I have had this happen to me too, in the past. From what I understand, not all acne comes to the surface of the skin and there are many different types. I remember some of my cysts would never go away unless I popped them, while others were exactly opposite and wouldn't go away unless I left them alone and they would clear quite quickly.

Fun stuff, huh? (;

Yep, this happens to me each month. Same place - center of my chin, slightly to the left or right. They inflate out of nowhere to quarter-sized reddish not-too-prominant swellings during PMS, and deflate when my period arrives (though sometimes they last the duration). They almost never come to a head, so I just deal with the painful swelling and redness by icing my chin constantly, taking a lot of ibuprofen, topically applying crushed aspirin (BP gives me chemical burns, but I've had some shrinkage success with Mario Badescu's drying cream) Of course none of this actually matters - if I succeed in shrinking them, they'll just swell up again when the Advil wears off. My hormones keep them around until AF comes. Today, in fact, I'm PMSing and dealing with a very stubborn cyst that won't come to a head no matter how many mud masks or hot washcloths I apply. It's actually split into two swelling lumps; I'm assuming whatever's in there got too big and took over the adjacent pore. What's strange is I know in a few days it'll be like they were never there, like they just reabsorbed into the skin somehow. Though they'll probably leave a little hyper-pigmentation to let me know how much they enjoyed their visit.

Yep, this happens to me each month. Same place - center of my chin, slightly to the left or right. They inflate out of nowhere to quarter-sized reddish not-too-prominant swellings during PMS, and deflate when my period arrives (though sometimes they last the duration). They almost never come to a head, so I just deal with the painful swelling and redness by icing my chin constantly, taking a lot of ibuprofen, topically applying crushed aspirin (BP gives me chemical burns, but I've had some shrinkage success with Mario Badescu's drying cream) Of course none of this actually matters - if I succeed in shrinking them, they'll just swell up again when the Advil wears off. My hormones keep them around until AF comes. Today, in fact, I'm PMSing and dealing with a very stubborn cyst that won't come to a head no matter how many mud masks or hot washcloths I apply. It's actually split into two swelling lumps; I'm assuming whatever's in there got too big and took over the adjacent pore. What's strange is I know in a few days it'll be like they were never there, like they just reabsorbed into the skin somehow. Though they'll probably leave a little hyper-pigmentation to let me know how much they enjoyed their visit.

Do you find that you've ever been able to sort of pop it? I have something very similar with the same cycle but when it gets big and in the past (before I realized it wasn't going to disappear forever and tried this) I got some white stuff out of it. Have you ever noticed that?

I had to get these injected with cortisone or they did not just go away. I stopped getting new ones on spiro, but the same old ones would inflate periodically.

Most I had to get injected twice.

One I had to get injected a whole 5 times before it went away.

I actually still have one on my cheek kind of, but I've already had it injected multiple times, and I got a temporary indentation on the last time so I won't inject it anymore. Interestingly enough it just recently sort of receded and turned purple. Like a blood blister. I can still feel it and see it but it's a whole new color, so something's going on under there.

There's lots of unorthodox treatments you can find online for these things. Here are some that I've tried with varying degrees of success when I had no health insurance and could not afford cortisone injections (they're like $100 a pop at most places). I make no guarantees, so try anything at your own risk

In general, I've found that with cysts "more is more." Being nice to your skin does not make a cyst go away. They're almost as bad as warts. Some cysts will last forever unless you take drastic measures!

- For moderate cysts, if I apply Retin-A just on the cyst 4 times a day I can get a lot of them to come up to an almost visible whitehead within a week. It's never a full whitehead, but you can kinda see it under a thin layer of skin. I have to poke into it with a sterilized needle just a little bit to get the pus out or it will just sit there, and sometimes go back into the skin. (By the way Differin is too mild and never worked for this, get at least Retin A .025%, preferably higher.)

- Sometimes I can get similar results to the method above by applying 50% lactic acid multiple times a day to a cyst. For a number of days. The cyst gets really red and raw...but sometimes it does stop it from receding, and it comes up to head that I can puncture.

- Vinegar. Any kind, white, apple cider, whatever. It doesn't work consistently. But once in a while I'd get a cyst that would just respond to it really quickly. As with most of these methods, I would apply with a q-tip or something multiple times a day. And then when it came up, I would puncture the top with a needle to get the stuff out.

- This one is extreme and I actually haven't tried it myself. But there are some people online who swear by it for cysts. Take a diabetic needle and fill it with 20% lactic acid solution (you can buy both legally over the counter in most states). Very gently inject it sideways at a 10-20 degree angle into the cyst. You do not need to make it hurt or push the needle in very far. It's sort of a very mild DIY cortisone shot. It gets something in the cyst to stop the cycle.

- Heating pad. This one never really worked for me. I held a searing hot pad on a stubborn cyst for 30 minutes three days in a row. I don't think it did a damned thing. That cyst took 3 cortisone shots to go away.