External Hemorrhoids, Panic Attacks and Honesty
A recent visitor to a blog I work on sent an email with a subject line that read “My Painful External Hemorrhoids Nightmare Story” which was really open and honest. I responded after reading it to ask if it would be okay to write an article based on what you shared. They said it would be fine as long as I didn’t use his last name.
“Debbie from Cedar Rapids, Iowa” is a single mother of a young child who has to work two low-paying part-time jobs to pay the bills. She always put on her best happy face for her daughter, her friends and family. Her approach to managing stress was to repress it and keep all her worries to herself. When her daughter slept, Debbie ate a lot of junk food to reduce her stress.
Surprisingly, she was able to maintain an attractive figure without any exercise outside of her job. Her late-night junk food binges led her to develop chronic constipation. She ignored the first sign that an external hemorrhoid was forming. After passing stool, she felt what she said felt like a bee sting and felt a small growth when she wiped herself.
Like many people, she ignored it thinking it would go away on its own. Within a month she had a large bleeding hemorrhoid that she couldn’t ignore. She got so bad that she had to wear spandex shorts under her work uniforms to avoid embarrassing blood trails. The itching and pain were constant. She was always there to remind him that her condition would not go away any time soon.
The only temporary relief she found was using over-the-counter hemorrhoid creams. The external hemorrhoid was not shrinking because she had let it go too long untreated. Her co-workers, friends and family noticed that she now walked differently. That is a very embarrassing life situation to experience other than hemorrhoid pain. No one likes to tell other people that they have hemorrhoids.
The logical approach for people is to make an appointment with the hemorrhoid doctor. Debbie had two things against her. She was too embarrassed to go see a doctor and she had a phobia of doctors. She had no problem taking her daughter to the doctor, but she had developed a real phobia after having a major panic attack during a doctor’s visit as a patient.
It had been a year since the big panic attack happened, but that fear of having another one created a phobia of doctors. I understand your feelings because I have a friend who has excellent health insurance coverage, but will never see a doctor unless it’s serious.
They also have a phobia of hospitals and doctors. They told me once that they don’t want to have blood tests or health checkups because they don’t want to know if they have a medical condition like cancer. They think that if they don’t know they have a medical condition then it doesn’t exist. Avoidance always leads to more health problems. Debbie was avoiding having her external hemorrhoids removed.
It got to the point where the external hemorrhoid grew and became infected. The bread became too much. Infected hemorrhoids cause serious health problems. Her parents had started caring for her daughter more and more because of Debbie’s health problem. Not liking what they were seeing happening to Debbie, she took her to see a hemorrhoid doctor.
The mind is powerful. In the waiting room, Debbie had a huge panic attack and felt like an elephant was on her chest and joker faces were looking at her. The thing about panic attacks is that the person who has one always thinks that all eyes are on them. This raises anxiety levels and a fight or flight reaction to the situation. Debbie wanted to leave immediately. Her parents and a nurse calmed her down.
The doctor she explained had a severely infected external hemorrhoid that needed laser hemorrhoid surgery to remove as soon as possible. The word surgery makes any patient’s heart race. Debbie had no choice. Her health was seriously at risk from the hemorrhoid infection. She fully recovered from laser hemorrhoid surgery and is back to living a hemorrhoid free life.
What really moved me about Debbie’s email was that she candidly told me that her painful nightmare of hemorrhoids finally stopped, but now her anxiety and panic attacks are more frequent. She shared that she was not going to ignore the condition like she did with her external hemorrhoid.