Hi, everyone. I'll try to make this short. During my 6th month of pregnancy, I developed a couple external hemorrhoids. One is gone, leaving a skin tag. The other still swells with harsh bowel movements. A couple months ago, I had a slight case of the flu and subsequent diarrhea for a day. After that, my bowels felt very irrtitated - I felt intense burning, pressure, incomplete bowel movement and just the general feeling that something was IN there. This lasted for a couple weeks, so I went to my gyno who checked me for possible prolapse (rectocele). She said I was fine as far as that went, and she also did a digital anal exam to check for internal hemorrhoids. She said she didn't find anything, so she referred me to an internal med doctor. He, too, did a digital rectal exam and said that he *could* feel what seemed to be hemorrhoids. (I had severely irritated my bowels just the night before while stupidly straining to go to the bathroom, so maybe that's why he could feel them when the gyno couldn't.) He gave me a pamphlet on fiber intake and prescribed some suppositories to use for a week to help with the irritation.

I only needed to use one of the suppositories and I was feeling fine. I upped my fiber intake and was going to the bathroom regularly and all was well. Then last weekend, I was an idiot and bought a bag of Oreo cookies. We normally don't keep much junk food in the house so my body isn't real used to it anymore, plus Oreos have always been notorious for giving me diarrhea. Long story short, after eating like 6 cookies for 2 days, I was having diarrhea. Right away, the burning and pressure and discomfort started up again. I started using the suppositories, but this time, they don't seem to be helping much.

I'm just wondering if those of you with internal and external hemorrhoids could give me a list of your symptoms? The internal med doctor told me that if I kept having problems, to call back and schedule an anoscopy. I don't have insurance so I don't want to do that unless I have to. What I'm concerned about, is that I also have HPV, and I'm worried that those are somehow internal warts. I don't really see how they could be, though, since my gyno, who knows I have HPV, said she couldn't feel anything and never mentioned warts being a possibility with my symptoms. But I'm a hypochondriac and am still not convinced. Anyway, here are my symptoms:

- External hemorrhoid swells with harsh (constipation, diarrhea) bowel movements
- Burning sensation in bowels after diarrhea that lasts for at least a few days
- Feeling of pressure and of having something "in" there when I'm having a flare-up
- Some anal itching at various times, usually just when having a flare-up
- Feel fine when I'm having normal bowel movements
- No blood on toilet paper after any bowel movements, even during flare-ups

I wouldn't think this would be warts because I doubt they would only hurt when I have diarrhea or something. I would think they'd continually hurt. Plus, as I said, I do have a visible external hemorrhoid, and I do have IBS so I've gone through various periods of constipation and diarrhea for the last 10 years of my life so it would make sense that I'd have some internal ones as well. I'm just worried though because with everything I look up online, I never read anything about internal hemorrhoids actually hurting? I should also mention that my 2nd to last pap showed mild dysplasia and I opted to not treat it. My following pap was normal, so it could probably be assumed my body finally built up an immunity to it and therefore I shouldn't be experiencing other physical symptoms of HPV.

Any input would be greatly appreciated...