Weird lumps n bumps

I have several other posts about this so I’m going to keep this one short n sweet.

2012 noticed I had a little lump just under my right armpit.

2013 I had it checked out. I was told it was just a swollen lymph node that would eventually go away on its own.

2018 still had the weird lump — in fact it had grown slightly - mentioned it to my obgyn when I was pregnant with my first baby, she did an ultrasound on it, didn’t hear anything back about it, assumed no news was good news.

2022 the lump randomly started swelling, the pain was so bad I couldn’t even wear a bra, I was putting gauze pads over the lump and wrapping my chest with an ace bandage just to get through work. The day before I was supposed to go back to see my pcp to have this lump drained, it ruptured and drained an unusual substance my pcp was not familiar with. He referred me to the infectious disease center at the hospital where they tested the fluid, did a CT scan, and an ultrasound over the span of a couple of weeks and I was on antibiotics for about 4 months to treat what turned out to be a very rare bacterial infection called actinomycosis.

When treatment failed and sinus tracts had been detected, surgery was scheduled.

After a long LONG journey, I had my surgery yesterday! The lump that was extracted will be sent to pathology to figure out what exactly it was before it become infected!

Here’s how it’s looking after some cauterizing and sutures!

I documented the whole process, to save you from trying to find them in older posts — so if you’re curious to know what it looked like before, I’ll insert photos below.

CAUTION ⚠️ now they start to get graphic…

The only thing I didn’t document that I wish I had was how this looked after it healed before having surgery. But it basically looked the same as this above, just that hole closed and kind of dimpled inward.

Anyway — just wanted to share my super rare experience and also remind y’all to listen to your body and get things checked out when you notice something is off! And if it turns out to be nothing, be grateful you caught it before it became something! ♥️