For the past 6 years at least, I’ve had hemorrhoids. Not small ones, mind you. Big enough for my urologist to comment on them when I had my first appointment with him.
Since they didn’t bother me in any way and were not painful, I basically tolerated their presence, although I was sometimes concerned that a partner might find them offputting.
A couple of weeks ago, I was having a shower and I noticed as was cleaning my nether regions that I could not feel them anymore. That was a nice surprise. But also puzzling.
They couldn’t have… fallen off, right ? So what happened ? Can hemorrhoids somehow get reabsorbed?
In my experience, they can come and go. Not like they fall off – more like they are prolapsing blood vessels that retract back into place and shrink, over weeks or months. I think when they recur, they’re the same ones that were there before. This is just from observation, and I don’t know if I’m interpreting things correctly.
IANAD, but I think that everyone has hemorrhoids, but the issue in some people is that they’re swollen. A swollen body part can become un-swollen, sometimes spontaneously for no particular reason.
This. I had hemorrhoids in my late 30’s and for most of my 40’s, but since I started walking daily they have receded and are no longer an issue. I haven’t had a problem for over 30 years. YMMV.
In my experience ALL hemorrhoids spontaneously subside. They appear, they last for a few days, and then they subside. I did have one that required surgery, but hemorrhoids that last for years are something completely outside my experience.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever had hemorrhoids. They seem to be defined as swollen veins in or near the rectum. I’ve had swollen tissue of some kind, but I can’t tell by feeling (in the shower) whether it’s a vein or one of those ribs of tissue that make up the rim (if you will) of the rectum. I have one of those that swells from time to time and then goes back down, always without any bleeding or pain.
I did have a digital prostate exam last week for the first time in maybe 10 years, and the doctor didn’t mention any issues there (he would have, if he had seen anything) but I don’t think anything was swollen at the time. I didn’t think to ask him to check specifically.
I’ve had them for a long time. Occasionally they bleed, leaving a mess in the bed. Mine have never been painful though. Once I had a couple removed. With one exception a couple years ago, they seem to have stopped bleeding.
Hi, long time clinical nurse here: It is common and normal for hemorrhroids to recede and flare, but they will never really go away on their own. Once the tissue is stretched out enough to be externally visible and annoying, it can never go back to normal…like before that tissue was compromised. Straining will always aggravate hemorrhoids and NOT straining will allow them to relax and recede.
I had serious anemia one summer. I also had bleeding hemorrhoids. My gastroenterologist - otherwise helpful for my many intestinal problems - insisted that hemorrhoids were almost unheard of as the cause of anemia. He tested me for everything else.
Of course, the cause was my bleeding hemorrhoids, so I had an operation. Stitches inside and out, then told to go home and eat a normal diet. Guess what a normal diet winds up as. Imagine that product expanding the site of stitches from a recent operation. I would try to distract myself from the pain by punching the wall next to the toilet, and I’m told that’s a common reaction. One of the worst pains in my life and I’ve had a cyst pressing against a nerve in my spine.
Normally, hemorrhoids are treatable early. There is better prescription medication than Preparation H. Do everything you can to avoid that operation. Everything.
I had them decades ago and they do come and go so I stopped being too concerned about them. Then a couple of years ago I got one that was persistent so I eventually asked the doctor to check it out. She said it was prominent enough and persistent enough to be worth removing surgically.
The surgeon cut it off but noticed that it seemed a bit unusual. It turned out to be anal cancer.
Chemo and radiation treatment has cleared it up, but I recommend that you don’t get anal cancer. The treatment was brutal (it basically destroys your anus, which has to heal itself) and recovery was slow. I’ll never really know for sure but I suspect the experience of taking a dump was akin to having a baby, except that it felt like I was passing a tricycle. Every time.
That sounds horrible - but ordinary anal cancer is not the worst case scenario. My dad went to have hemorrhoids removed, and a biopsy showed that he had anorectal melanoma. He passed away 3 awful months, to the day, from his diagnosis.
Oh that was nothing at all. He tied a rubber band around the vein, snipped and stuffed something up to stop the bleeding. No pain and no followup. Piece of cake.
I know there’s a bit more than this but it (ligation) does seem like a pretty easy procedure.
Why isn’t it performed as a matter of course, like warts or tooth cavities? Creams and pads are probably ok but why not just lig’ them like a skinflap?
There’s hemorrhoids and there are mucosal prolapse.
I think the long term thing is the mucusal prolapse, basically its the same as a skin tag.. a flap of mucosa hangs out.
The hemorrhoid has to be short term, because its a blood clot that is going be cleaned up .. a prolapse with blood vessels in it might also be called a hemorrhoid but its long life is due to the prolapse.
This then allows the explanation of the “cure”.
Ironically it be illhealth ( of the mucosa in the rectum or perhaps the colon generally ? ) that triggerred the flap to retract. It could just be a bout of constipation that stretched the rectum out a bit, causing some stretch injury. The general scarring associated with healing of the mucosa could then tie it all in place and thus hold the mucosa inside .. now its a polyp or mucosal flap inside the rectum now, rather than it being a prolapse because some scarring managed to create a stricture to hold it in.
I’ve had women who were moms tell me that going to the bathroom after hemorrhoid surgery was WAY worse than childbirth, because a vagina is made to be stretched out like that. A rectum is not supposed to have stitches in it, let’s just say that.
Before I went to pharmacy school, I dated a man (yes, he’s the same guy I mentioned a few days ago who played classical music in his record store to drive out troublemakers) who’d had hemorrhoids. He said, “Preparation H doesn’t do shit!” which was not a pun intended thing, but he did extol the praises of Anusol, which does contain a local anesthetic. As for the ‘roids themselves, he said, “Have you ever heated a car key over an open flame, and then pressed it against your anus?” and I replied, “Not lately.”
Some years later, when I was finally licensed and behind the counter, there was a big advertising promotion for “Hemorid, specially formulated for today’s woman.” An elderly man who had about 7 teeth asked me about that, and I told him, “It’s probably because they put it in a pink box.” He said, “Dem things ain’t gonna look at the box!” and bought it. Never saw him again, so maybe it worked.