FTISLAND singer LEE HONG GI has admitted that he has been suffering from “hidradenitis suppurativa” for a long time.
On December 18, a video was posted on the YouTube channel “화농성 한선염에 빛을 비추다” operated by Novartis Korea under the title “제 종기의 이름을 찾아주세요 (Litt: Please find the name of my abscess)”.
In the video, LEE HONG GI appeared and said, “I have suffered from a disease called tonsillitis since middle school.” Purulent tonsillitis is a rare chronic inflammatory skin disease that affects more than 10,000 people in Korea.
“Sometimes the illness would get so bad that I would go out during shows or concerts would get canceled because I couldn’t move, so many things were canceled. I couldn’t walk, move, sing or get on the plane. There were times when I had a high fever and felt a little embarrassed to talk to anyone.” said LEE HONG GI.
LEE HONG GI confessed: “Now there is the correct name of the disease “Hidradenitis Suppurativa”, but when I was young, when I suffered from this disease, people around me would say “Hide”, and a lot of people thought that was the case. “
“It hurts even more just before it bursts. This (the degree of pain) varies slightly from size to size. There are some that look like small acne spots, but as they get bigger, I feel a pain that can’t be explained in words. My blood pressure was high because I was suppurating. That’s why, my condition was so serious, I wore extra underwear.“
“It hurt me so much that I thought (as a youngster), ‘I wish Santa would give me a present for my butt if he had one,‘” he said. “I thought other people’s faces and other places were like pimples because they were concentrated in the buttocks and groin armpits with the sebum, but it’s not the depth of pain like the acne right now. It starts when I’m stiff and it’s thrilling.”
LEE HONG GI said, “It took a long time to break through the ‘abscess’ and spread it to the people around me. I had to say, ‘I have to stop filming because of this illness, I might be sick, I do not do it. I think I can get on the plane, I have to cancel the performance, but it was too difficult to open up at this point. I was embarrassed because I didn’t know how to explain this. People and other members thought it was an intentional illness. When I was a trainee, the members wore gloves and applied the medications prescribed at the hospital. After seeing the process of removing pus after surgery, the members thought it must hurt a lot.“
LEE HONG GI also revealed an episode in which he was treated for an abscess in the army. He said: “The lump got so big that the disease spread near the anus. I had to cut it down to the flesh next to the anus, but that was the most embarrassing and the most difficult, and as the pus moved slightly to the side, the extracorporeal core also formed. I was so stressed. So they had to do surgery. They allowed me to take a bath sitting alone in hot water for about 20 minutes. Little by little, my colleagues and superiors all heard about it. Surprisingly, there were many people in the army who understood this disease.“
LEE HONG GI said: “Once I said it, everything was fine. It was very worrying to talk about it on television, but once I came out, things got better.”
Journalist: Shawn
Translator: Shawn
Source: 화농성 한선염에 빛을 비추다
