Question from Friendsville, Maryland, USA:

I am just 31 years old, and I have had type 1 diabetes for 21 years. I take care of myself physically, am very active and generally healthy, and I am kind of scared to see these painful sores developing all over me like this. Within the past month, I have begun to develop some sort of painful, huge and ugly boils, or sores on my body. They are not in one particular spot but just kind of develop like a painful red bump, then continue to grow. The one on my face looks like a big hole, and the other ones are doing the same exact thing.

I only showed the one on my face to my doctor who said people with diabetes get these often, and he wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic. I did not make any other correlation between it and the other three until yesterday when I finally decided that I was not imagining these awful sore boils were just a coincidence. I honestly thought they were just a few stray pimples, but I read in a book today about carbuncles, and I think this is what I am experiencing.

If carbuncles are what I have, are they treatable maybe with a continual low dose of antibiotics? Are they something that will eventually pass? Are they treatable, Will I need to be treated for the rest of my life in order to make them disappear? Are they something that I will, in fact, have to endure for the rest of my life?