Bumps

A couple weeks ago, I contracted an infection under my left eye.

I have two bumps under the my eyes, closest to my nose, under where the tears drain into my nose, one for each eye. The bumps have been growing as of late, causing me to wonder if they're something worth looking at. They're under the skin, unlike the BCC, and seem to be growing over years.

The infection I had under my eye was caused, I'm sure, by my constant worry about the bumps. My worry about them has been increasing as for a while now, which means the amount I touch them increased, which means more dirt, more oil, more chances of infection.

And what do you know?

I couldn't tell if the infection was a boil or pimple or what. What I could tell was that I didn't want the infection to move to my eyes, so, thin skin under the eyes or not, I was going to clean up that spot.

Do you know how painful alcohol fumes are next to your eye? You don't? Well, don't find out.

When using rubbing alcohol on the bump didn't dry it out or fix the problem, I did what any nominally insane woman would do.

I cut it out.

Just as I had done when I was younger, I took a sharp object, cleaned it with alcohol, cleaned the short object with alcohol, cut the skin slightly, and cleaned out the puss next to my eye. While I was there, hey, why not remove the bump, too? It would mean only a slightly larger cut, and I could see what it was.

To my surprise, a gentle push on the bump caused it to move. I managed to move the bump down, and outside through the infected spot. Poof! Another bump gone.

The bump bothered me, though. I might have considered keeping the thing and having it analyzed, but that seemed weird. I asked Lisa if she had bumps under the surface of her skin, bumps that were hard, and clearly not pimples or acne or blackheads or anything reasonable that everyone knows what it is since junior high.

To my surprise, she said, "Oh, you mean like the calcium deposits like this?" and pointed to a bump that looked just like the one I had extracted a couple weeks ago. "Yes!" I exclaimed. She then went on to explain that yeah, they're normal. They happen. You can have them removed if you're likely to pick at them, thinking they're a whitehead.

Well, there you go.

Or rather, there I go.