Winter 2017

I don’t like cysts.
I had a couple removed a few years back and it was not a fun time. Minor surgery which means being awake – this way you know all the struggles the surgeon is having and they know all your discomforts.
So … last year when I had a small cyst develop on my chest I kept my eyes open for a new solution.
It was just a minor cyst and never filled up with puss, only ever a dry cheesie substance and never even getting to the size of a small pea. But still it bothered me and made me self-conscious when wearing a low cut shirt.
One Sunday last fall I read in a blog from a woman that I follow, because of her skill with fermented foods, about that coconut oil was good for eliminating cysts. Well I keep coconut oil next to my bed to put on my face and cuticles before going to sleep. Because of this article I started putting the oil on my cyst as well. I did this for over a month when right before Christmas the cyst swelled up to over the size of a quarter and was oozing all of the time.
I was not happy and questioned why I believed a person who gave health advice without any expertise. Not knowing what to do next I actually went the same route and looked up on the internet treatments for inflamed cysts. I read one solution that was to make a poultice out of corn starch and tea tree oil. Having tea tree essential oil in the house I gave it a go.
I made the poultice, put it on the cyst, and covered it with gauze. I noticed the inflammation reduce in the first day. I then just tried the tea tree oil directly on my skin and found it caused no irritation so I changed to just directly putting the oil on and forgetting about the involved poultice process.
Over the next few weeks the cyst kept shrinking and did not return to being inflamed. By the end of January the skin on my chest was smooth and clear with not residual scar or pocket under the skin from the original cyst – just lovely cleavage.
My thoughts on this are that the coconut oil broke down the walls of the cyst and the tea tree oil took away the inflammation to allow the skin to heal.
These are just my experiences being recorded for my own future reference and consideration by others for their own research.