Tammynoska

Suzy, okay, the number one thing for you to do now is to keep your stools soft and self-propelling. Now I learned one thing for myself, just popping in the stool softeners didn't work. I paid the price dearly for the first 3 weeks with stools that reinjured me. This isn't a joke: if you aren't careful now, you CAN break a stitch and have to be repaired. I don't want to scare you, but I don't want you to downplay your problem. My nurse told me this problem exists for the first 21 days, so one has to be careful to keep stools soft and self-moving.

Okay, here's how I solved my problem with the stool softeners not being enough to soften my stools.

I first took 3 stool softeners, all at dinner. It wasn't enough. I drank with them around 15 glasses of water. Still wasn't enough. Then I tried taking them right at bedtime. Didn't work. What would happen is the first part of the stool would be hard enough to injure me, and the last half then was soft. So I figured that what I ate for breakfast also needed to be softened.

So I then took one 100 mg colace at the end of my breakfast, with 2 cups of water. Then at my last meal, supper, I had two 100 mg colace at the end of dinner with which I drank 4 cups of water. In-between meals I chugalugged what added up to 14 cups of water.

Believe it or not, that alone wasn't enough, and I can't tell you how important it was then to add to the colace:

3 cups of hot, soupy oatmeal at breakfast. What I'd do is first thing when I wake up have 2 servings of Quaker instant oatmeal, on the soupy side, and hot, hot. Plus at the same time have a hot, hot glass of 2 cups of water. That would get my stools going, plus add needed bulk to make sure my butt hole wouldn't shrink as it healed. My husband bought me these things to my bed, because if I got up before eating, my bowels sometimes wanted to go, but if I made the mistake of trying to go before having the oatmeal and hot water, I could get half a bowel movement, somewhat hard, and the rest would stay stuck in my butt and hurt me.

Then after I would go with my oatmeal, I would have (and still do) another serving of a package of instant regular oatmeal with a turkey patty and a blended drink of rice milk and a banana.

The reason I split it up my breakfast this, is I usually couldn't finish the first 2 servings of oatmeal and the hot water before I would have to go. But, I found that 2 packages of oatmeal wasn't enough bulk, so I had to add one more package that I would eat after I went. Protein at each meal, like the turkey patty, I found important to help me heal.

Now, the 3 cups of oatmeal and the 3 colace split up WEREN'T ENOUGH. You have to realize this, Suzy, that if you are like me, you have to do all of these things or you will pay the price in pain or injury or both.

Now I found that I had to ALSO have bran with my lunch, because my problem was that the first half of my stool would be too hard that it would hurt me, plus I still had to push some, a big no-no. So I read that insoluble fiber like bran adds weight to the stool and helps it to move along quickly out.

I also learned that if I ate any refined carbohydrates like white bread, my stools would get more solid and possibly hurt me; I still liked to eat white bread or else my stomach got too irritated with all of the fiber, fiber, fiber and softeners!

So at lunch I had and now add at the end of my regular lunch meal, a 1/2 cup to 1 cup of raisin bran, with rice milk as I'm lactose intolerant,and regular milk would give me deadly gas and diarrhea.

STILL THAT WASN'T ENOUGH. I found that I also had to add about 1-2 tablespoons of raisin bran flakes to my supper, I mean put it on top of the rice or anything on my supper plate, not directly eat the flakes. STILL THAT WASN'T ENOUGH. I had to add around 3 slices of apple including the skin, and a nectarine with the skin, as those skins added important insoluble fiber, and, AND, I had to also have with my supper around a 1/4 cup of some kind of lettuce, romaine, etcetera.

If I cut out any of those, I found I paid the price with my stools not being soft enough! Yes, the stool softeners alone didn't cut it; but if I tried to cut back on any stool softeners, I would get harder stools. And if I took all of the softeners, but cut out the salad, or the fruits, or the brans, I paid the price. I found I had to do all of these things together to give myself stools soft enough, and drink 15-20 cups of water!

From what you are saying, Suzy, the stool softeners alone aren't enough for you. What are you waiting for? To get injured to take more measures to soften your stool and get them to easily come out without pushing? Let me tell you, I waited, and I bled and rebled for 3 weeks. I think that is how I injured my sphincter, that one of the hard stools tore it some. If anything, I hope that by sharing with you my downfalls, you can avoid them while it is still okay.

Now, as far as your bleeding---this was my biggest fear, as the first surgery I had,the bleeding turned out not to be normal and I had to have an emergency surgery a week later, as the only stitch in my artery had broken.

After the second repair surger, I did bleed but not the amount I was the first. Still this freaked me out. My nurse told me that it can be normal to bleed for the first 6 weeks with each bowel movement, gas, etcetera.

The point is to call your surgeon up and ask him if it is normal for you, and to not under any circumstance strain or push---even gas out. You can accomplish that by eating the right combination of fibers, at the right times of the day, with each meal, and taking the stool softeners at the right meals in the right amount. I tried the smaller 50 mg colace, and they didn't work at all, even when I doubled them up to make 100 mg. Only the actually 100mg capsules work for me.

It is now 8 weeks for me and I still have to do all of those things. It's no fun, but it is less fun to bleed and hurt.

You know I have AOL internet service, and I find that I can't find MY postings in this topic for hours afterwards, but if I go to Internet Explorer, I can find my post right away. Don't ask me why---could have something to do with the way AOL stores webpages and shows the old one. Sometimes I can't even post from my AOL, and get a message that my number is banned, and I have to go through Internet Explorer to do it. So I now check through IE.

To tell you the truth, I am mortified about the thought that my sphincter might not heal; I worry about it being like one of those fissure horror stories I have read where the fissure never heals. At this point, unless my surgeon is lying, he seems positive I will heal in some months. However, it isn't easy when I have to struggle with keeping my stools soft. I haven't gone more than 2 days in a row where I get the 'perfect' soft stool that doesn't hurt me, or if I don't get enough sleep that can make me bleed when I go from the strain on my tired body.

I am going to try a herb called gotu kola that I read last night online some man used to heal his fissure with. I'll keep you posted if this works---gotu kola is reputed to help heal wounds. You're supposed to apply it topically, but this guy took a couple of pills a day. Normally I don't want to take any herbs, as they can cause side effects and/or interfere with my thryroid medicine, but when you lose all hope of normal healing, you find yourself desperate and will try anything promising at least once.

Runninggal, thanks for the words from your surgeon, that you could have setbacks for up to a year, as this is very helpful to know, and now makes me have a relaxed state of mind. If we all pool together our information and experiences, it will make the experience mentally just that much easier for the next person.

Suzy, I want you to know that I had that funny smell too, and it is normal and associated with the drainage that is also a normal part of healing. Welcome to the Muskrat Anal Gland Club! It will eventually go away when the wounds inside you heal. The drainage is a good sign, a sort of yellowy pale liquid stuff that means your body is healing the surgical site, sometimes mine was tainted with red from the blood. I read a couple of months ago what actually happens to make that discharge from the wounds, but can't recall the details. A photographic memory is not one of my talents.

Suzy, I'm going to employ some remote mind control on you now:

@@@@@@@soften your stools@@@@@@@suzy, split up your colace dose@@@@@@at breakfast eat 3 packs of quaker oatmeal@@@@@drink 2 cups of hot water@@@@@add bran to your lunch@@@@@and your supper@@@@@@@suzy, also add fruits with skin@@@@@and salad@@@@plus drink@@@@@drink@@@@@drink@@@@you only exist now to make soft stools@@@@@@@soft, self-moving stools is your mantra@@@@@@@@

Okay, end of mind control.

Sherry, yes, I had the hemorrhoidectomy done in my doctor's office. He shouldn't have, and things went wrong. I had gone in there just to have a hemorrhoid banded, and he lied to me and told me it would be less painful to have a hemorrhoidectomy instead, probably because he got $200 more cahs from me upfront for this procedure than the banding.

The emergency repair I had in a hospital, which I stayed overnight one day.

MRSE, the emergency room doctor told me that they used to tell patients to use the triple antibiotic ointment, but then they learned that is made wound healing much slower. If you read the fine print you will see it is not to be used over wounds. I, too, wanted to use it, but my doctor instead told me to use this non-prescription painkilling creme just for the butt, called . The first surgeon had given me a prescription of cream called analpram that was just for the pain and itching after a bowel movement.

Also, I religiously wore a pad the first week of my surgery, and for me it rubbed and irritated my surgery site at my ********, and caused me problems. However, your ******** might not have stitches, but because of this I didn't use pads after the second surgery. Instead I would use a single soft tissue that I would just gently place in my butt crack when I got out of the tub and the tissue would absorb the moisture as I toweled off and dressed. If the tissue fell out, I would just replace it with another one, until I felt dried out.

Now to walk I had to use a pad for support, but I put this OUTSIDE of my underwear, without sticking it to my underwear, and waddled with it to my recliner or bed.

I used large size 100% cotton balls to gently pat myself clean, but not dry. I took around 5 cotton balls. I wet them with tap water. The first one I just gently patted my butt hole. Then next wet one I dabbed on some betadine and gently patted the butt hold and stitch area to clean. That area was so tender that I could only do very light patting and not efficient cleaning. The other wet balls I used to pat off the betadine, the closest I could get to rinsing. Wiping is a no-no.

I, too, didn't have the odor for the first week that I spent hours in the tub, but then I learned that keeping the surgery site in water so long also could delay healing and cause infection, so once I started limiting my tub time, the smell came.

Suzy & MRSE, one last thing before I end my mini novel here, the surgery inside in the first 4 weeks caused an awful confusing feeling of a combination of pressure and sensation like I had to have a bm, when I didn't after I would have a bowel movement. It was important I figured out which was which, as it was important I didn't try to have a bm when there was nothing there and increase the pressure to the wound site and break a stitch. I learned that after I had a bowel movement, that if I sat or more like leaned back in my recliner or on the bed for 1-5 hours after, the creepy feeling would pass. It's like the surgery site got irritated; but also, my surgeon told me it was normal to have a feeling of pressure inside like that. This sort of reaction after stools kept up for the first 5 weeks. I don't get it now anymore. Now let me go back to watching the Simpsons on TV.