Self treatment of my pyogenic granuloma

This blog contains some rather icky pictures. I wouldn't suggest looking unless you're really curious about pyogenic granulomas. 

A Pyogenic Granuloma can look like this: (I'm not going to give all the details about what they are. Google it, and you'll find plenty of pictures and info along with advise to go see your dermatologist. It's isn't cancerous or harmful, just annoying and unsightly and can bleed like crazy.)

While I do not suggest self treatment of a pyogenic granuloma, I was determined to treat mine without the assistance of a doctor visit due to lack of insurance (please Obama care, kick in soon!). It was very frustrating to find help online. A lot of people said they had removed theirs with silver nitrate sticks but I didn't find anything helpful about how they did it or what to expect. So I am posting my experience. Once again, I do not suggest you follow my example. I am not a doctor, and I only did this after a lot of research (what I could find) and because I knew exactly what it was and why it had formed. I just wished someone had posted something like this for me. 

It all started with a tiny blood "blister" on my cheek, though not actually a blister. It was just a red dot under the skin. It had come and gone before and was barely noticeable, about the size of a dot made with a pen. This time I decided to poke at it with my tweezers and was greeted with a lot of bleeding. Over about a week or 2, I managed to make it bleed again almost every day sometimes just as simply as washing or drying my face, hindering the scabbing and healing process. Before I knew it, what started out as a dot, was becoming a growth. Within a month, it looked like the picture above. I did a lot of googling "blood blisters", but it wasn't a blister. Thankfully I stumbled upon a picture of a pyogenic granuloma, and after researching, I realized this was definitely what I had on my face. Supposedly it can go away on its own in 8 months or so, but it was on my face - this unsightly rasberry-like growth right on my face. I had to get it off. So I did research on silver nitrate sticks and found a pack of 100 on amazon.com for $32. In fact, most of the useful information I found was from reading reviews on that product. They look like this: 

So this is how I treated it: I first covered the area of skin around the P.G. (pyogenic granuloma) with edges of a band aid I'd cut in a circular shape to be flush to the P.G. I didn't want any of this on my good skin. I've heard you can use vasoline (?), but I found this taping method worked for me. I dipped the end of the silver nitrate stick in a dot of water, not enough to be dripping, because anything that comes into contact with this stick or the water dripping off of it will turn black (including the bathroom sink, I found out). I carefully and gently touched the stick to the P.G., all around it for 1-2 minutes, then I disposed of the stick and the band aid around it. I'd read that this stuff is painful, but perhaps because the P.G. doesn't have the same nerve reception, it felt more like a tingling than pain. On occasion, for a few hours, I felt something like pinching in the area. This is what it looked like about an hour after:

Then a few hours later it turned darker, almost like a black scab. It went from looking like a raspberry to a blueberry. Eww.:

I put a band aid lightly over it that night just to keep it from being scraped in my sleep. By morning I noticed some oozing. I rushed to the bathroom to make sure it wasn't bleeding. It wasn't, but the top layer of the P.G. has sloughed off and was wet with clear oozing. It looked like this:

I'd read somewhere that you should use the silver nitrate sticks every other day when treating this. I don't know if that is factual, but I couldn't resist using it again. I felt that the silver nitrate had only affected the top layer, which was now gone. And I was anxious to see this thing off of my face. So I coated it a second time with the silver nitrate, just as I'd done before. (Obviously, I was attempting to keep from having to cut it off, as you probably would with a skin tag, because I get squeamish with cutting things off of myself, and I knew at this point the thing would bleed tremendously.)

I don't have pictures between that and what happened a few hours later, but I went to the bathroom, saw in the mirror that I had sprouted a "small leak". It was completely black, but apparently the silver nitrate had "burned" into the bloody area of the P.G., and the thin layer was doing nothing to hold back the intense bleeding that began seconds later. This is the gross part: blood was pouring out from this hole in my face. I was holding tissues to it while trying to prepare another silver nitrate stick. It was like the P.G. had deflated, though, and I couldn't get to the source of bleeding. I had to get my husband to prepare a small sharp knife for me so that I could slice off the flaps of the emptying P.G., which surprisingly was not painful at all. Then I was able to use another stick to stop the bleeding which was occurring flush to my cheek. Actually, I had to use several sticks, though I'm not sure that is okay, though I haven't had any negative side effects. This is because, the sticks were getting so coated in blood and black coagulation, I suppose, that the sticks were becoming useless. I think I went through 4 or 5. This wasn't pleasant, and it it why I wouldn't suggest doing this by yourself. If I hadn't been at home near the silver nitrate when it started bleeding like this, it could have been a bad and embarrassing situation.

So after that hectic scene of trying to stop the bleeding, I had a giant black circle on my face. Some of the skin around it did get covered in silver nitrate due to the bleeding trying to escape to the sides. This is what it looked like:

The skin around it looked bruised, but it was only staining from the silver nitrate. Hideous, I know. I covered it lightly with a band aid mostly to keep it out of sight, and thankfully I didn't have to go out for a day or 2.

The next day - Day 3: The area of healthy skin that I had gotten silver nitrate on was peeling up. I didn't want to touch it, because I wasn't sure if it would start bleeding again. At this point, I started applying a little bit of antibiotic skin cream with a q-tip around the area to be on the safe side.

Day 4: The "scab" made by silver nitrate peeled off without any bleeding. I was very pleased about this. The area around it was still stained and unsightly. I continued applying antibiotic cream and covering with a band aid.

Day 5: After a shower, the black stains were gone, and I was left with this. I was still applying antibiotic cream and band aids, especially when going out. Thankfully I had no signs of any infection, and it appeared the body is doing what it normally does - healing itself.

After a few days like this, I realized that the redness was not going away, and the area seemed to me to start bulging again. I'd remembered in my research online that it is very common for P.G. to grow back, because it is a cluster of blood vessels, of sorts. So I treated just the red area with silver nitrate. I'd heard that doctors often had to go in and dig the whole thing out. I wasn't going to be cutting on my face, so I was treating this more like a wart now. So for about every other day for a little over a week, I continued the silver nitrate sticks, and each time, the red area got a little smaller.

When it got to the point above, I thought I was done. But I noticed about 5 tiny red dots, which I had to assume where a part of the P.G., and I didn't want to have to go through this again. So I treated it one last time. I felt like I knew it was done when I actually felt a little pain from the silver nitrate sticks. It felt like it would on any of my healthy skin - like burning. For me, that was the sign I'd reached the bottom of this.

It's been a few weeks, and I have no scar, just a circle of skin that is slightly more red than the rest of my face, but with makeup is almost invisible. I have been careful to use a sun screen on my face, just to be on the safe side, whenever I go out.

I am finishing up this blog at 2 months since the beginning of this process, and I have seen no sign of regeneration of the P.G., and I am very happy this is over, happy the silver nitrate worked, and happy that I didn't have to spend a small fortune with a dermatologist. I will not be picking at any red dots of my body from now on. I hope this is helpful for anyone who finds themselves in my situation who is just as stubborn about not going to doctors. Good luck, and be careful.