Christy Collins found a lump on her bikini line and assumed it was an ingrown hair.
Six days later surgeons were cutting infected tissue out of her while her body fought sepsis.
The 28-year-old content creator from Bournemouth, Dorset, had spent 9 August walking around London in shorts.
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Hot day. That night she sat down to do her make-up and felt something.
“I felt a gumboil-sized lump on my bikini line,” she told Creatorzine.
“I sat down to do my make-up, and it seeped out.
“I squeezed it, and I shouldn’t have; it was a bad idea.
“It was sore, and after I squeezed it, it went from a boil to a massive sac cyst that stretched from my bikini line to my bum.”
Within two days the swelling had gone hard and red.
Christy reached for the nearest thing to measure it against.
“I thought it was an ingrown hair, but it was the size of an iPhone 16 Pro Max within a couple of days,” she said.
Her vision went at the pub
“I went to the pub and was so lightheaded, but I’d been staying hydrated,” she said.
“All of a sudden my vision went blurry, then it went, and my hearing went.
“I came around and went home.”
The next morning she could barely walk. She rang 111, who told her to go to A&E.
It was late, so she waited, spoke to her GP online the following day and came away with antibiotics.
By that evening she couldn’t stand.
“I kept thinking I’d be fine,” she said. “The area on my bum was getting hotter.”
‘My friend saved my life’
A friend pushed her to go to hospital. Doctors found sepsis and took her into theatre for a one-hour operation to cut away the infected tissue.
“My friend saved my life. I’m so grateful to her,” Christy said.
“At the hospital, it became traumatic.
“I thought I’d be given a pill, but when they said I needed surgery, I was so scared.
“They said my infection markers and blood pressure were through the roof.
“The doctors said if I were older, it would be a different story, or if I left it an extra day, it would have been life-threatening.”
She woke up hallucinating on a stack of pain medication.
“The nurses said my age is what kept me going.”
Five days in hospital, and a wound left open
Christy spent five days on a ward. The wound measures around two inches deep and five inches wide, and medics have left it open so it heals from the inside out.
She takes antibiotics and goes to her GP surgery every day to have it dressed.
“I can’t go out apart from to the doctors,” she said.
“My mum is having to shower me, and I need help to go to the toilet.
“I’ve lost my independence at 28.
“I’m reliant on my mum like a baby when I’m used to doing everything for myself.”
‘You have to be so careful’
“I’ve always shaved my bikini line, and ingrown hairs are so common,” she said.
“You have to be so careful.
“The nurse said they see this a lot and to never shave your bikini line. It’s not safe.”
And then the line she keeps returning to: “The thought that shaving could have killed me is horrible.”
Why it matters
Creators trade on being available. Filming, posting, showing up.
Christy currently cannot leave the house except for a daily dressing change, which is the part of this story other creators should sit with.
A medical emergency doesn’t just cost you your health, it costs you the thing your income depends on, and there’s no sick pay waiting at the end of it.
The wider pattern is familiar enough. First-person medical warnings travel further than almost anything else creators post, because they are specific, frightening and cheap to make.
Grooming injuries in particular have become a reliable engine for that content, which raises the obvious problem of unverified medical advice reaching very large audiences from people who are not clinicians.
Christy isn’t giving advice so much as describing what happened to her.
She’s still being dressed daily, still relying on her mum, and still working out what her recovery looks like.
