I made that nitroglycerin rectal gel quite a few times back in the day. It was very easy: 3 grams (or 1 packet) of topical nitro gel, used by heart patients, mixed with 27 grams of Vaseline and packaged in a small jar. Apply to the anus as needed.
It promotes blood flow to the area and enhances healing.
I feel your pain. Literally. I’ve been dealing with this off and on for years. Guess what? Once you get one, it’s VERY easy to get it again. So you’ll be going to the bathroom and just see blood everywhere and you know you’re in for a world of pain. And, in my experience, the healing process is the worst. The sharp, stabbing spasms as you’re just trying to sit or go to sleep, the ones that just make you sick to your stomach, those are the ones that make you wish you had access to some good ol’ street drugs.
As for advice? Stool softeners were good for me. I took 2 a day, sometimes 3 and I try to start taking them again if I ever find things…firming up. I’m terrified of getting ripped up my brown-eyed winker again and will deal with borderline diarrhea in hopes of keeping everything in one piece. I hear that in severe, chronic cases that surgery can be the only option but…I’d rather go through life without having ‘asshole surgery’ on my list of previous medical procedures.
TMI: Mr VOW must use the same chin-to-knees sitting position when he graces the throne. The Gawdawful cleanup chore of toilet bowl scrubbing is made so much worse with unmentionable body products splatting under the seat and even sometimes behind the seat.
Sit up, dammit! Get a Squatty-Potty. Or pick up the toidy brush and also use those disinfectant cleaning wipes to clean up the plumbing after you do your morning constitutional!
~VOW
Aren’t bodily fluids just so special? Jeez, it didn’t occur to me the clean-up issue. I might be convinced to put a little sign right at eye level of sitting on the pot, urging personal responsibility.
“Our aim is to keep this bathroom clean. Your aim will help.”
Monday I was diagnosed with, and treated for (ya don’t want to know!), a perirectal abscess . . . so, I, almost literally, feel your pain.
CMC fnord!
Whoa! Not only are those extremely painful, they also smell horrible and can be very difficult to treat, especially if you smoke. If you do, quit, or that thing will never heal. :eek:
Take my word, folks, don’t Google any of these diseases. You won’t like it. God, I hope you both recover.
trade you … spent a week getting fluids pumped into me [5 bags per 24 hours with added potassium] thanks to intractable diarrhea … to make it understandable to those who know pharmaceuticals lomotil 4x day combined with 2 4mg loperimide washed down with a dose of liquid kaopectate [doctors orders] with pretty much no slowing of gut motility. [personal best time 17 minutes mouth to asshole, when you get identifiable shreds of lettuce and bits of watermelon and haven’t had them for a week prior 17 minutes after eating, it is pretty much a great marker of speed …]
I can however recommend for the average sitz bath 1 tb each powdered baking soda and epsoms salts [stupid brand i get is in large crystals, I blenderize it into a powder to get fast dissolving and make it easier to measure] with the lovely warm water. Buffers the hell out of the poor digestive juice bathed butt … We just bought a vintage ‘hip bath’ to install, seriously can’t wait for mrAru to get around to renovating the plumbing bits in it.
For me, the worst Google Images were for the perianal abscesses in babies. :eek: Apparently this is not unusual, although I don’t remember ever being involved in treating a case of that.
I collect old medical books, and have a book (ETA from the 1950s) about colorectal disease that includes before-and-after pictures of anal areas tattooed with cinnabar (AKA mercury sulfide), which sounded worse than the disease. Nowadays, when all other measures fail, this treatment is still used, albeit with methylene blue, which is a fairly inert dye.
Don’t Google any of this on a public or work computer. Trust me on this.
Speaking of…
I don’t know how much of an outlier this was for my surgeon or in general but,
This was the third perirectal abscess my surgeon treated;
A In her career.
B In the last year.
C In the last month.
D That day.
[SPOILER]D That day!
Like, what the fuck, are these things contagious or something?
(I know they’re not.)[/SPOILER]CMC fnord!
Bumped - any updates for those of us who recently reached something close to this point? I have had hemorrhoid problems for decades, but never this bad, and neither Preparation H nor witch hazel wipes (e.g. Tucks) seem to do much good. To make things worse, I have a feeling the one decent kind of exercise I do - a stationary bike - is making things worse, mainly due to the seat.
That sounds like the name of a really terrible healthcare plan…
It had mostly healed after a few weeks. It can take a while. The key is to avoid hard stools, and the key to that is to avoid dehydration and to consume sufficient dietary fiber. I occasionally supplement with a Benefiber-type thing if I’m low on fiber on a particular day.
If you are having trouble passing stool, don’t strain. Get up and do something else for a while. Move around, stay on your feet, until you feel the urge to go again.
An anal fissure is not quite the same thing as haemorrhoids, but both can often afflict the same person.
