Day 3 of recovery:
finally went to the bathroom. no pain and no blood. absolutely amazing! i can't believe i was dreading it so much. going to keep at the stool softner/metamucil/sitz bath routine.

Chris - Congratulations!

Glad to meet you on here..sounds like things are going well. That's great!

Nice to meet you too!
I'm just going to go ahead and keep posting away. It is just helpful for me to type this out everyday, as I particularly don't like discussing this person to person.
After I posted that update about day 3- I ended up going to the bathroom 3 more times after that. I guess making up for the 2.5 days after surgery I did not go. The second time I noticed a bit of bleeding. Last night I noticed a decent amount of blood on the gauze pad I had in place. I guess it is to be expected.
Here I am on day 4- I am able to sit ok with little discomfort. Things are OK. I'm a little disappointed in the bleeding during the BM, but I realize I just had surgery there and that bleeding is going to be a reality for a little bit. I guess the first BM that was pain and blood free got my hopes up a little too high! It is going to be a long process. I have to temper my expectations. Still on the road to recovery.

Sounds normal and similar to my experience. Just make sure to take Miralax.

Chris - I'm 10 days out now and pain free. A little itching and trace amounts of blood. Don't worry about a little bleeding - that can go on for a while. Just keep the stools soft.

thanks. yea. i'm just a little concerned about the bleeding. I actually just went to the bathroom after I posted that update and there was a significant!! amount of blood. My stools are super soft and there is no pain at all. The amount of blood was just a little disturbing. I am just going to take it easy today.

avoid aspirin and ibuprofen until the bleeding stops. hard to tell exactly how much bleeding there really is since it colors the entire bowl. as long as you only bleed with the bm it's not alarming. do you see your surgeon this coming week? might be good for him to take a look, if only to reassure you

thanks for the advice. i haven't taken asprin or ibuprofen. just Tylenol on day 2. None recently. The other thing that crossed my mind, is that I haven't been taking a multivitamin for quite sometime and I also have cut a lot of meat out of my diet over the past couple of years (being married to a vegetarian and all) so it could also be possible that I don't have enough iron in my system. Not sure if that reasoning makes perfect sense. Anyway I decided to start taking a multivitamin with iron in it again. The multivitamin definitely can't hurt things.
I don't have an appointment for another 2 weeks with my surgeon. I plan on calling on Monday to schedule it. If I still feel uncomfortable about the situation over the weekend I'll mention it to him on Monday.
The good thing is that through all of this there has been no pain. Thanks again Bob.

Hope everything works out fine Chris. Lack of iron (if that is the case) doesn't impair clotting, but a multivitamin won't hurt (but don't take too much iron - it causes constipation). Have a good weekend and great that there is no pain.Same here - I went to the gym today and it feels wonderful not to be hurting.