany and I noticed I had a sore spot on the inside of my thigh. I assumed it was just a bit of chub rub and treated it as I usually do – slap a bit of sudocreme on it overnight and wear cycle shorts under my dresses until it cleared up.

It didn’t clear up.

In fact, it kept getting bigger and bigger until I finally went and saw the GP in early September. He didn’t examine it, but just supplied me with a course of antibiotics and the instructions that if it got bigger to go to the hospital.

It got bigger.

The following day I presented myself at Urgent Care and after waiting a few hours was finally seen where it was determined that they needed to drain the abcess as soon as possible. I was given the option to stay overnight in the hospital or return at 0800 the following day. I choose to go home first.

As I mentioned in my posts about Mounjaro, when I was in for this surgery and they tested my blood, my HBA1c was extremely high. It was a Sunday and the diabetes care team wasn’t in, so after a bit of umming and ahhing over what they should do, they finally decided to give me insulin, which they don’t usually do for Type 2 Diabetics. I also asked if they could numb me from the waist down instead of putting me completely under and they decided to try it. If it didn’t work, they would still wind up needing to put me completely under but fortunately, the epidural took and I was soon unable to feel anything below my waist and they were able to drain the abscess.

There was nothing to wake up from, I just had to wait for everything to wear off and so I was stuck in the hospital bed unable to move more than my arms and head, really. I had to ask someone to help me prop myself into a seated position and then I got incredibly hot and had to ask someone to help me change out of the gown and into my PJ shorts.

When I started getting sensation back, I felt wet and I foolishly assumed it was sweat…it was not. Turns out, my bladder had voided while it was numb. Deep joy. Fortunately, the lovely orderly came and changed my bedding and cleaned the bed off for me and accepted my apologies.

The surgery was around 1000, but I didn’t fully regain the ability to use my legs until around 1400. Tim arrived at 1500 (visiting hours) and we thought I would get to go home soon, but unfortunately, I wasn’t discharged until 1900! I was told to finish off the antibiotics from the GP and given instructions to make appointments to have the dressing changed. My GP no longer provides this service and there is no longer a travelling nurse, so I had to make the appointments through the Heart of Lincolnshire group which initially had appointments over on the Uni campus and I would need to visit urgent care on weekends. But at home, I settled in with my nurse, Hexe.

I had my first dressing and packing change and we discovered how difficult it was going to be to actually keep a dressing on the location as it was located high up on my inner thigh. We finally ended with wrapping my leg completely in an elastic band and a lot of KT tape. It looked insane, but it kept the area covered.

Surprisingly, six weeks post surgery and the surgical wound was finally healed up with only a small scar to show for it. Unfortunately…about four weeks after the surgery, my hidradenitis decided to rear it’s ugly head.

The dressings naturally covered over what I will call my leg seam. The area where the top of your leg basically meets your torso. Groin works too, but sometimes that had medics assuming I meant my vagina and not my leg so I stopped using groin and used leg seam.

So I went on more antibiotics and continued to see the wound care nurse, sometimes twice a week, reducing it to once per week and even every other week and certain points depending on what it looked like.

And the antibiotics continued. By the time a year rolled around, I had been on antibiotics 12 times – not quite every month as sometimes it was back to back (to back!) rounds to try to shrink it down.

I finally managed to see my GP and not one of the locums and he had pretty much had enough of me being on antibiotics and nothing happening. Of course, I still needed the antibiotics, but he ordered an ultrasound, which would determine if I needed another surgery.

He put a rush on the request, and I had the ultrasound within three weeks. It was small, but there was something there so he put through an urgent request for surgical removal. And here’s where things get a little strange…

The letter I received urged me to pick a clinic. The list also listed what the wait times were for an appointment and I was overjoyed to find one not to far away that I could even get to on a bus that said it had a 10 day wait.

So I rang them. I had to leave a message for the scheduling person to call me back…and they never did. I talked to my GP about it and he said that he couldn’t do anything but suggested I ring them back. I did, and this time found out that the person scheduling appointments was “new” and my request had somehow been overlooked. But again, I would recieve a call back.

They rang me about a week shy of one year from the prior surgery to tell me that the surgeon was on paternity leave and I couldn’t schedule anything for at least three weeks. Oh, and they also couldn’t find my initial referral! They finally found it and I scheduled the surgery for the beginning of October.

This time the surgery was done under local and holy hell did that hurt! They told me I could yell, and Tim heard me scream all the way out in the waiting room! Once the area was numb everything was fine and I wound up with 1 internal stitch and 3 external stitches. No packing, which meant it would heal a lot faster…and it did!

Karen (my wound care nurse) removed the stitches 11 days later and finally discharged me from her care 13 days after the second surgery, 57 weeks after the surgery that started it all.

So I’m now currently cyst and abcess free…let’s hope it stays that way!!

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I am not a Doctor or Nurse and the information contained in this blog post is meant for information purposes only. Please consult your GP with any health related questions.

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