Pain in the… The shame, the burning by Michael Alvear

If you haven’t suffered through the most embarrassing medical condition on earth, odds are you will. Up to 75 percent of us will get it, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The first rule of real estate—location—explains the eye-widening, mouth-puckering shame associated with hemorrhoids. Everyone has them. Three, to be exact. When they act up, they become a mass of swollen veins in the lining of the anus and rectum. There are internal and external hemorrhoids. You don’t want to know much more than that.

Men are especially prone to late-stage surgery for hemorrhoids because a) We’re stupid and b) We believe that hemorrhoids are a sign of rampant anal sex, and we don’t want to out ourselves to straight doctors.

I’m right on point A, wrong on point B. “Hemorrhoids aren’t caused by bottoming,” my doctor scoffed. “They’re caused by pushing too hard when you’re on the toilet trying to have a bowel movement.”
He pointed to the special head-down-buttocks-up table and asked me to assume the position. When I heard the urethane glove snap on his hands, I thought to myself, Why couldn’t I have Attention Deficit Disorder like everyone else?

He wheels out an anuscope and sticks in what looks like a dildo with lights. “Third degree hemorrhoids,” he announced. “You need a specialist, probably surgery.”

When I arrived at the specialist, I blanched at the sign on the door—“Colon and Rectal Surgery.” There are no grand entrances through a door like that. One doesn’t walk in as much as slink in. Eight or nine people were inside, waiting and carefully avoiding eye contact and shifting painfully in their seats.

I was finally ushered into the exam room. I almost fainted when I saw what looked to be a two-foot dildo with a gun-like trigger and an open vial of KY jelly.

It was a sigmoidoscope. This device is inserted into your anus all the way up to your colon. Air is introduced into the scope to aid in viewing. This is the only field of work where pumping air up your ass isn’t considered a public relations ploy.

Mercifully, the doctor didn’t use the contraption, saving it, presumably, for the patients who complained too much about the long wait in the lobby. As I bent over the bottoms-up table, the doctor spread my cheeks apart as far as he could, giving his lovely blonde assistant an unobstructed view of what I used to think of as a private part. I longed for a shot of dignity the way a diabetic longs for a shot of insulin.

I scheduled the surgery within a few days. The procedure didn’t require an overnight stay, but it did require anesthesia. Thank God. Who in their right mind wants to stay awake for that?
Three days after my surgery, I sneezed. I thought my sphincter had flown out of my ass. The good thing about a hemorrhoidectomy is that you don’t really need painkillers after the surgery. The mortification masks most of the discomfort.

My straight surgeon laughed at the idea that gay men are more prone to hemorrhoids. He doesn’t blame anal sex for hemorrhoids. He blames magazines. “The bathroom isn’t a library,” he said. “Go in, if nothing comes out, get out.”
Words to live by.

My surgery could have been avoided if I had been properly schooled in the toilet arts. Never hold your breath when you’re on the bowl. If you do, you’re trying too hard. Breathe. Don’t effort. Don’t strain. Be at one with the bowl. There is no place for struggle in the art of the Zen dump.

My surgeon has seen it all. Removed it all, too. Hemorrhoids aren’t the only things he has extracted from anal canals. Among the other foreign objects: eggplants, candles, shampoo bottles, even a perfume decanter. “We have a little museum of artifacts,” he said of the things he has pulled out of asses.

The record goes to a man who got a dildo stuck in his rectum. My surgeon said you could tell by the way the man walked that the device was still vibrating inside him. They had to shut it off before they could pull it out of him in surgery. I didn’t ask how they did it. I didn’t want to know.

There’s a one in 200 chance that my hemorrhoids will come back after surgery. I have taken the magazine rack out of bathroom. I drink a gallon of water a day. I’m eating enough fiber to cement the government’s food pyramid to the floor. Nothing motivates better than mortification—except maybe the threat of a generously lubricated, air-shooting, gun-triggered colon-crushing rectal projectile.

Michael Alvear lives with Zoey and Zack, his lesbian Labrador, and girlie-boy Vizsla. He can be reached at michaelalvear@attbi.com