turns out it was a pilonidal cyst, later developing into a very severe one at that. it was something i ended up living with for several years, as it was never inflamed and would only intermittently cause me troubles and drain puss, hence the itchiness (like having vaseline between your butt cheeks, causing a chafing type of irritation). in the summer of 08, the cyst had become so infected from having never been treated that it progressed from being more of a subcutaneous cyst to a superficial swelling or abscess (sort of a painful lump on the tailbone) and soon thereafter erupted into a bloody mess. by this time it was october and when i had doctors take a look at it, there were so many little canals of infection digging their way through roughly 2 inches of tissue extending from the top of my ass crack toward the anus (though thankfully never actually affecting the anus or rectum, which results in a whole new level of problems) that they had to operate. essentially, they cut out all of the infected tissue, leaving a huge crater about 3 inches long, 1 inch wide, and a whopping 2 inches deep. the hole they left their was nearly big enough to fit a tennis ball into, and sadly this was only the beginning of my problems. long story short, the wound has never healed properly as i have continuously been battling infection and tearing of freshly healed tissue (as it's really hard to walk around and sit when there's a threat of aggravating such a fresh, raw, gaping wound). anywho, i ended up having another surgery in september 09 to sort of clean the area up, making sure that the tissue was all fresh and equally granulating throughout (as hypergranulated tissue in some areas can be problematic too) and i had a vac put on the area. a vac is basically a sponge/vacuum device that plugs the area and continuously drains it, keeping it in a closed environment and therefore out of harms way from infection and having anything poke into it. this device really helped the wound heal properly; from the inside out (slowly patching, or knitting it's way shut on the inside and gradually working toward the surface) though it was a real pain in the ass....pun intended... because it was a horrendously painful thing to change and i had to see nurses almost every day to monitor the settings on this device being carried around (sponge + tube + vacuum pouch of drainage), and needless to say pulling sponge out of a raw wound that's been in their for a day is a very unpleasant experience. moving on, the device has been off for a couple months and i'm now sitting here with a very minor, superficial wound resembling that of an elbow scab, just significantly longer and in an area where pressure causes some pain (lots of nerve endings at the tailbone) and that's highly susceptible to cracking of the skin and minor bleeding, so i keep little 4x4 pieces of gauze tucked in there to avoid any embarassing accidents, and now im just playing the waiting game.
moral of the story: when you have a problem, get it checked out. no matter how silly it seems. turns out for me, i let this thing go for a little too long and it ended up leaving me horribly infected and needing years of medical care / recovery. sadly, in this time, i haven't really been able to be active, as sitting and walking was certainly a painful thing to do early on, and with such a large wound there was a lot of draining and bleeding associated with it, and i'm only recently returning back to normal. don't let seemingly minor and/or embarrasing problems eat away at you so that they cause lasting, irreparable damage. fortunately, i'm healing, just very very slowly, and with lots of troublesome procedures to deal with along the way (cauterization was also a weekly ritual to prevent little flaps of skin from hanging around the affected area, and nobody likes having an open wound chemically burned). thing's could have been worse. if the infection had made it's way to my spinal cord, or into my digestive tract, lord knows what shape i would be in now. so that's the story of my rectal itch, and how it started off as a semi-serious joke and developed into a life-changing medical condition commonly known as pilonidal disease.
**note: google 'pilonidal cyst' at your own discretion. there are certain things you can't unsee..
