Coping With Hemorrhoidectomy

I had mine done 1st Sept 08. 3 days now. All tolerable until I actually tried to have a real BM on the 3rd day. Like trying to poo razor blades or rather I wish I could poo razor blades as it feels like they are still in there. Have taken stool softeners (to no effect). Lots of fluid (to no effect). Lots of prunes (to no effect). Eaten fruit and fiber (to no effect).

I have now started on the laxatives and hope I haven’t misjudged the dose as this difficulty may be more due to the pain rather than actually being constipated. This might be why some of the people say they get diarrhea, they aren’t really constipated just in pain.

Mine were 4th degree hemorrhoids and I had never experienced this level of pain with them in fact they only flared up once a year or so. But 4th degree is said to be pretty bad and in the future (I am 48 now) there could be issues with clots and other associated complications. Also I have a lazy bowel to retrain and I had to cancel out that the hemorrhoids weren’t making it worse.

The hemorrhoids were most likely aggravated by constipation and laxative use to start with but then it becomes a vicious circle as one symptom starts to influence the other. The other thing to note is that hemorrhoids are varicose veins and having one may be an indicator or a susceptibility to the other. I began to get varicose veins on my legs when I was a teenager so for me it seems to be in my genetic make-up (thank the parents). Also my work requires me to sit for long hours and so it all tallies up.
Having the operation wasn’t going to kill me, its not major surgery and I’ve even read of people leaving the hospital on the day and I had to consider the long term health of my bowel. Image all this for someone aged, fragile and infirmed. So I did what I thought best but I as I sit on the toilet, crying in pain I wish it could be put out of the misery or put under an anesthetic or almost anything else to get through it and just have a good poo.

Society seems to be free to talk unashamedly about taking in food and how important this is but so very little coverage is given to how it should come out. How many people out there have been able to speak as openly about the rear-end business as they do about the front end eating business? It is even seen as something to be ashamed or embarrassed about which shoves it aside even more. If I had been told what I know now about the importance of good healthy poos and toilet habits when the constipation first began I probably would have been able to treat them before they got so bad.

The thing that I find really underhanded, almost deceitful is why so many surgeons (not all of course but by what I have read on the forums a good percentage of), do not fully explain the possible extent of this procedure and that it can be okay or it may be really unpleasant or somewhere in-between. I read that about half of the population have hemorrhoids by age 50 so why is it that only when it gets to the operation stage that we get to hear so much about it?

I think I am in the middle. 2 days after I went out for a coffee, short trip to the supermarket, can pick stuff up and with some painkiller have been able to sleep quite well at night. But the BM is a big stress especially since I suffered from constipation prior to the operation. I was sitting on the toilet crying from the pain and the frustration of trying so hard for such a tiny tiny poo. I wished that there had been another way to deal with the hemorrhoids but I really needed to get them done rather than spending more years of ignoring them.

I hope everyone who reads the forums get over the recovery as fast and easily as possible. It appears the survival rate is very high. So best of luck.