Hi I've been recently diagnosed with HS. last week I had another hospital stay with GA to remove a huge abscess under my right armpit. The nurses are visiting every day to clean, pack and redress the gaping hole I've been left with. Sorry to ramble. But the wound has started oozing pus again with an odour. . Nurses aren't concerned, but I am. Any advice would be wonderful.
Hi poor you. I know what you mean. Don't forget that the nurses pack it with steralised solution which should take care of any infection. I think the criteria is does it hurt and do you think it is becoming infected again? If so your only option is to go back to your doctor and get it checked out. I have found though that nurses generally know what they are doing and if they aren't concerned then this could just be a natural process and part of it.
I hope this helps. x
Many thanks for your reply. Appreciate it.
Hi,
I had a large abscess removed under my left arm and I remember that I had some discharge from when it was healing and it smelled just awful. What you see probably is not pus but actually a substance similar to pus that all wounds produce, and if the abscess was big, then it will produce a lot of this pus like substance. Essentially all wounds want to form a scab but because of the size it can't scab, only heal, so a lot of gooey stuff comes out to do that.
Thank you for your reply. I'm on a massive learning curve. Up until November of last year I'd never heard of HS.
A lot of people have never heard of it. When I first started having trouble, I got anitbiotics from so many doctors and none of them knew what I had. Finally they sent me to a dermatologist and even he only figured it out after about 4 visits. And he told me it was HS and that it was a very rare condition. But now, my new dermatologist is telling me that it is not rare at all and a lot of people have it. So after fifteen years I am still very confused sometimes.
Exactly the same. I've been treating myself over the years with occasional visits to the doctors for antibiotics which never seemed to work. November 2014 got admitted to hospital with groin and armpit abscess. That was the first time someone actually said what was wrong with me. Now I've got another. I'm seeing the dermatologist end of April, and hopefully I'll get some answers. Once again thank you for your reply
Well I had it for a round 7 years before it was diagnosed. I had always suffered with my skin from acne and I put it down to that for a long time. I had never heard of HS but a friend of mine had it quite badly and said it sounded like hers. I asked my doctor for a referral to a dermatologist who diagnosed it straight away.
If they get infected I go straight to the doctor for ab's - doxyclycline which always work for me. I have only had one as bad as yours on the top of my inner thigh and I well remember the agony. I spent 3 days in hospital and had it incised under a general anaesthetic and mine was packed every day too.
I found the ones to really watch out for are the sore tiny red pimples with a little red around the area as these are the ones which usually develop very quickly and become huge. My bad one started off like that and took just 3 days to get that huge!
I found stress to be my biggest trigger which seems to have proved itself as now I am retired I get very few thank goodness! Though how you avoid stress when you are working I don't know. I tend to get ones now which recur from lumps and they usually go down fairly quickly.
I had a couple of nasty ones on my stomach and one on my leg which recurred regularly but I had them incised under a local anaesthetic and have had no problms since. The dermatologist told me that once they have spread the options are limited ie incising, rouccatine or more major plastic surgery.
And I agree HS is not rare at all - just underdiagnosed due to ignorance and lack of interest by medical professionals. I hope yours heals soon. x
You're welcome and best of luck to you at your appointment. let us all know how it goes 
Visit your doctor to make sure the area has not been affected again.
DO NOT eat sugary foods or dairy foods. no sweets, chocolates or yoghurt. No fish either.
Just a few tips.
I am horrified by your advice! No one should ever cut out whole food groups as that is very dangerious and will cause major health problems. Better advice is to cut down or eliminate one at a time to see if that helps. If it's fine then reinstate it. Never cut out all dairy. Nor all fish as that provides essential vitamins and minerals.
Has cutting surgar and dairy eased your symptoms? I know my OBGYN encouraged me to cut a lot of lactose products and pretty much all sugar for my PCOS which had mixed success, but it didn't do anything for my HS breakouts.
HS can certainly be triggered by food, at least in my case anyway. But lactose products seem to be a pretty rare trigger for HS, and I've never heard of sugar or fish being a culprit. Nightshades and Gluten seem to be the most common, and nuts aren't unheard of, but not those three food groups. I'm curious about who told you to stay away from them.
Hi Louise,
Sorry to hear that your HS has progressed to this point. I've had several abscesses surgically excised and all but one oozed puss for a few weeks afterwards. Isn't it lovely? Ironically, I was actually worried about the one that didn't ooze.
It seems to be a natural part of the healing process, like tanya said. And the smell is unfortunate, but expected. I'm sure they have you on antibiotics to prevent infection, but if the pain starts to get worse, you start running a fever, or the wound gets really red and angry, make sure you let the doctors know. I wouldn't be too worried, mainly because you've got nurses coming in to clean and redress the wound so they're getting a pretty good look at it every day.
But if this is keeping you up at night, make sure you ask to speak with the doctor about it. Good luck!
I have read many times that sugar is a problem for the immune system because it contributes to inflammation and lactose is a sugar. BUT, cutting dairy completely is most likely not a idea because your body does need some. Cutting sugary foods out of your diet though is a good thing for anyone at any time.
I actually stopped drinking milk because of the hormoens that are fed to the cows. I switched to almond milk, also because I like the taste better. BUT I still eat yogurt and cheese which gives me the nutrients my body needs.
An interesting thing though, is that when I stopped drinking milk, my acne did clear up a little bit, but that was probably coincidental because it did come back after a few weeks even though I still don't drink milk.
So, sugar, refined sugar, yes cut it, even if you dont have HS because sugar has absolutely no benifit to your body at all. Natural sugars from fruit and other foods is what the body needs.
Dairy, is not needed as much as most people think, but do have some and cut it completely, maybe just moderate better.
Nightshades as the culprit is probably a whole lot of smoke. I read about that and I started eatign them like crazy to see if things got really bad and I didn't notice anything. So if that was the issue, in theory I should have blown up everywhere and I didn't.
Finallly gluten, is just like sugar in that it does absolutely nothing for your body. it has no nutirents and doesnt benefit you in any way, It simply helps foods stick together or it helps achiece a certain texture in breads and things like that. But the body doesn't need it. So, ya go ahead and cut it if you want, but I doubt it alone would cure anyone of HS.
One thing I've noticed about HS is that everyone has different triggers. Obviously nightshades aren't a trigger for you, maybe gluten and dairy are?
I can time my breakouts down to the hour after eating nightshades. On the other hand I can eat copious amounts of bread and sugar and it doesn't bother my HS monster one bit. I tend to watch my sugar intake because it does aggravate my PCOS, but I don't bother avoiding gluten. That had no impact on my Hashimotos, PCOS or HS after I came off my elimination diet.
Everyone's body reacts differently. That's why I always encourage people with HS to try an elimination diet to determine if they do in fact have a food trigger. Not everyone does, but a fairly large percentage of us do. Sometimes people have only one trigger, sometimes it's more. I even talked to someone who reacts to gluten, nightshades and nuts.
And it's really not a good idea to cut out an entire food group permanently unless you know for a fact you have a sensitivity to it. Gluten by itself is not nutritious, but gluten products actually contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, like iron and folate, that you can't get in gluten-free products. Nightshades also have a lot of health benefits like zinc and b vitamins, and if you can eat them without experiencing detrimental side-effects, you definitely should.
I agree. Of course everyone should try all these things. I just worry about people who come on here and throw out some advice and get peoples hopes up. They post links to a website that directs you to another website, and before you know it, there you are looking at some product to buy or someone who gets ads on their page and they want the traffic, to boost their ad price and make money.
The person who I saw claiming that nightshades "cured" them of HS had a website like this and to me it seemed like they were clearly trying to boost traffic and they also had a link to som 'natural' herbs and vitamins to buy. So, anyone can make their own conclusions about that. Are they just trying to be helpful? Maybe.
Anyway I agree with you and that is what I said in my other answer, sorry for the typos, but no one should completely cut out food groups, but if they want, sugar and gluten are NOT food groups and they do nothing for your body. All foods that have gluten can be found without gluten and those versions have all the same other ingredients as their gluten loaded conterparts.
You can completely cut out gluten if you want and still get all the vitamins you need from other foods. In fact, most gluten free products end up having more nutritious value because they have other ingredients added to mimic gluten, and these are natural things like a little more egg to help bread, for example, stick together or molasses which is very good for you.
Gluten free products are also better for you because they are usually also organic and transfat free. Not all, but most. So, like I said, anyone who wants to go ahead and cut those thigns out should do so. Refined sugar and gluten are nothing, lile eating paper. They should also try cutting out nighshades if they want, but (in my opinion) something else is at work if people claim that they were cured form cutting them out. But by all means, everyone should try, because you never know, no one knows and that is why HS is so horrible in the first place,because there are no clear answers. Doctors around the world have no clue, so be wary when someone comes along and says "hey, its this simple, stop eating this and you will be cured!!" It's a false hope that can get people really down on themselves, I know because I've been there many times.
One last thing to consider is that people who cut a food out of their lives and have that initiative and will to really do it, are probably also doing other healthy things like excercising or eating other food that they did not normally eat. And that could actually be what is causing the 'cure'. But they may not amke that connection, and they think it was the food they cut, as opposed to the food (and nutrient) they added to replace it. Or maybe it was the alleviation of stress that was a side effect of taking initiative in their life, etc..etc
Anyway that is enough rant for me, please understand I am not sayign that this or the other thign is a lie, maybe it worked for a few people, but a person has to understand just waht you said, that everyone is different, and so people should not come one here and say 'here is the cure".
Dairy is a breeding ground for bacteria and should avoided after a course of antibiotics to fight infection. Excess sugar is very problematic for skin.
- BSc Biomedical Science student.
I'd also liike to add that a little advice was needed, so i gave what i could from my personal experience and my backgrond in studying Microbiology and Immunology.
Fish is inflammatory despite having many beneficial qualities. I have never ate much dairy to begin with. Cutting out sugar certainly has. I myself did, I've studied Biology for years now and many doctors and herbalists agree, some do not.
This thread wasn't really about the causes of HS. It was about a wound, so applied my knowledge of microbiology. Dairy provides ideal conditions for bacteria to multiply,
I'm interested to read your point on sugar, as the abscesses I had in November and March both grew when I was consuming masses of fruit and eating lots of carbs. Both times I joined slimming world where they advocate free eating of both these foods. Each time I had raised sugar levels, when admitted into hospital and yet subsequent blood tests came back slightly raised when home and follow up bloods were taken to check for diabetes. I wonder is my diet affecting my HS.