Gettin' graphic for the holidays

Okay.  I'm about to get nasty and graphic here while discussing what happened to me this weekend.  So, if you're faint of heart or just don't wanna hear gory details, you might want to sit this one out.

That said, it's not that it's all lascivious or something, but it does have to do with my butt.  Well, inside my butt.

Last week, I woke up from a mid-day nap to find I urgently had to go to the bathroom.  I mean, urgently - when I got to the toilet to make nice-nice with the bowl, I found that instead of feces, I expelled an unholy amount of blood and blood clots.  Large chunks of solid, coagulated blood.   This had happened to me before; before I saw my GI doctor, I'd have incidents where I'd pass blood and blood clots - it turns out that the mass inside me really, REALLY likes to bleed.... it had been under control for months, but for some reason, it acted up again.  I had the one incident, and then it stopped.... so I breathed easy, and chalked it up to it getting irritated for a moment.

However, late Thursday night - it started again - and it didn't stop until I checked myself into the hospital at Noon on Friday.

I was throwing out blood and blood clots like I was a production assistant on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Seriously, I think if any normal person saw the amount of blood that came out of my body, they'd cry and pass out.  I'm so blase about it - I didn't even FEEL bad...... I got up and cleaned the kitchen Friday morning before I decided to go to my dialysis center to have the test my hemotocrit levels.  I figured that with such massive blood loss, I might need a transfusion and that my H&H levels (red blood cells) would be severely low.  Again, I bucked the odds by NOT having low blood pressure (in fact, it was high) and my H&H was lower than a normal persons, it was still right around where it has been for me for a while.  I managed to save most of the blood clots I had expelled - this is where my life is nasty and sucks - I scooped them out and put them in a plastic bag.  They filled up almost half the bag - when the nurses saw my ass bag o' blood, they often turned about as pale as I was.

So, my wife and I went to the ER, checked me in - by the time I got to the ER, I started feeling mildly dizzy.  Nothing too bad, though, which was odd.  I was more in a state of mild panic, though - just because I wanted answers.  They gave me some "protonics" and my bleeding stopped, and I waited to see the GI doctor.  I knew he was busy that day - apparently that Friday was everyone's Butt Emergency Day, so I spent most of the afternoon just sleeping in the ER bed, with my ever vigilant wife by my side.   Finally, a jovial dude of a doctor popped his head in - his amazing mane of chest hair popped out over his slightly unbuttoned shirt.  I called him "Dr. Disco".  He was pretty awesome, though - and he told me that I had a prolapsed rectum, and that I'd need surgery to repair it.  No colostomy, which made me happy.

So, now I have to have this bowel repair/resection surgery.  I'm actually excited about it, because I just want to move on.  Get this solved, hopefully feel a little better, and then get me a kidney!

~Steve