embaressing question....

hey all,

quick embaressing question. i have 2 lg external hemorrhoids that can become really irritated when im have lots of d (ive had them for a long time). my ques is has anyone had a hemorrhoidectomy and how did it go?  how long was it before you felt sorta back to normal.  ive read up on it on the internet, that it can be done as an outpatient procedure, and you should be back to normal in 10 days or so. i work in a hospital, and want to make sure this is completely outpatient, and that i wouldnt have to be out that long before i could return to work, and that no one there knows that im having surgery.  thanks for any help!

yes theyre hemorrhoids, i thought thats what they were all along, but the the gi doc confirmed it when i was scoped last year.  mine never shrivel up, theyre the same size when theyre not irritated, but when they do, they become painful and swollen. bah. no fun.

 

I had a hemorrhoidectomy and a couple of skin tags removed- and then I found out I have Crohn's.  That was six months ago, and the incisions still haven't healed completely.

I was miserable after the surgery.  It was very painful, and the pain meds didn't help much.  It was 4-6 weeks before I could sit normally.  (I went into the hospital at the four week mark, and when I came out two weeks later I was able to sit again, so I'm not sure exactly when it happened.)

As awful as the experience was, I can't completely regret it.  I was in constant pain with the hemmies.  I'm an Office Manager, and sitting at my desk every day was miserable.  Having a bm was agony.  I frequently had to lay down for a half an hour or so afterwards, just to recover.  Even my first bm after the surgery was less painful than it had been before the surgery.

I've heard of people having this done and being back at work in a day or two with no pain.  That was absolutely not my experience.  It wasn't just sitting that was a problem, either.  Walking was very painful, also.  Basically, anything that jostled the area hurt.  Just shifting in bed could take my breath away.  Sneezing was enough to make me scream.  Think about every time you engage the muscles in your pelvis.  That all hurt.

I don't mean to scare you.  I know my situation was pretty much worst case senario.  The fact that I had undiagnosed Crohn's, and that the surgery kicked off a major flare, made the whole thing worse than it had to be, too.  But I do think some doctors soft pedal the recovery from this surgery.  It's no joke.

I have internal hemorrhoids and I am miserable when I have D I have lots of bleeding and pain. I also have a skin tag or something similar, yuck! I find for the hemmies a hot shower or bath seems to soothe after BM's. Also I use lots of hemmie cream. At least a few times a week even if they are not bothering me. When they are really hurting I get the hemmie wipes that have witch hazel in them and wipe with those then add creamm. I do this each time I have D or when I have bleeding. Seems like this helps but sometimes I really suffer with them. I thought I had a fissure but I am not so sure now. I know I have internal hemmies though. They really do suck but I am learning to live with them. i wish there was a cure but the cream seems to help some. My Doc gave me a RX cream once and wow it worked well. I would ask him for it when it gets really bad. I hope you get some relief soon! Karen

i have 3 large ones myself and i know how bad the pain can be when you are flaring. i went to a colo rectal guy and he said that he does no surgeries like this on people with crohns becasue of the risk of the CD returning at the surgery site, and becasue its more than likely that i would get more. i have really bad internals and fissures as well and when they put me on proctofoam for that the hemmies really went down and arent painful at all now. plus i use witch hazel and proctosol cream from the GI and that helps a lot also.

bunny 

I thought I had the same hemmoroids for over a year.  Four doctors kept treating them as hemmoroids, finally GI number 3 and the GI that discovered the chrohn's identified them as perianal crohns skin tags.  Remicade reduces mine each month.  They start to swell again in about 6 weeks after my infusions.  When they are bad I use witch hazel wipes and taken warm epsom salt baths.

Hemmies are varicose veins.  Skin tags are growths.  It surprises me how many people say that their doctors misdiagnosed their skin tags as hemmies.  I would think they would look very different. 

Yes starbucks, in general the tags have what appears to be a split in them, hemmies don't...and the reason why you havn't healed so well is because you're not suppose to have any kind of surgery on perianal crohns skin tags while they are flaring (large/hard), only if they shrink down to almost nothing is the time when you can get them snipped off...trust me I speak from my own horrible experiance with this.

And, you don't have to only have one or 2 for them to be skin tags, one person can develop many or just have one...it's the way they look compared to a hemmie that makes them different from a hemmie, very different...perianal crohns skin tags are diseased tissues which is why they don't typically heal well or at all after surgery unlike a hemmeroid which does heal if it's infact a hemmie.

:)

Also, you can have both at the same time.  That could confuse things, too. And mine never shrank much.  Sometimes they were less big and sore, but they never shrank.  Probably because I was in a low-level flare for a year and never knew it. 

Another thing to consider- skin tags can grow back very quickly.  I had a new skin tag within a week of my surgery.

Post Edited (bektold) : 10/29/2007 9:10:47 PM (GMT-6)

Ya the skin tags have a freaking mind of their own like the rest of the disease...My CD actually started with perianal crohns skin tags when I was a teen, but every doc told me they were just hemmies and they weren't too bothersome at that time either...they would come and go on their own fairly quickly so technically I've had crohns since my early teens with having the skin tags popping up and down, the rest of the symptoms didn't come until my skin tags appeared in my early 20's when I was pregnant with my first and I gained a ton of weight and again I was told they were just hemmies, then when my first born was about a yr and a half old the skin tags became uncontrolably painful and I went in for an emergency hemheroidectomy (they banded them) which was a big NO NO...and I've been screwed with this disease ever since....JUST BEFORE I went in for the surgery I told my docs that for some strange reason I was having more then my normal amount of daily BM's, they were still formed (no D, no blood or any other CD symptoms other than the tags) but they dismissed my frequency issues and said it was simply hemmies....WRONG!!!!

CRAP, if I new then what I know now!!!!


:)

im thinking i have a skin tag too, but mine never shrink down to nothing. but ive had them long before i had serious syptoms with the crohns. grr. im glad i have this board, because honestly where else can you ask things like this without people looking at you and going 'ewwww'

i guess mine sometimes get like that. but not real small, not small enough where i would think they would be snipped off in the office. ouch.

aw, i hope you feel better! mine arent that bad, but they might be some day. let us know how it goes.