I have followed the forum & read through all the responses to the tiny white plug saga, as I have dealt with this issue since about 2019. I still have yet to figure mine out entirely, but I have managed it somewhat successfully for the past 2 years or so. I still have no exact diagnosis, but many ideas thrown around on these forums make sense as the causation & root of the issue. What instigated me to post about my experience finally was finding an article about how "ringworm has mutated through the years," & this discovery possibly makes sense in someone else's case out there. I have believed for a long time that mine had a relation to ringworm as I have dealt with ringworm infections many times, & specific characteristics of my sores resemble a "normal ringworm presentation." However, other aspects do not, so I always wondered if I had developed some chronic, mutated ringworm infection from never entirely eradicating it in the first place. I do know that, like many others have said, PICKING & using multiple products at once is not the answer (at least in my case) and that leaving them alone, working on my mental health, and keeping the things I use to treat them simple & slow to evaluate their effectiveness has been the best route for me personally. I am by no means trying to put anyone down who struggles with picking as a means of relief because trust me, I've been there, & some days I still struggle with not picking due to the pain of these weird ass sores, but keeping myself healthy, my stress down, & avoiding intense irritation have in the least helped with the healing aspect & the reoccurrence of them, not the prevalence of them because I still get them from time to time but not nearly as often or intensely as before.

I'm going to try to keep this organized and as simple to read as possible as it's a lot of information. However, my goal is to share my story, see if anyone else is still struggling with this skin condition, and if anyone has found a diagnosis, resolution, or better form of treatment to manage it. I'll also share the article I read (about the whole ringworm thing). I would love any response, discussion, feedback, or anything! The other forums seem pretty outdated with information regarding the "tiny white/stretchy plugs."

Back story (how mine started - pictures included):

• So, in 2019, after a particular day of chopping up wood with my boyfriend near a densely wooded area, I came home and had a slight blister-looking rash on my forearm. It started very simply, so I summed it up to a bug bite and didn't overthink it...then it started to get more prominent over the next few days with more blistery spots. It then spread to my neck. I've had poison ivy and poison oak before, and while it resembled these rashes, it was different; the blisters had little splinter-looking things in them and wept constantly. It was the itchiest rash I've ever had. When I went to urgent care, they diagnosed it as poison oak and gave me steroids, creams, and antibiotics. While it helped heal the rash, it morphed into something I'd never experienced. The area under my neck filled with fluid, so much fluid that it felt like I was walking around with a turkey gobbler hanging from my neck. It slowly started to weep out from under my chin and my arm. Then it took forever to scab up. As it scabbed over, these little white plug-looking things started flaking out. As it healed, I started getting the sores with the plugs that take forever to heal. The whole healing of the rash took a solid month to 2 months until it was somewhat back to normal, but the sores persisted. I went back to my family doctor for these; he again put me on antibiotics and mupirocin ointment for what he said was impetigo. It didn't work. I showed him the rash I had been treated for, but he didn't seem to think it was related. Throughout the rash, I also had general flu-like symptoms, fatigue, weakness, muscle/joint pain and soreness, constant tiredness, brain fog, weight loss, etc. (which never subsided and worsened with stress, environment, etc.). I went back to my doctor to try something else, and this was when he told me that it was self-inflicted (which, yes, we all know that picking the plugs out eases the pain and at this point, I was doing that, but before any of this I had clear skin and never picked at any of my "simple pimples" that I used to get, but these things showed up on their own and are not the regular acne I used to have at all). So, I dove deep into researching the possibilities...and treatments. Some things worked, but many didn't. But what I believe it is to this day is fungal and related to my weakened immune system and whatever it is taking over my entire system. I think healing the body from the inside out is super important to figure out a lasting remission of this condition. I'm just struggling to find the proper treatment. I've had biopsies done, swabs done, Lyme testing, and blood tests, and nothing shows up. But I've read a lot about how certain infections or conditions can mask themselves or be undetectable as they're mutated, and the current tests aren't adequate for diagnosing.

As of today, the sores wax and wane. I don't know if the correlation is hormones, but I'll get anywhere from 1 to 5 spots that start out looking like the average pimple or more like a cystic acne bump. It will be raised and seem like it will come to a head, but it never really does, and it is sore as heck. It will chill there forever, no matter what I put on it: pimple patch or cream. It remains this hard, closed, painful lump that isn't pop-able but needs to be released to have anything happen with it. When popped, sometimes a little bit of stuff comes out, or a hard nodule-like seed pops out, and then the skin peels off, revealing all the freaking white plug things that are glued in there. If pulled, the sore bleeds like crazy, but the pain, tightness, and pressure in the sore are relieved. If too many are pulled or messed with, a sort of calcified plug ring forms around a center crater of plugs. If left alone, these things take at least a week to start to look like they may heal, but even then, they can become covered by a pseudo skin (maybe biofilm?) that is easily disturbed by the simplest touch or washing. It's such a miserable process. My entire face no longer has the same texture it used to years ago. It's like a thick coating of layers of whatever this is covering my old skin. My eyes/contacts feel gritty and dry like sand coats them. I have a weird white, flakey goop in the corners of my eyes when I wake up every morning (not just the typical crust of eye boogers). I have so many light vellus hairs all over my face, and whether I take a derma blade and shave them off, it seems like they're right back the next day or 2. This is gross, but my boogers are also always the same white consistency as my eye boogers (even when I'm sick and they should be green, they're white). I have spots on my tongue that feel like they have glass pieces and bleed when I brush them.

I apologize for the length of this post and the number of pictures. I'm hoping someone out there can relate to what I've gone through and am still going through, as this is such an isolating, depressing, and embarrassing condition to deal with.

https://www.sciencealert.com/cdc-first-us-cases-of-severe-drug-resistant-ringworm-identified <--(link to drug-resistant ringworm article)