I'm sharing this in hope someone has gone or is going through the same stuff that I am, because I certainly feel isolated from everyone else around me. I've dealt with chronic constipation since I was a baby. It was never bad enough to make my parents worry but as I got older things got harder and harder. This year my constipation has been at its peak.
Around March I discovered I had an hemorrhoid and I freaked out. However, this hemmie would pop out after a BM and disappear a few hours later. Still, I freaked out and decided to change my diet. That didn't help. Even though I was eating veggies, fruit, fiber, drinking water like crazy and taking a morning walk the hemorrhoid would come back no matter what. Eventually I was so depressed about it that I went back to my old eating habits and resumed to taking stimulant laxatives when my constipation was acting up. I know, not the smartest decision. On September the hemorrhoid came back on destroy mode and it would not go away. I dealt with it the best I could for three days until the pain was so bad I had to go to the ER. They gave me Daflon and some other pills to deal with it and told me to make some lifestyle changes if I wanted to make that thing go away for good. It worked like magic and I was fine the next day. After that incident I was more than careful about what I ate and I made sure to keep my constipation under control (no longer taking laxatives, but mineral oil and other kinds of stuff) and I had really normal BMs.
Then it all went downhill. A month after my trip to the ER the thing was back and this time it would not budge. I still had some leftover medication and I tried to use that but it didn't work at all. I finally got an appointment with a proctologist who took one look at me after a week of being in intense pain and told me he was going to take the vein (hemorrhoid) that didn't work out that same day. Of course I was scared of the pain but I was beyond fear at this point and I knew I had to do something.
I had the surgery. The post-op was hell. It didn't hurt because I was on pain killers but I was constipated (I always am, duh) and didn't have a BM until the doctor told me to have Lactulose on day SIX. The pain during and after that first BM was something I can't put into words. I was crying constantly because I was so depressed. I couldn't believe this was happening to me, I had always been healthy. After that I started healing and things were okay for a while, although my constipation was still a huge issue for me. Then, when I got an appointment with my gastro to discuss treament options for it I was hit with yet another big f-you. I started feeling pain after and during BMs. I was so scared it was a new hemmie, or that I had split open my surgery wound that I called my doctor and met him so he could take a look at me.
It turns out I had a fissure. He gave me some cream that I'm supposed to apply twice a day and see him in a month.
Now, I can't begin to explain how this has affected my life. My days revolve around whether or not I will have a BM, if it will hurt, etc. I am so depressed it feels like this will never end, that this will be my life for as long as I live. These past three months have been the hardest of my life. Everyone in my family tells me I'm obsessing over what I eat and keeping too much track of my BMs, but how can I not when everytime I overlook either of them I end up in severe pain and with a doctor looking at my butt?
I still don't have an answer to my constipation problems, and I feel like no one is taking me seriously. This has ruined my life. I don't want to be overdramatic but I think the fact that I had no time to think my surgery overy left me with some sort of PTSD. I'm so anxious about my BMs that the thought of going to the bathroom is always on my mind. I want life to be the way it was before. My fissure, for example, is hurting right now and I'm so sick of it. I would have thought by now I would be back to normal or at least a bit better, but it seems things are still the same if not worse. I feel so discouraged.
Has anyone else not had a smooth recovery? It feels like everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong.