It was discovered at my ultrasound (I am in early pregnancy) that I had two large approximately 8cm diameter benign cysts on my right ovary. I had no symptoms, no pain, and no idea that I had these inside me.
After a more intensive scan and a confirmation that these were indeed very benign and quite unremarkable cysts, I was told to wait and see if they went away on their own.
After two weeks I became much more aware of the cysts because they often hurt in the morning, when I lay on my right side or after I had eaten. I would wake up in the night with intense lower abdominal bloating and lower back pain. During these wakeful hours I would spend time gently massaging the area above the cysts with my fingertips, like I was playing the piano. This seemed to ease the pain and bloating considerably and after a short while the cysts would feel less hard and my body would relax and allow me to fall back to sleep.
I continued this practice of massage for two weeks and it always seemed to relax me and lessen the bloating in my belly.
In the past two days I was beginning to have brief episodes of extreme pain in my side. This pain may be described as similar to having a 'stitch' during exercise, but much more intense. I began to worry that this pain was a warning that my cysts were close to rupturing or that torsion may occur (torsion is when the cyst twists on its stem because of it's weight and cuts off the blood supply to your ovary, which can be very dangerous). I decided to take things very easy and rest as much as possible until I figured out what was going on inside me. My abdomen was very bloated yesterday and I could actually see the hard water-balloon-like cyst pressing against my abdominal wall - I lay on my back and gently did the piano-fingertip massage above and around the cyst, sometimes stopping to apply firm but gentle pressure with the warm heel of my palm. After about 20 minutes, I suddenly felt the tension in the cyst release and the fluid rush out of it. The cyst decreased in size instantly under my fingertips - it was a very horrible, weird sensation, but a relief at the same time. Surprisingly, this was not accompanied by any pain at all and I had no bleeding from my extremities.
Apparently the abdominal wall can re-absorb cyst fluid quite efficiently - is this true?
My abdomen is no longer bloated and distended on one side - the cyst may re-form, but I hope not
I can still feel the other cyst deeper inside me but it is not so easy to massage there without pressing quite hard and I am worried about disturbing my fetus - I need some advice about massage and cysts and pregnancy.
How far I can take this safely, since fingertip massage seems to have been an effective remedy for one of my cysts?
Does anyone else have any experience with cysts and using massage to cure them?