Suppurating infected scalp wound
 
Author: Teratoma
Email: dweeb@aol.com
Date: 1997/05/12
Forums: alt.tasteless 

I've seen people post messages regarding their personal diseases,
injuries, and sickening conditions on this newsgroup for quite a while,
and now I think its time for the mother of them all.  This isn't my
story, its my uncle's.  But I'll tell it in the "first person
perspective" just for convenience.

When I was about 17 years old, I always had itchy, flaky scalp.  It
would itch and irritate me so badly that my mother thought I had lice
from all the scratching I did, but no, it was just my nasty scalp. 
Sometimes while I was in a particularly productive bout of scratching I
would accidentally hook a fingernail under a large flake and pull off
what looked like a little cake of crusted dandruff, about the width of a
thimble, in my hand.  

Anyway, during one such intense scratching episode I got my fingernails
involved, but this time instead of pulling the flake straight off, I
razored a straight line about 2 inches long, straight up the back of my
head.  Immediately I could feel the tip of my fingers covered with some
nasty goo.  I had delved much deeper than usual in this case than
previously.  

I tried to push the edges of the nearest dandruff-infested skin clumps
back together like a seam, but was met with a dagger-like shaft of
horrible pain for my efforts.  I decided to ignore it, and go on with my
life.  BIG MISTAKE.

I could feel that foul pus oozing out of the back of my head all night
long, infecting my hair and trickling down the back of my neck.  I
touched some of the trickle that was on the back of my neck, and looked
at my fingers--the fluid was a sickly yellow and smelled like death. 
Over the course of the next 2 days, I always wore a hat, pulled down
practically to my ears, to disguise from my alarmist parents the sight
of my crusted hair and the constant seeping flow.

Finally, though, about 3 days after I'd cut myself, I began to worry
because the wound hadn't finished leaking pus.  Tentatively, I pushed
two fingers at the back of my skull and was rewarded with pain so
intense I collapsed to the floor.  My mother found me and pulled my hat
off, and screamed because of the coating of translucent gunky pus-clumps
that clung to my hair in various states of congealment.

They took me to the doctor, who shaved off all my hair to discover that
the wound had become badly infected.  They managed to save my life, but
it turned out that the malignant pus had seeped into a small portion of
the bone at the rear of my skull.  That particular portion had also
become infected and the doctor had to actually REMOVE a section of my
skull a little larger than a quarter, replacing it with a small steel
plate.  He later told my father that the part of my bone they'd removed
looked like a saggy, rotting, flaking honeycomb.

Anyway, for the entire rest of my life I have kept my head utterly
shaved, and even though I have no hair I use a special shampoo for my
scalp--I probably don't need to do either anymore, and many people stare
at me (maybe they think I'm a Nazi skinhead) but I don't care.  To this
day I will often absently run my hands over the back of my bald head,
luxuriating in the quiet joy of having a clean, dry, healthy scalp.