Fistulotomy part 3

I didn't get to blog any last night, mostly because I was pretty tired, oddly, before 11 p.m.

Yesterday sucked. That's pretty plain and simple. The chafing really did not help the healing process in the least. It made it tough to so much as move my legs, and climbing in and out of the tub was a pure hassle. It's not as if the chunk taken out of my butt was not painful enough. However, I got through it by coating that very tender, exposed pea-size spot with triple-antibiotic ointment. I have yet to mess with it this morning, mostly because I just do not feel like it. Managed to eek in a shower last night, which felt so good. When the chafing goes away completely, I'll resume using my sitz bath on the toilet.

Another bowel movement came at around 6:30 last night and it wasn't a pebbly one like the day before and on Sunday. This one was a full BM. It didn't hurt so bad, with the help of the enema and with the remaining Calmoseptine ointment I'd applied the previous day. Dr Jahadi said the Calmoseptine might help the chafing, but of course "don't apply any to the incision". Doctor, respectfully, that's the only way a BM could have occurred at all, was with the ointment. Otherwise, it would have been a fate almost as bad as death, I'm pretty certain. Or, just impossible. Still, I don't mean to minimize the pain of the BM. It was still excruciating. The sting, the burn, absolutely horrible. It took three wipes of wetted-down toilet paper, pinched into a wedge, to get it clean, and my hands were shaking and twitching, it burned and stung so badly. The pain felt just like that of the fistula, except in a much broader area of the anus. It was torture, but the pain did not last for maybe 10 minutes. It helped that I lay naked on the bed, butt pointed toward the fan, to try and calm it down some. It worked. But just like a bad rain storm (weather analogy), it didn't last and I was ok.

Three sitz baths, one about an hour after the BM. I knew there was no way to let it stay on my mind that I'd done a BM without bathing. That's just bad medicine. So I gutted it out and sat down. Was not that entirely painful. By then, the antibiotic cream was mostly shielding the chafing from the water and all, so that wasn't much of an issue. After about five minutes, I started swooshing some water back up into the "family jewels" area and hoping to wash some extra infection or dirt out of the wound. Went back to bed, aside from the intervals of getting up and making the milkshake and eating the yogurt.

My food regimen right now is sports protein drink and vanilla yogurt. I made that decision a couple of days back because I knew going to solids would be pretty tough this soon. But that can't last forever, because an overload of protein is no good, either. I need not forget that I've also been eating whole wheat bread with some butter on it. I make sure I chew the bread really well though. It is the only resemblance of solids I'm getting right now.

Today the wound doesn't seem to be as taxing on the muscle as it has been in days past. I have yet to really take care of anything back there, though. Part of me doesn't even want to.

I guess if I were to paint a picture, the recovery process seems like a piece of notebook paper, with each day its own line. For this procedure, the lines are definitely college-rule line spacing. This morning feels like perhaps, maybe, just maybe, my body has allowed me to skip maybe a half of a line or so. Yesterday, Dr. Jahadi said after five days, I should be getting a little more momentum with this. He even talked about returning me to work next Thursday. Given yesterday's mood, I nearly blurted out "are you on crack?! are you even halfway serious??". And he was talking about me moving around, going about my daily business. The cynic in me wanted to say "daily business for me is jumping in the car, going to job assignments, living pain-free, and when I need to poop, doing it without the same terror as being held with a gun to my head", but I politely changed the subject.

On a side note, in the past week I've watched my toe and finger nails grow and really need a trim. Why is it that I can never find my nail clippers without making it a side job? argh.