Tuesday, September 02, 1997 - Rectal Surgery

I'm going to think twice next time I use any phraseology about "reaming someone a new asshole".

There are a number of reasons the number of Random Blts has decreased recently - I've been very busy with client projects and Direct X 5 beta testing.

More recently, though, I've been reamed a new asshole.

It all started when I stayed up for about 30 hours straight programming on a client project.

Somehow - and I really don't understand how - I managed to develop a hemorrhoid.

I've had 'em before, and it's not a huge deal normally. And I've really been loading up on the roughage lately... but maybe the change in diet started it. I dunno.

But somehow, by sitting on my poor butt for about 30 hours I managed to turn an ordinary "it'll go away by itself" hemorrhoid into a 'clot'. According to the one paragraph I could find in the Doctor's Book of Home Remedies, a clot is "really painful."

This is an understatement.

I had my wife take a look at it - a task she found fairly distasteful, to say the least - and she said, "Yup - worse than pregnancy." She found a doctor referral for me and off I went to see the Rectal Specialist.

(I have a follow-up appointment later this week - do you think I'll have the guts to ask Dr. Herman how he chose to be a Rectal Specialist?)

He says, "well, if it was just one, I'd make a little incision right now and I'd be your best friend for life." He said this because he knew my ass hurt bad.

But ... somehow I have a series of clots! Shit! I have to have outpatient surgery. It's called, appropriately, a hemmorrhoidectomy.

But they should call it "open butt surgery", because, even though it only takes 20 minutes, you get a general anesthetic, and after the long-lasting novocaine wears off, and you get home, and it starts to hurt worse than before the surgery, that you get out a mirror, and a flashlight to see what the hell is going on, and you see a truly horrific sight.

I suspect not too many of you have examined your anus with a mirror and a flash light. You might have been curious and used a mirror, but I bet you didn't get a flashlight out! It was quite illuminating.

There was a huge 1 and 1/2 inch scar. There were stiches - several of them. But most importantly there was a quarter-inch hole in the skin next to my anus. It was bleeding and it hurt like hell.

The only sure-fire fix, besides enough pain medication to put me to sleep, was a 'sitz' bath, a truly wonderful invention where you basically just sit in a bath tub with nice warm soothing water.

Several days of healing went by, and things improved overall. Although that extra hole was a bit disturbing. But later on it started bleeding! All by itself!

I called the nurse and she told me not to worry about it.

The next day I called the doctor and he told me not to worry about it, as long as it was draining.

The next day I was looking in the mirror, you know, just to check up on things, and I noticed this horrible puss-looking stuff in the scar and the extra hole.

Unfortunately for my wife, she got called into duty again, and she had to verify if this stuff was puss or what. She said it looked like the time my son Sam got his knee infected when he slid along a sidewalk and pieces of dirt got embedded in his skin.

I called the doctor (it was yesterday, Labor Day), and I got the doctor on call, who said it wasn't too bad if the puss was draining away, but it was good to play it safe and go to the ER and have a real doctor check it out.

So, I went to the ER, and now I'm on antibiotics, and things are generally healing well, although I still have an extra asshole.

There's really no moral to this story, except that I'm 38 years old now (the day after the surgery was my birthday!), and I'm going to have to give up all the all-night programming sessions, even if something is urgently due.

But after this experience, I can definitely say that getting reamed a new asshole is no longer a curse I would wish on anybody.

Except maybe ...