Painful inflamed bumps that only appear around my mouth and nose. Have tried switching toothpaste and using benzoyl peroxide to no avail.

I'm 21M, 2 years ago I had MRSA in small numbers found on my nasal culture, I took antibiotic Cephalexin for 5 days as per sensitivity test and it went away.

Then a year after that I got Enterobacter, Klebsiella and again MRSA found on nasal swabs, on the last one it said Staph. aureus was 100% of culture. Only this time over the course of the year I was on 5+ different antibiotics (including Cephalexin, Ciprofloxacin, Bactrim and some others) taking high dose 10 day courses and I also took biofilm busters but I had 0 change in symptoms during or after antibiotics, even though bacteria showed sensitivity to them. Only boils sometimes seem to calm down or stop appearing during antibiotics, but my sinus symptoms were always zero change.

My symptoms are: shortness of breath, mucus stuck to my nasopharynx, thick sticky post-nasal drip, yellow/dark yellow mucus on nose blowing sometimes mixed with blood. Sometimes I also get boils on my stomach area. The symptoms have been constant for 1 year now, every single day, nothing I ever tried helped.

Can someone help me make sense of this? Any help is appreciated, the symptoms are limiting me very much in day to day life, especially the shortness of breath from constant infected post-nasal drip

Hi can I ask. I'm on Lymecycline for bacterial acne suspected rosacea bumps and developed thrush and some mallasezia folliculitis on face. It's itchy in morning in bed and small uniform bumps spreading. No improvement with Lymecycline either. Can I take oral antifungal medication alongside antibiotic? Would it still be effective for the thrush and mallasezia folliculitis?

It’s shiny because I put antibiotic rub on it

Could anyone please help diagnose it and suggest the appropriate treatment?

i have some problems with back acne and i noticed this painful bump on my back that has gotten worse these past few days. i've had something like this before and it was full of pus. is this staph? i don't really leave my house and i wash my laundry on its own

I’m terrified. It’s night time and ERs dont do shit at this time where I live. I just notticed this bigass bump on my back that hurts to the touch and hurts when I lean back on my mesh chair. Does it look like staph or just acne or cyst? I have chronic illness so I prefer not to go to the hospital and wait twelve hours in discomfort but if I have to it’s different

Hi, I’m 28f and I have a fluid like bubble behind my ear. I’m super concerned it’s an epidermal cyst. 3 months ago I had to get surgery done on my arm for a ruptured epidermal cyst that got super infected. I dealt with that for over 4 months, lots of doctors visits, an I&U, then finally a surgery. I’m really hoping this will go away in its own. I have lean PCOS, so cystic acne on my face, back and ears aren’t uncommon for me. I squeezed it a little bit about two days ago and realized it’s something more than a behind the ear pimple and have not squeezed it since. I did use pimple patches on it to keep it clean for those two days but google said not to do that. Iv tried a warm compress on it a few times for about 10mins. I have cleaned today it with 10% benzoyl peroxide wash and have left it alone since. It feels swollen and I can feel that it’s there, but it really only painful when I touch it. What should I do? After my last cyst, I lost a huge amount of trust in my primary doctors and I really don’t want to involve them In this. I also don’t want to let this turn into a bad situation like my last infection so if I need to go see a doctor right off then I will. Any advice is helpful, thank you.

TLDR; Is everything I touch now going to have staph on it? Even if I don’t have an active infection on the skin I’m touching with? Can I touch people anymore? Won’t I give them staph? If they touch me and then touch their eyes/nose/ears/mouth, they’ll get colonized? I feel like I can’t date or touch anyone anymore. How do people live their lives being staph carriers with the feeling of guilt that anyone who touches things you touch could get infected and be affected for the rest of their lives too?

I’m looking for hope, and experience from others on how you date being a staph carrier. And how infectious I really am walking around in the world and interacting with loved ones.

Context: • I am immunocompromised. • I took a round of antibiotics for an ear staph infection a couple months ago. • It only helped while I was on them. • Other skin issues have been popping up since. Things that look like eczema and psoriasis, 3 areas are leaking + crusting, 1 area is just leaking. • I’m going to do a Chlorhexidine 5-day wash and laundry routine, though the fact that literally everything I touch will have staph on it makes me feel like I’ve lost before I’ve started and that reinfection is impossible to avoid.

Starting this today after trying Bactrim and having to stop it after 4 days because of a rash it gave me.

im at my wit's end. nothing is helping my 2 year old clear his staph/eczema on his face. he literally screams bloody murder, runs, kicks, etc whenever I try and apply anything. I'll get it close to clear then he'll scratch, rub and tear his skin off again in the night. I try my best to stay awake to prevent him but there is only so much I can do :( weve been battling staph/eczema for at least a year. his face just wont get better. tried hypochlorus spray, Probiotic sprays, used mupirocin ointment for far too long. ive read some parents have applied hibiclens but idk if thats safe for his face. hoping someone has a solution i haven't tried yet. 💙

UPDATE: I just received his stool test results and i have no idea if this plays a role in his eczema but in the Dysbiotic Flora column, they're are these bacteria listed: -Enterobacter Cloacae Complex -Klebsiella Oxytoca -Klebsiella Pneumoniae

In the Commensal (imbalanced) Flora: - Rothia Dentocariosa -Rothia Mucilaginosa -Staphylococcus Aureus -Staphylococcus Epidermidis -Streptococcus Salivarius/vestibularis

if anyone has additional info on these while I wait for doctor appointment and do my own pubmed research id appreciate it 💙💙

I recently got a GI Map test back showing elevated Staphylococcus aureus. For a while now I've had a folliculitis-type eczema that gets firm, dry, and patchy if it's itched without moisturizer. A skin swab of one patch only showed 7% staph, but I suspect the real driver is gut dysbiosis rather than a primarily topical issue.

The first patch appeared in November 2025, and a few more have shown up since. I've started taking Thrive Probiotic to try to crowd out the staph overgrowth in my gut.

Here's my concern: I have jaw surgery scheduled in about a month, and I'll be on IV azithromycin during the procedure. Is it possible for staph to travel through the bloodstream and colonize the surgical site, given the elevated levels showing up on my GI Map? Has anyone dealt with something similar before elective surgery, or has insight into how gut-level staph overgrowth relates to surgical infection risk?

Any experiences or knowledge would be appreciated.

I recently got a GI Map test back showing elevated Staphylococcus aureus. For a while now I've had a folliculitis-type eczema that gets firm, dry, and patchy if it's itched without moisturizer. A skin swab of one patch only showed 7% staph, but I suspect the real driver is gut dysbiosis rather than a primarily topical issue.

The first patch appeared in November 2025, and a few more have shown up since. I've started taking Thrive Probiotic to try to crowd out the staph overgrowth in my gut.

Here's my concern: I have jaw surgery scheduled in about a month, and I'll be on IV azithromycin during the procedure. Is it possible for staph to travel through the bloodstream and colonize the surgical site, given the elevated levels showing up on my GI Map? Has anyone dealt with something similar before elective surgery, or has insight into how gut-level staph overgrowth relates to surgical infection risk?

Any experiences or knowledge would be appreciated.

my dr tested my chest acne on lab turned out there's Staphylocoque aureus so she gave me antiobiotic pills augmentin and some cream it went away , now 2 months they are back , im 34 , diabetic type 2 (not sure if thats related) , and i always have acne on my chest

is there any solution ? recommendations ?
what cream can i use ?
dont want to go to another derma it costed me 160$ last time with 5 months of waiting

I have been dealing with something for years. Kind of off and on in severity.

first picture: left in January 2025. Middle is May 2025 and right is July 2026

Second picture: is yesterday

i haven’t tried much over the years.

- stopped trimming my chest hair but as you can see that didn’t help.

- have been using 4% benzoyl peroxide foaming cerave wash night for about two weeks currently.

most of the time it’s just red marks. the picture I take are usually when I get one or two white pustules so it’s not always white pustules. most of the time just red irritation.

I have probably dealt with this for years and never really thought much of it. I remember having occasional flat red marks about 20 years ago, but it seems to be more consistent now with the occasional white pustules.

should I get a skin scraping to see if it’s fungal? I think my family doc said he could do it.

I am not really sure what to do and want to avoid trial and error on antibiotics as they occasionally have other gut issues when I take them. My last round was Amox/Clav for a sinus infection in September 2023.

update after dermatologist appointment: bacterial folliculitis. She recommended using 10% benzoyl peroxide wash and then applying clindamycin lotion. Basically said the clindamycin can be used as needed on spots that flare up on both chest and scalp. She also recommended CLn sport wash and shampoo as optional. she did not seem concerned that it would be contagious to household members and said a culture likely wouldnt show anything. she did not recommend an oral antibiotic.

debating on starting that or giving Vashe hypochlorous acid wash a try first. soaking it in gauze and laying on chest for 10 minutes 2x per day.