Without further fanfare, it all started on the last day of Spring Break, 2007. My parents were driving me back to school, when in the car I realized that there was a slight discomfort when I sat directly on my tailbone region, or when any sort of pressure was applied directly to that area. I assumed I had just bruised my tailbone from all the skiing I had done that week. Or all the butt sex. One of the two.
But as the school week dragged on, the sensation in my tailbone region grew more and more painful, and by Wednesday, a small lump had developed near the top of my natal cleft (“butt crack” for those of you not well-versed in biological terms). It was approximately the size of a grape. Obviously, this is not natural, but I simply assumed that my tailbone was so severely bruised that the flesh surrounding it had swelled up.
That night, the pain haunted my backside as if someone was continually jabbing me in the ass crack with a fork, and I didn’t sleep a wink. By Thursday morning, every time I sat down it felt like the equivalent of being slammed in the butt full force with a sledgehammer. The lump on my tailbone had doubled in size from the previous day, and from that I drew the only scientifically logical conclusion: I was growing a tail.
Initially I was freaked out, but I tried to consider some of the benefits of having a tail. I could use it to hold drinks at parties. I could design cool accessories to wear on it. And if need be, I could always join the circus, a possibility I could never have fathomed before, since I don’t have a Siamese twin that I am aware of, and growing facial hair, try as I may, has never been my strong suit. On the other hand, I’ve never had a big penchant for clowns either. I decided that joining the circus was not an option.
That night, I thought that maybe putting ice on my newly budding tail would slow the growth process a little. Keep in mind, this all happened in April; this late in the semester all my roommate and I had left in our freezer was a handle of Majorska and about 12 packages of our supply of applesauce which never seemed to die. I figured we would eventually want to put our mouths on said vodka, so I used an applesauce container as my mock-ice. Expecting to feel instant relief from the “ice,” the cold actually cut off blood flow from my tail, turning it into a hard, frozen lump of shooting pain.
After lying awake all night I got up, only to find that I could no longer walk properly, but rather, as if I had a baseball bat lodged up my colon. I realized that my tail, embarrassing as it may have been, was no longer a problem I could handle on my own. So I waddled across campus to the Fordham Health Center.
When I sat down in the examining room, the doctor asked what was wrong. Now, if you find it uncomfortable to tell your doctor you think you have an STD or a yeast infection, just imagine how embarrassing it is to announce that you believe you are growing a fifth appendage out of your ass. At least we know where STDs come from; my tail rendered me nothing more than a freak of nature. Unwilling to believe me, the doctor asked me to lie down on my stomach and pull down my pants. So I turned over on the cold examining table and dropped trow.
There is nothing more disheartening than hearing your doctor gasp in shock. But she gasped.
“Sarah,” she told me, “this isn’t a tail. It’s a pilonidal cyst and you need to have this looked at immediately. Please call a friend and we’ll have you rushed to the hospital.”
I called my friend Gwen and she came to the Health Center where the “Rambulance” picked us up. (Get it? We’re the Fordham Rams and it’s an ambulance? Rambulance. Cute, right? It’s like, oh, you have a massive growth terrorizing your coccyx region? Well, we’re going make this situation even more mortifying for you by giving the ambulance a really stupid name.)
We boarded the Rambulance where the EMT worker, who happened to be in my Spanish class, asked me if I would like to be strapped into the gurney. “Thanks,” I replied, “but I can sit on my own just fine. As long as I’m balanced on one ass cheek.” He then proceeded to fill out his EMT form, which required that I dictate to him in humiliating detail, the precise location and sensations of the cyst awkwardly nestled in my butt crack.
“What does it feel like?” he asked.
“It feels like a golf ball,” I replied.
“Can you be more specific?” he dared to further inquire.
“It feels,” I explained, “like a golf ball with rusty nails poking out of it, which has been doused in kerosene and set aflame, hit by Tiger Woods at a high velocity, and landed in the tippity top of my butt crack for a hole-in-one. And when I stand up, I feel like it’s still there, lodged between my cheeks and spewing fire. Is that enough detail for you?”
“…Yes. That is enough.”
We arrived at the hospital, which was marginally comforting for a minute, until I remembered that we were still in the Bronx. When I got inside, I sat down at the registry desk where a nurse with an intricate, magenta hair weave and a six-inch manicure warmly asked me, “Mmm-hmm, so wuhss wrong wit-choo?”
“I um, I have a cyst. A pilonidal cyst.”
“You says you’ve got a whut??”
“A pilonidal cyst. It’s in my lower back, and it’s hurting me very much...please, I just need to see a doctor,” I begged.
“Awlright, leh me see ya insurance cawd and you ken have a seat ovah theyah, ummkay?”
“…Umkay.”
So there I was, in the waiting room of a Bronx hospital, surrounded by stab wound victims and drug addicts, sporting a pilonidal cyst, trying to fit in. Few times in my life have I ever been so frightened. At one point a toothless, hairy-legged heroine junkie backed Gwen and I into a corner, repeatedly insisted that we must be sisters, and refused to take no for an answer. (For reference, Gwen is Puerto Rican, and I am Scandinavia’s poster child. Point blank: we look nothing alike.) The emergency room triage system is usually unkind to me, but luckily I was still young enough at the time to be seen in the pediatrics unit, so I didn’t have to wait very long to escape the waiting room.
Once in the examining room, I was seen by a pediatric nurse, this time with a flamboyant, red hair weave. She asked me to lie on my stomach and pull down my pants again. She took one look at my cyst, and again, gasped in disbelief. She called in another nurse and a doctor, neither of who were weave-laden. At this point, I was laying face down and pantless while three doctors poked and prodded at my butt crack, Gwen having no choice but to observe the whole thing. Despite their efforts, the Winne-the-Pooh decals on the walls were not helping to ease my discomfort.
The nurse with the red weave explained to me that a pilonidal cyst is something you’re born with, if you’re one of the lucky ones, of course. The pilonidal cavity is located in your lower back, right above your rear. In certain people, the pilonidal cavity is prone to infection when irritated (i.e. skiing injuries, large quantities of butt sex, etc.), and it fills up with a fluid, forming a cyst that grows and grows until it has nowhere left to go but to burst through your natal cleft, erupting in a massive explosion! Red Weave Nurse also told me that the condition is most common in obese men. (Note: I am neither overweight nor of the male persuasion. How I was chosen for this said plight, I shall never know.)
Prepared to lance it, Red Weave Nurse pulled out a shiny, razor-sharp scalpel from her medical drawer and began to examine the cyst for a place to slice. It glimmered in the fluorescent light. While generally I’m not good with any sort of pointy object puncturing my body in any way, at this moment I was in so much pain that I began to think Jimmy Hoffa had been hiding out in my pilonidal cavity and was trying to escape through my ass. Which is really just a round about way of saying, I didn’t care if she had to hack off my entire lower half with a rusty, serrated-edge bagel knife, I just wanted the pain to stop.
But as soon as I thought my troubles were going to end, Red Weave Nurse informed me that my cyst was too hard to lance, and that I would have to let it soften up and burst on its own. Are you fucking kidding me? I asked with my eyes. To answer my question, Red Weave Nurse handed me a warm compress, and a prescription for antibiotics. And then, she gave me a prescription for extra-strength codeine. Ahh, I cooed to myself, now things are about to get interesting.
You may be wondering about the results of powerful drugs combined with a throbbing back cyst waiting to erupt at any second like an active volcano. I could tell you now, but if you felt uncomfortable reading all that, wait ‘til you hear what happened next. You can’t handle it, not in one dose anyway.
Continue to The Tale of My Tail, Part II (when you're ready) »
