I suffered from hemorrhoids for years before I finally summoned the courage to mention it to my doctor. It was an extremely humbling experience.
@BenDover Ah, yes. The ever so embarrassing hemorrhoids. Only when they became ever so painful did I finally swallow my pride and go to the doctor for help. “Hey, doc, I’ve got . . . uh . . . ummm . . . well . . . it’s like . . . yeah . . . . how do I say this . . . ya know what. How about I just show you.”
Eventually, I became less embarrassed talking about my pain in the butt. When the pain became unbearable I did the unthinkable: I had the hemorrhoidectomy surgery. The surgery itself was not so bad, mostly because I was completely out of it with the anesthesia. And the three days in the hospital were not so bad because I got plenty of pain medication in my IV drip-line.
At first, it was a little embarrassing when doctors and nurses came by to inspect the stitches and the healing progress, and as they paraded more and more students though, it became less and less embarrassing to have my derrière on display. Eventually, my modesty went completely out the window, and I didn’t care when they brought the candy stripers and cafeteria workers by to take a gander at the goods. Even Seymour Butts came through for the obvious reason: He wanted to see more butts.
So, the hospital stay, with the heavy help of the IV narcotics, was not so bad.
HOWEVER, the six-week recovery was another matter. It was the most excruciatingly painful recovery out of all my 26 surgeries. Every bowel movement wreaked havoc on my bum hole. During the first two weeks, every day it was one step forward with healing and then the bowel movement dragged me two steps backwards as it ripped out all the healing and then some. The next two weeks it evened out. It was still very painful, but every day it was one step forward with the healing and one step backward with the bowel movement. Progress finally came in the next two weeks with two steps forward and only one step backward.
Back at work, things were kind of interesting. Every so often, a guy would approach me in a hallway. He would furtively look left and right to make sure no one was within earshot. “Hey, buddy,” the whispered. “I heard you had a . . . uh . . . ummm . . .?” And I would interject, “A hemorrhoidectomy.”
Yup, they were embarrassed to talk about hemorrhoids, too.