Sometimes when you go to the doctor you come out feeling much worse than you go in, because they prescribed you with a disease that should belong in the middle ages. This happened to me about four months ago, when I found some small, hard lumps in my armpits that were tender and seemed to be increasing in number with some enthusiasm. The doctor had a cheeky feel of my (embarrassingly somewhat sweaty) armpit and diagnosed .... BOILS! Great.
The good thing about boils is that you can really creep people out by asking them if they want to feel your boils. The bad thing about boils is that they seem to be quite hard to get rid of.
First of all I'm going to clarify what I mean by boils before you feel to queasy. My doctor told me boils are caused when a type of bacteria, which lives a happy little life on your skin, manages to somehow get UNDER your skin, and cause infection. This is obviously more common if you have eczema, because you're skin is broken and so the bacteria is more likely to get under it. Some people prefer to refer to them as cysts because it sounds less gross.
I've been getting a few boils here and there, ever since I had a massively infected spot in January. A small spot on my face when completely out of control and took over half my face. It was full of puss and made my eye completely swollen, as if I'd been punched, and would have been kind of grossly cool if I hadn't had to travel to Nottingham to visit friends that very weekend! The amount of puss that came out was alarming, even for me.
To treat the boils I've been on three rounds of antibiotics, taking four tablets a day for a week. The tablets smell DISGUSTING and after swallowing one I always ended up doing a little burp that tasted like tablet. However, they keep coming back so I'm going to go to the doctor again and try and find out why I can't stamp them out for good. I don't want to keep having to take antibiotics.
This week, as well as a few cheeky little lumps in my armpit, I've got a small spot that is very tender on my eyebrow line, and I'm worried it's also infected. An infection near the eye can cause a lot of swelling, and my eyes are very puffy today - the last thing I want because I'm going to a wedding this weekend! It's only Tuesday, so hopefully this will have corrected itself by the weekend.
