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As
medical disorders go, haemorrhoids (yes, it's the British spelling, ok?)
is quite a “comedy” condition. Almost
definitely because they’re on the bottom. The arse. The posterior, the behind,
the derriere. They provide comedy material and many, many hours of amusement,
probably due to the combination of the pain of someone else, and let’s not
forget; IT’S ABOUT ARSES!!! Bums. Buns, browneyes, anuses.
Arses
are just funny. They’re rude without being pornographic. You can show
arses on prime-time TV without raising a single complaint. Saying that, the
way TV is going, soon we’ll be seeing naked soapy jiggling breasts and floppy
phalluses on Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues. But that’s straying from
the point (and heading towards lowest common denominator sexual swearwords. For
a change.) Mention the word “Arse” (or “ass” if you’re American) to
someone, and 9 times out of 10 they will think “buttocks”. But(t), the
subject I am talking about is piles, and you don’t get those on your
buttocks. No, you don’t get the twisted veins on your shiny, peachy buttocks.
No, they’re on your ANUS. That horrible wrinkled little orifice, hidden
between your cheeks, as if your body is trying to hide the grotesque (yet
necessary) opening. The anus isn’t particularly nice to look at. It’s like
part of your body has imploded and sucked a load of skin inside with it. You’d
never get a comedy shot of a pulsating anus on TV .
The
less stupid amongst you will probably have realised that this isn’t an
entirely fictional story. To a certain extent it’s autobiographical. OK, ok,
it’s TOTALLY autobiographical, but at least it will give you something to
laugh about .
It’s
1994. I’m 17. I’ve just started going out regularly, and starting to know a
few more people at college, therefore spend less time at home. Obviously, when
you’re a student, you don’t take particularly great care of your body,
don’t really care about much… so yeah, it’s all junk food and alcohol and
ne’er a trace of fibre to be found. It wasn’t necessarily fatty food, it was
just complete SHIT.
Obviously
the fact that I’d be spending a far longer time in the toilet hurting myself
with defecation didn’t prompt me into thinking that I should do something
about it. Nahhh, I’d just cope with the occasional rumblings and whatever. In
fact, one particular excretion went down in history (for a few weeks). Round at
the flat of two friends (Mat Urey and Phill Morris – incidentally, the flat
that the “flat 134b” story was based on) I dropped a poo so heavy that it
stuck in the bog bowl for days. We tried all sorts of cleaner type stuff to get
rid of it, but it stayed. So, of course, we named it Kevin.
There
I go again, digressing…
So, my diet did improve
slightly, but still would have given a nutritionist nightmares. When you’re
younger, you don’t worry about the consequences of your diet or health. So I
didn’t. But something happened that changed all that.
After
nature taking its course one day, I found I was in slight discomfort. Inspecting
this discomfort was the obvious course of action to take. Due to the awkward
positioning of this pain, obviously I had to investigate by touch only. Some
people would have used a mirror, but I had no particular wish to see my own
hole. When my finger touched what appeared to be an unexpected protrusion, for a
split second I almost collapsed with fear. Then, I thought “ahh fuck it,
it’ll go away”. It did go away after a week or two. I didn’t tell anyone.
Wind
forward a few years – 1999, wife is pregnant. Reading through all the
literature, we came across a spot of info that told us that haemorrhoids was
common during pregnancy. How I laughed.
What
my arse obviously didn’t understand was that it was supposed to be the woman
who got them. But, no, it was me. I got lovely bits of protruding anal vein.
Yes, me, the father. Excellent. Obviously I got no sympathy at all. Me and my
little tiny slightly uncomfortable lump versus my wife and her large bump,
nausea, dizziness, indigestion and the discomfort of having to squeeze a small
human being out of her.
So
that time round, being obviously more mature (ahem) I decided to pay a visit to
the GP to ask him what to do, expecting to receive some medical advice and maybe
some tablets or cream to make it go away.
 What
I should have prepared for was the examination. It’s not every day you’re in
a strange room that smells funny, sort of lay on your side with your legs sort
of spread apart whilst a man you don’t know that well covers an appendage with
latex, lubricates it up and inserts it in your body. But that’s what happened
to me. What sort of conversation is suitable for the duration of the probing?
Silence? Smalltalk about trivialities in the news? Or forgetting the taboos
completeley and asking “so, do you do this often?”. Me attempting to add
some amusement by saying “If I pay you an extra tenner, do I get extras?”
did not help however.
But
piles haven’t bothered me since then. Oh no. Something MUCH worse.
One
Wednesday a few months ago was an interesting day for me. Initially, it went
pretty much the same as any other day; arrive at the work car park, stand in the
lift and glance an awkward semi-smile at someone who i don’t really know, go
into workshop, throw bag into drawer, check out the diary to see what I had
planned for the day, sat down, carefully chiselled a gelatinous nugget of snot
out of my nose and sat down with the usual plastic cup of freshly poured
machine-cooled water. How very normal.
After
an hour or so, my body informed me that I had an excess of water in my bladder,
so, choosing not to ignore this warning, I sensibly walked down the corridor,
commenced the usual ritual of not saying hello to anybody else stood at the
urinals, then performed the act of the wee-wees. Taking a cursory glance at my
liquid stream to ensure that i wasn’t pissing over the shoes of the guy stood
next to me, my eyes were attracted to an unconventional sight. I appeared to be
urinating Vimto. It took a few seconds for my brain to actually realise that
dark red piss was not actually a sign of a healthy digestive system. This
was strange. Weeing didn’t actually feel any different than usual, so why did
i appear to be emptying my heart out of my genitals?
Post-pee,
I relayed the story in lurid graphic detail to a couple of work colleagues, who
suggested that I actually go and see someone about it. Which was probably the
best idea. So off I trundled to the Occupational Health department, with my mind
working overtime, creating wild ideas about the reason my body was malfuctioning
in such a colourful way.
The
Occupational Health department where I work is just like a Doctor’s surgery.
You know, walls bedecked with numerous posters and leaflets promoting various
ailments and diseases, describing symptoms so vague that it’s possible to
convince yourself that you’ve had every single disease known to humankind.
I’m sure that most of the diseases promoted on surgery noticeboards are
completely fictitious, made up for the sole purpose of frightening people. But,
jumping off that tangent, the Doc called me in, I described what had happened,
though I chose to replace “Fucking hell, I’ve just been pissing blood!”
with “I went to the toilet and noticed that my urine had turned red”
So,
I pissed into a jar for the doc, and, although the hue was less vibrant than
before, her test concluded that there was indeed blood in my urine stream. After
a couple of doctors appointments, I ended up going to the hospital for a
“flexible cystoscopy”. I don’t know how many of you are unfortunate to
have experienced one of these, but if you haven’t, it’s not an experience
that I’d undertake voluntarily.
I
got into the examination room after taking off my pants and putting on this
delightful hospital gown, and lay on the examination table thingy. For some
reason the doctor felt he had to put his finger up my bottom as well, tunnelling
deeper than on my previous arse-examination experience. But that was nothing.
Fucking zero
compared to the main event.
 Picture
a long, thin, flexible tube. Picture yourself lying there in a hospital gown
watching a man advance his way to your genitals whilst two women watch. And then
close your eyes for the rest of the fucking experience so you don’t have to
make eye contact with the painbringer.
So
anyway, he grabs hold of my cock, holds it one hand, holds tube in other.
Informing me to brace myself, he then begins the oh so very
unnatural
experience of sliding a foreign object the wrong way up my pisspipe, scratching
its way along my tubes. Then the real
REAL pain
came. The tube was about to go through my sphincter. The closest experience I
can actually compare this feeling to, is like that of the straw puncturing the
seal on a Ribena juice carton. Pressing against it and then…… ooop! It just burst
through on to the inside. How very pleasurable. After much poking around, he
withdrew his long shaft, and I limped out of the examination room, and straight
into the toilet. The first piss was reasonably interesting. Standing there, in
the usual position, my willy started what I can only describe as
"sputtering". Like I was pissing air. Strange, very strange feeling.
But as the first cascade of urine commenced, a delightful stinging sensation
burnt it's way up my tube. I said something along the lines of "Ouch. Dear
me, that was rather painful indeed, I don't wish to experience that discomfort
again". Or something similar.
So anyway,
the hospital analysed all the information they got, and everything was ok. Just a bladder
stone or something lovely like that. Apart from it feeling like I was pissing
broken glass for the next day or so after the cystoscopy, that ailment hasn’t
bothered me since. So people, the moral of the story is drink lots and lots of
liquid! I know I fucking do now.
I’m
taking bets over which part of my body is next on the list to go wrong. Who
wants to see my chart?
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