A Pain in the Ass

"It's not even close to being over, but I feel better already."

A long time ago, I was starting to wonder if I'd forgotten how to wipe my own butt properly. Seems like every time I looked, I had these funny brown stains in my underpants."

That was just the start of it. One day, I started noticing a swelling on the cheek of my butt, right in my crack and fairly close to my butthole ....sort of like a big pimple or a boil. It went away and came back again, and then it went away again. I started getting a rash between my legs after long days at work from what I thought was sweat. Actually, it was an unstoppable and annoying moisture coming out of my rear end.

Finally one day, my ass swelled up as big as a grapefruit and hurt to high heaven. It scared me badly enough to call in sick and walk into a doctor's office for help.

The girl in the office asked me the usual questions and took my temperature and blood pressure and told me to wait for the doctor. A young guy finally came in and took a quick look up my bung hole and got immediately on the phone to another doctor.

"Can't you just cut it open and let it drain before I die from this pain," I asked him.

The young doctor hemmed and hawed and seemed really concerned with my swelling, and mumbling something, sent me right over to the doctor he had just called in the city. What the fuck? I could barely drive myself over there, the thing hurt so badly.

The city doctor put me on a table and cut it open, letting about a cup and a half of puss and goo and blood out all over his nice clean floor. Afterwards, he told me he suspected I had what he called "fistula in ano."

"What's that?" I asked him.

"It's Latin for "hole in your ass," he said.

Wonderful!

He briefly explained to me how sometimes the rectal wall inside your poop chute tears, and leaks shit into the cheek of your butt, eventually causing the skin to rupture where it comes to the surface. It's a tunnel, from inside your rectum out through your buttcheek, hence the Latin name, "fistula," literally meaning tunnel. I immediately went into frightened denial and asked if it could be a big pimple, or an ingrown hair, or something.

Maybe, he said, but I think a fistula is more likely.

"How can you tell?" I asked him.

I've been doing this for twenty years," he said.

"What do we do?" I asked him.

We put you to sleep, put a spreader up your butt, find the fistula and cut it open like a filet mignon. You keep your butt in a bath for the next two months and hope you heal up.

"How long does it take for the operation?" I ask.

"About 45 minutes."

"How much does it cost?" I ask.

"My fee is $1600 and the hospital will charge you about $3000 for the nurses and anesthesia." When I asked him what people did for this a hundred years ago, he said they "lived with it."

It's been over six years since I decided I didn't want that sourpuss sawbones carving up my ass in a scant 45 minutes for $5000 bucks so I could hope I'd eventually heal up. For about 80% of that time, I've been in endless pain and misery with an oozing, festering, extra hole in my ass–––just like that smug bastard said I would.

My new ass doctor is only charging me $750 bucks to carve me up for about 45 minutes, but I like him a lot better than that first doctor. The hospital is still going to run about three grand, but I don't care any more about the money.

Six years in panty shields is enough stubbornness and parsimony, and a mere month or two of getting over painfully invasive rectal surgery will be like a walk in the park after an aching pain in the butt that's been dragging on now for over six years."

The guy had his surgery this week, and it turns out that the fistula was deep enough to require further cutting. When he told me this story he was happy as a clam, even with the two inch gash running from his anus outward, the wound all neatly stuffed with packing that was merrily draining away between two baths a day. He also had a string tied around his sphincter muscle and through the fistula, pulling it tight to the anus. The sphincter muscle would eventually have to be completely severed to complete the treatment, but his spirits were high and his ample pain medications were handy. Six years of misery for a measly few thousand bucks? It just wasn't worth it any more. And so what, he said, ....it'll just take me a while to pay it all off.

Yeah, ....like my friend said, "It's a long way from being over, but I feel better already!"