Hemorrhoids Are The Devil's Spawn

Can we talk about the absolute freaking HELL that is hemorrhoid pain?!

I mean, I know you’re not supposed to talk about your butt hole in polite company–or probably any company, now that I think about it–but sometimes you have to throw the rules out the window. Hemorrhoids are a super common side effect of pregnancy, birth, and life with a butt hole, and we deserve to commiserate.

I’m not a doctor, so I can’t tell you exactly what happens, medically speaking, to cause a hemorrhoid. But I can tell you that it feels like your ass is inside out, and the pain is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

Give me 40 more hours of fruitless induced labor with a malfunctioning epidural. C-section recovery? Bring that shit on. Give me another kidney stone or two. I’ll take raging mastitis again, or a broken wrist once a year for life.

But please, dear sweet baby Jesus, save my ass from the pain of another giant hemorrhoid, or as I like to call them “butt lumps from hell.”

Hemorrhoids and pregnancy go hand and hand. I got my first hemorrhoid when I was pregnant with my first baby. Of course, I thought it was painful. I now realize that what I felt back then on my 27-year-old, first-time mom ass could best be described as “mild discomfort.”

I’m now nine months pregnant for the third time. I’m 35 years old. My ass is older and wearier, and the ligaments that once held my uterus in place have retired. The pressure I feel 24/7 from the giant child in my body is immense, and my asshole is rebelling.

Last week, I woke up one morning and thought, “Hmm, my butt doesn’t feel awesome. Wonder what’s going on.”

Well, I figured it out the moment I sat on the toilet. Hemorrhoids might live in your ass, but they make non-ass-related things feel like some kind of medieval torture.

Why does it hurt to pee when you have a hemorrhoid? BEATS ME. But the simple act of sitting on the toilet makes the whole situation feel like it’s about to become a life-threatening emergency. Can butts explode? Hemorrhoids might make you Google that. Ask me how I know.

Just sitting there without anything supporting your rear end increases the pressure by a zillion times, and it’s Too. Damn. Much.

I don’t even think we need to discuss pooping. I mean, I could try but I keep blacking out from flashbacks. The pain. The blood. The tears. The kids knocking on the door to ask me to make popcorn at seven o’clock in the morning, for some inexplicable reason.

Can’t a mom just suffer through the bowel movement from hell in peace?

Although, to be fair, hemorrhoids hurt no matter what you do. Sitting, lying down, standing, squatting, writhing…nothing really brings any relief. So, you might as well try to carry on and make the damn popcorn. (Or in my case, host a holiday dinner for 25 of my husband’s colleagues at our home.)

After 24 hours of agony, I called my OB for suggestions on OTC remedies. He told me with my level of pain, I should head to the obstetric ER to make sure it wasn’t “thrombosed.” From what I can tell that means “full of blood clots,” but I could be wrong. I didn’t ask for too many details because the idea made my head swim, and I almost puked.

What I did do is make my husband look at photos of thrombosed hemorrhoids, hold them up next to my actual asshole and try to decide if the ER was the place to be. The man tried his best, but ended up saying, “It’s really hard to tell what I’m looking at because I pretty much can only see the hemorrhoid. There’s not much actual asshole to assess.”

And that is why, one hour later, I arrived at the OB emergency room where I described my symptoms to the nurse at reception in front of approximately 15 horrified strangers.

This lovely, helpful nurse followed me into the bathroom while I peed in a cup to ask me a bunch of questions about domestic violence. She said it’s standard protocol for pain complaints. I totally appreciate that, but the pain in my ass was, in fact, just my own ass, and not my sweet husband, who had just spent his morning ass-essing my bleeding rectum.

Once in the room, I was instructed to lie on my side and show my swollen, bleeding ass crack to no fewer than ten strangers. After having a little conference about my anus, the doctors and nurses on call determined that my hemorrhoid was, in fact, purple and not blue.

Bully for me.

That meant no surgery would be necessary, but no worries! They could send me home with a cream that would likely shrink it in FIVE TO SEVEN DAYS. Yay!

I would have laughed out loud at the absurdity of the fact that they thought this was good news, but I couldn’t because laughing hurts like a bitch when you have a hemorrhoid of this magnitude.

Luckily, in addition to the slowest-acting steroid cream known to mankind, they also sent me home with a prescription for the world’s most obscure anesthetic cream.

Nobody carries it, but never fear! I was able to track it down the next morning by special ordering it. Oh! And paying out of pocket because my insurance refused to cover it.

Worth it. It must be made of pixie dust, angel tears and ground unicorn horn. Slap that goo on my butt crevice, and for the next two or three glorious hours, I was able to pee without weeping.

I’m seven days in now, and I have some semblance of a normal asshole again. The bleeding slowed to a manageable level a couple days ago, and then stopped.

It’s not totally healed, but at least I no longer have to ask my husband to spray my butt crack with Dermaplast to numb it enough that I can stand putting the steroid and numbing creams on it.

Things are looking up.

Speaking of my husband, in case you’re worried about his trauma level, he’s fine. He is already inquiring about my recovery to see if we can resume getting it on. I can’t imagine how he has gotten the mental images of my close-to-thrombosed butt hole out of his mind. He’s somehow managed.

I know I’m supposed to say that seeing this baby’s tiny, beautiful face will be worth it all. Well, I’ll be numb from the waist down at that point anyway, so I’m sure in that magical moment, I’ll totally agree.

But today this searing butt hole pain is some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my whole life. “Worth it” or not, hemorrhoids can suck it.