10 days following surgery.   By day 3 and 4, I was doing OK.   The problem was, it stopped getting better.   The BM issue was, for me, hard to motivate on.   With the Vicodin and pain from the surgery area, it was hard to tell how hard to push.   Some were difficult.   The stool softeners did not work well for me.   I finally began upping the dose on my own experience and that helped.   

Days later, it got worse.   The pain area got more specific in location and about 1 minute after passing the feces, that is when the real pain would come.   Unbearable is a word that fits well.   A little bath would help, but from day 5 or 6 till today day 10, this has come and gone.   With some, it is still just as bad.

10 surgeries in the past here.   Broken femur, (rod in, rod out), Ankle (pins in, pins out), 4 shoulder repairs, Toe - bone spurs 2X.   A couple more minor ones, but you get my point.   This is the worst of them all   BMs are like being in a turkish jail and going in to get tortured.

My biggest gripe is that the Doc did not make a full effort to tell me this is pretty much the norm.I could have lived with some discomfort.   Unless you have something going on that i worse than basic hemorrhoids, skip the knife.  Picture getting gang raped in prison and you will have 1/2 the idea of the pain you will face many times with the recovery.