Well, my first Bartholin's cyst came about while I was on a ferry from Athens to Santorini, Greece. I woke up, and the cyst was about the size of a large grape. I went to the ER in Santorini, and the doctor there prescribed some antibiotics, which didn't work. I came back to Rome, where the pain eventually got so horrendous that I had to go the ER in hopes of acquiring pain killers. The doctors said it was too large, and had to be either drained or the cyst removed surgically. I spent the night, thinking I was going to be going into surgery the next day. Instead, another doctor looked at it, and said it couldn't be operated on because the abscess was too inflamed, and needed to be drained at that moment. He lanced open the abscess with a scalpel, then injected the "deflated balloon" with hydrogen peroxide. This was all performed without any sort of sedative or local/general anesthesia. I was not aware that physical pain could occur at such a level, and I screamed like I never knew I could scream! Has anyone else had drainage of an abscess/cyst without any sort of pain "assistance"???