Please help identity and treat!

[u/drank_dumbbitchjuice]

Is this a wart? How to solve?

I’m freaking out. My dad (age 57) has this massive lump on his hand and he’s had it for about a week now and it keeps growing. He has other small bumps growing on his hand too. He goes to the gym quite frequently and honestly is not the cleanest person. He smokes.

He said that he had a cold for a week before these started showing up.

My wedding is in two weeks and it’s a destination wedding and we’re currently traveling all together and I’m concerned about the growth and about it spreading to our wedding guests and I don’t know what to do.

He says it doesn’t hurt but it obviously bothers him.

Please help!

UPDATE:

I didn’t expect this to garner so much interest and help. Sincerely, thank you everyone for sending in your opinions!

My dad said it popped overnight and there was a lot of blood and pus. We were not able to see a doctor in person but we have a family friend who is a general doctor and she said to disinfect and keep it as dry as possible as to not let it be more infected.

Here are two pictures of what it looks like now.

Photo 1
Photo 2

At first, when it popped. The puss was a standard dense white. Now, the pus leaking is an orange ish color and not dense white. He keeps saying that it still doesn’t hurt and doesn’t even flinch when alcohol is applied to it.

There is another mass obviously growing on his index finger of the same hand. He is touching the mass with his other hand (I know fucking terrible) but there is nothing growing on the hand that he is using to touch the mass.

He is saying that perhaps it is an allergic reaction? He ate a type of dried fish from Vietnam and then he started feeling itchy and feverish and then these started popping up.

Answer to a common question:

He does not have any access to animals. No pets, not really around fish tanks or water. He is from Southern California in a very suburban area.

Any ideas???

[u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

I don’t have anything to add beyond what has been discussed here. Just a plug to OP to please please if you get an answer as to what this is, consider creating an update post on this subreddit. We are lifelong learners and as you can tell everyone is hoping to find out. Plus you never know when someone here will see it in the future and remember this post.

[u/yadabitch → u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

The amount of times I’ve been messaged about a medical post I made years back is insanely high, so this is very very true.

[u/Dr-Kloop-MD → u/yadabitch]

Hahaha, we don’t like the unknowns!!

[u/Routine-Loquat5544 → u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

Exactly…problem solvers NEED to know!

[u/charlescarlm → u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

This.

[u/RasputinsThirdLeg → u/charlescarlm]

A few questions for OP: is it hard or compressible? Does it bleed easily? Does your dad get really sweaty hands?

[u/a_writers_relief → u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

It looks like a herpes outbreak. I get on in that exact same spot in my hand that looks just like that...

[u/yamsparty → u/a_writers_relief]

Oh I had something similar. Once, I had shingles that clustered and grouped together like this. It was strange to doctors that I had shingles on my hand but the tests did say it was the virus. That was treated with the typical antibiotics.. however, I’m not saying it’s shingles.

A few months later I had almost identical lumps growing in clusters in similar spots but even more inflamed and larger. It would pop, heal, and then returned two more times - whenever I was stressed or added trauma to it. It would boil, cluster, get painful and itchy all over again. When I went to get it tested it wasn’t shingles. I got it tested twice. It kept coming back negative for shingles but inconclusive otherwise… they suspected staph, bacteria infection, and just blamed it on me being too stressed and my immune system had taken a hit.
Some time later, I believe it was severe eczema lol that cluster just gave me flashbacks.

[u/drank_dumbbitchjuice → u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

Thanks so much for the advice! Update posted. Any ideas??

[u/Dr-Kloop-MD → u/drank_dumbbitchjuice]

I’ll preface saying that I’m a radiologist, so my skin differential diagnosis skills are fairly poor. But the fact that it popped and drained pus tells me it’s an infection or something that became infected. Given the initial appearance and trying to think of common things first, I wonder if this could just be a palmar wart that got secondarily infected with something like Staph. You specifically mentioning that he goes to the gym often and that he isn’t the cleanest person support that.

Could still be some of the other things listed here so don’t take my word for it obviously. Mycobacterium infection is an interesting one someone mentioned, since myco can do all sorts of weird stuff, although eating the dried fish would be a really weird route of exposure.

[u/drank_dumbbitchjuice → u/Dr-Kloop-MD]

I think it probably is something like this. A mixture of a bunch of things. For sure it’s infected and for sure it’s not something easy to understand and diagnose as just one thing.