Hi everyone. I have read so many stories that I thought it was my duty to share my own.
About 6 months ago I learned that I needed to have hemorrhoidectomy. When I got home from the appointment with the surgeon, I started reading all these stories, which scared the c**p out of me. I could not stop thinking about it. My anxiety got worse and worse and I eventually ended up in a psychiatric hospital. The anxiety before being admitted was one of the worst things I've ever experienced. It was like hell. I was contemplating suicide, not because I wanted to die, but because I needed to escape the anxiety, which was intolerable. If you haven't experienced something like this, you really can't imagine how bad it can get.
Well, I had my surgery yesterday morning. I had the left lateral internal hemorrhoid removed. I'm not sure if anything external was done. I needed to have all three removed, but my surgeon was unwilling to do them all at once because of risk of anal stricture, so we decided to remove only the left one because it was the biggest - like the size of a grape, taking up half of my anus.
So far the pain has been extremely mild. I don't think I have experienced anything above a 5, and the average has been about a 2-3. It's 2PM right now and the last thing I took was two ibuprofen at 7AM. I am going to continue medicating, but I feel like I could probably get away without taking anything else.
No, I haven't pooped yet, so that could change everything, but hopefully it won't. I started taking colace 4 days before the surgery, so I'm hoping for something soft.
I had three banding procedures before this and all three were more painful than the surgery.
It's 5:49PM Friday. It was about 9:55AM Wednesday when I was put under, and I was awake by 12PM. I only took the opiate pain meds on Wednesday. Thursday I took 2-3 doses of 400mg Ibuprofen, and 1 dose 500mg Tylenol. I probably should have kept up with the meds more diligently because I experienced the worst pain so far this morning. However, it still wasn't as bad as the bandings. While I was having the bandings, I thought I was just being a wuss, but now that I've had hemorrhoidectomy, I'm confident that they were much more painful than they are made out to be. In fact, when I saw the surgeon who first told me I needed to have the surgery, I asked "Is it going to be more painful than the bandings?" and the surgeon's nurse literally busted out laughing, like I was so naive to think that the bandings could possibly be comparable to the surgery. And the surgeon said "Yes, it's going to be worse." Of course, he wanted to do all three columns, and I only had one done, but still they acted like it couldn't possibly compare.
Anyway, I'd say the pain this morning was a consistent 4-5 burning for a few hours until the meds kicked - kind of a mix between "This is annoying." and "Alright this sucks." But the banding was like 6-7 consistently for 48 hours, where I was taking as much medication as I possibly could (tylenol, ibuprofen) as soon as I could, taking as many sitz baths as possible, squirming around in bed, unable to really do much of anything, lashing out at people, waking up in the middle of the night from pain, constantly thinking "When is this going to be over?" Googling stuff about the pain after banding. I even told my friends how bad it was. Canceled appointments. Etc. Given all that, it wasn't that bad. After the first one, I still went back and had two more, and I wasn't dreading them or anything. I've had worse headaches. Nightmarish headaches. I also get Proctalgia fugax, which is worse than my hemorrhoidectomy pain, and probably what the spasms from hemorrhoidectomy feel like. I haven't got any of those, and that's probably why the pain has been so minimal. Actually, the worst part of the whole experience was the constant extreme hiccups I had for about 16 hours after the surgery. Those sucked. My entire face and chest were sore from them.
So, if you're terrified of the surgery, it might not be that bad. You might be able to find a surgeon who will do it in two, which could reduce pain. I'm not sure if I'm going to need another one, as the left hemorrhoid was so much bigger than the right ones that I could probably live with them. It's going to be nice to not have to push that sucker back in. It was stage 3/4. Sometimes it went back in. Sometimes it didn't.
I want to stress that I was as terrified of the surgery as anyone could possibly be. They don't admit you to the psych hospital for anxiety unless it's really really bad. I was in group therapy afterwards, and some of the people in there were suicidally depressed and had still been turned down for inpatient care. Looking at my bedroom gave me a terrible feeling as though something terrible had happened there (like I had been stabbed) just because I had experienced such terrible anxiety. It was more like terror. The feelings of terror were so bad that I was afraid to return to places where I had experienced the feelings. I was already going through an anxiety episode at the time, though, and I have hypochondria.
I know that not everyone has it this easy with the surgery, and my heart goes out to those who don't.
I also took klonopin before surgery because I found a study about how being nervous before surgery can actually make the recovery more painful. Then I took more after surgery.
Also, extreme pain can kind of create a "groove" that makes it easier to experience that same pain later on. So, my plan was to medicate the hell out of the pain during the phase I thought would be most intense, and then cut back later so as to not cause constipation. As soon as I got home, I took a colace and drank tons of water in order to flood my bowels with water. Then about an hour later, I took two 5mg oxycodones, tylenol and ibuprofen. I wasn't even experiencing pain at that point. Then, I took another oxycodone every 4 hours interspersed with tylenol and ibuprofen until bedtime. I woke myself up 4 hours after falling asleep, took ibuprofen, then woke up four hours after that and took tylenol. So, the last time I took any opiates was before bed on Wednesday. That kept me at a 2-3 most of Wednesday. Perhaps that has had something to do with how little pain I've experienced, or maybe I'm just really lucky.
Day 5:
The pain is getting worse. It's not excruciating or anything, but it's severe enough to keep me up at night. It's like a constant annoyance and nothing gets rid of it, except of course pain medication, but I had to stop taking that because it was irritating my stomach. I pooped without pain meds and it wasn't bad. I haven't had any internal pain the entire time. At least, none of the pain feels internal. I already want to have the rest of the hemorrhoids removed, and I think I will have the second surgery as soon as possible.