I first noticed it a couple of years ago when I felt a bump on my back between my shoulder blades. I thought it was a pimple at first or an ingrown hair and so spent a lot of time putting pressure on it and trying to squeeze it out. I also had my girlfriend give it a go, with no success…Once I had health insurance I went to the dermatologist and had them check it out. They explained it was a cyst and could be surgically removed without too much fuss.They shot in a local anesthetic and then went about carving a hole in my back while I lay on my stomach. I remember the doctor saying at one point, "Wow, this is more blood than I expected," which is exactly what you don't want to hear as they're cutting into you, but they got it under control and it was over soon enough.After stitching me up and putting my shirt back on, I asked the nurse if I could see it. She looked at me blankly and opened the trash can and pulled out a little bloody tissue holding the small nub of flesh that was my cyst. "Would it be possible to take it home with me?" I asked her, and after laughing about it, she fetched a small vial and placed the extirpated cyst in it with some formaldehyde, advising me not to drink this as it would make me sick.I kept the vial in a small jewel box located on my coffee table. It sat there for a month or two until I finally got around to taking pictures of it with my macro lens. I then popped it back in the vial and returned it to its sacred box.I keep it as a reminder of that which is foreign that emerges from within. I'm actually a fairly squeamish person, but I can be obsessed with infectious diseases, skin conditions and/or malformations of the body. I have surgically removed skin tags from my scrotum using a Swiss army knife pair of scissors, but they are not nearly as photogenic as a sebaceous cyst.MATTHEW
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