The AssMan Cometh

I am officially miserable. You may think it's the constant trips to the bathroom or the stretching of my uterine ligaments or back pain from leaning over the sink to wash dishes. While those things are certainly annoying, they are a minor inconvenience compared to my real problem. I've got hemorrhoids. BAD.

I know what you're thinking: I can't believe Sue is talking about hemorrhoids on her blog. Oh stop it, yes you can.

Once you have knelt at the altar of the colorectal surgeon and said to yourself, "Oh my gosh, he totally just taped my butt cheeks open" there's really not much left in this world that can embarrass you. Except, I guess, when you have to go back a second time because the surgery failed, and the surgeon takes one look and says, "Oh my gosh! Oh wow, yep I've never seen that happen before." Really the only way to respond in that situation is with humor: "Well, I'm glad I could be your first."

Not too familiar with hemorrhoids? First, thank your lucky stars, then go to this link (not to worry, there are no visual aids). My body seems to have a built in weakness for hemorrhoids during pregnancy. The weight of the baby just puts too much pressure on my butt. I had hemorrhoids with Lily, but thankfully they were mostly internal and never got really bad. I suspect it's because I never went into labor with her or had to push her out because she was a scheduled C-section. Plus she was my first so my body wasn't ruined yet.

I got hemorrhoids with Amelia, was pretty uncomfortable for the last few weeks and had to give up on my hopes of having an unmedicated labor because I couldn't sit or lay comfortably in between contractions. The strain of pushing the baby out was more than my tooshy could handle and one of the hemorrhoids ballooned out and developed a clot (thrombosis). Despite the myriad of people that took a peek at my butt while I was in the post-pardum maternity ward (the hazards of delivering at a university hospital), they told me just to wait for it to clear up on its own.

It didn't. After just a couple days home with Amelia, I went to the colorectal surgeon who stayed late on a Friday afternoon to help relieve my misery. The thing is, as mortified as you are to drop your drawers and let someone go after your butt with a scalpel, you're so desperate for the pain to go away that all you want to do is turn around and hug the guy!

That experience and the aftermath was by far the worst physical pain I'd endured. I still maintain that I would rather give birth 10 times over than have to get another hemorrhoid surgically removed.

Fast forward a couple of years. I've tried to be vigilant in taking my stool softener and Metamucil with this pregnancy. There have been a few minor incidents, but things have cleared up within a couple of days. Then last week Mystery Boy started moving down and putting a ton of pressure on everything south of the uterus. Within three days I had a thrombosed hemorrhoid. Having been there before and knowing it was not going to just "go away", I called the butt doctor Friday morning and got in for another late afternoon appointment just in time before the weekend. The procedure was quick and Mom met me at the hospital to watch the girls, followed by a sleepover with Grammie.

I had a miserable night and by the morning I discovered that a new clot had formed by the stitches. Un-freakin-believable! Mom had a funeral to go to, so I sent the girls to play with some neighbors and called upon my Aunt Liz to drive me back up to the University of Utah hospital because I couldn't bear to stop taking my pain meds long enough to be a safe driver.

If you have to choose someone to accompany you to butt surgery, make sure it's someone with a sense of humor, and preferably a nursey type. Aunt Liz and I had a great time cracking (pun intended) butt jokes and she threatened to take pictures of the butt doctor working on my backside. Fortunately she restrained herself enough to only photograph me fully clothed.

Thank my lucky stars, the colorectal surgeon and his intern who had done the procedure on Friday afternoon were both in the hospital on Saturday as the attending surgeon and resident surgeon on call, so I had the experts fix me up again instead of some ER hack. When it comes to your anus, you only want the best!

When I had the thrombosed hemorrhoid removed after Amelia's birth and then again on Friday, the doctors completed the procedure with sutures. I was really concerned about the hemorrhoids recurring since I've still got 4 weeks to go until delivery. Dr. Peche said that sometimes a clot will come back, pooling under the sutures, but he'd never seen it happen. Leave it to me to broaden his medical horizons!

The solution was to remove the sutures, clean things up and just leave the wound open to heal. The recovery will take longer, but the risk of another thrombosis is lower. Dr. Peche said I should be healed up right about the time I deliver. Great, just in time to push a baby out and pop a few more ass grapes.

Here's the "after" picture. And the only reason I'm feeling so sassy is because my butt is still numb from the local anesthetic.

And yes, I did ask the doctor if his licence plate said ASSMAN. He said, "No, it says NAMSSA so that when people see it in their rearview mirror, it says assman." Nice.