Gross Anatomy

Anyone who knows me in real life or from previous blogs knows I’m generally a little too open about my body and its weirdness. Too Much Information is my normal state of existence. My nearest and dearest all hear about every burp, tickle and ooze.

This, however, is definitely TMI, even for me. But I am compelled to share it, just because even though it’s GROSS the eternal twelve-year-old that runs rampant in the vacant warehouse of my brain won’t shut up until I tell it SOMEWHERE. Also, there’s a punchline, and it’s a good one.

So if you don’t want to read it, don’t. If you do read on, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Still here? Then you are a disgusting person and we’ll get along just fine.

I have what’s known as Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Basically, when the doctor asks, “When was your last regular bowel movement,” my answer is, “Regular?” I go back and forth on the loose/bunged-up pendulum with generally no pausing in the middle.

There are two primary effects of this on me:

1. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom with intense cramps. Women with IBS say they are very similar to labor pains.
2. As a result of all the straining, I have moderately severe hemorrhoids.

I had to take a day off Friday because of a severe bout of IBS, which pretty much left me in the bathroom from Thursday night until about noon on Friday.  Once it was all over, though, I found something new on my backside. A painful lump, about the size of one of my fingers down to the second knuckle.

It wasn’t in the same spot as my ‘roids, but close. Maybe it was just a new, really big one? There was no bleeding and no pain beyond what I normally felt from the ‘roids after an extended bout, so I didn’t rush off to a clinic. I smeared on my normal topical cream and waited to Monday to call my doc.

So I’m at work Monday morning, and went to the bathroom to go number two. During the standard, tissue-based cleanup procedure, something disturbing was discovered.

It had popped.

There was blood, yes, but the blood was kind of oily and creamy, in a way that screamed PUS at me. Let me tell you, you never want pus coming out of your backside.

Once it had stopped…seeping…I called my doc. No appointment for two weeks. I got an appointment for an after-hours clinic.

The doc there listened to my story and had me drop trou so he could take a look.

I tell you, one of biggest things you never want to hear a doctor say while he’s looking in the crack of your ass is a suprised “huh!”

It’s an abscess. In my bout of straining I managed to somehow tear a hole under the skin above my asshole which filled up with blood and pus. The fact that it popped and was draining by itself was a good thing apparently, because otherwise I’d have to have it lanced, which is EXCEEDINGLY PAINFUL.

So. Three times a day (four on weekends) I soak my ass for five minutes in a bath of epsom salts and keep the whole area clean with an antibacterial soap. I have an appointment with my regular doc in two weeks to see how the progress is going. It is going down slowly. It also popped again today, draining a lot of the pus out, so I think it’s healing.

The grossest part?

Doc told me to keep an eye one it, to make sure that, “no poo was coming out of the abscess.”

Apparently there’s a chance it’s not an abscess at all, but a fistula, which is where a scar or tear in your large intestine fuses with your skin and forms a tube allowing fecal matter to exit through another aperture.

In other words, I strained so hard on the toilet I very well may have torn myself a new asshole.

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