there's something in my butt.

disclaimer: not for the weak stomachs, more for the diseased ones.


Holy shit, so I opened my toothpaste drawer and I realized that I had still left something in it from like a year before. I just never remembered to bring it back downstairs:






If you're wondering what that is, it's a marshmallow roaster. Built to be stuck into marshmallows and roasted over a campfire. Unfortunately the last time I held this marshmallow roaster, I had no intentions of sticking it in any marshmallows.

Welcome to the awful fucking world of perianal abcesses.

For those of you who don't know what an abcess is, it's like a big pus ball that grows under your skin. If left untreated for long they can get pretty big and painful. It pretty much feels like a man with big hands has pinched your skin between his thumb and forefinger as hard as he could and refuses to let go. You can get abcesses of course anywhere, but when talking about perianal ones, (use your greek etymology roots bro) we're talking about ones near your butthole.

The first time I got perianal abcesses I thought they were hemorrhoids. (Luckily, thanks to Crohn's I've now also gotten hemorrhoids and can now distinguish between huge abcesses and ragin butt blisters). All of my abcesses I've gotten were perianal, and the first time I got them I was actually on the distance track team, so this was about two years ago. Like I said, giant hands pinching your butt. Imagine running with that, not so great. Any tightening movement that contracted my perineal (gooch) muscles would kill. So coughing or squeezing the rest of my pee out hurt pretty bad.

These abcesses weren't as serious as they would later get, but they were still painful. I didn't really know exactly what hemorrhoids were either at this time, but I thought I had them. All I knew was something was in/around my butt that didn't feel great, and that felt like little bubbles. So I did what anyone would do, I squeezed the shit (literally I guess) out of them. I guess this caused some leakage because eventually they went away.

Fast forward a few months later, same problem comes up, only this time it's one bigger abcess. I try the same squeeze thing but am not as successful. I think the problem will keep going away if I keep rubbing hemorrhoid cream on it but obviously that doesn't do shit. Eventually it's to the point where I can't walk and I'm spreading my legs so they won't rub together and cause any discomfort. After a few days of sitting around and being an idiot in pain and kinda putting off the doctor, we decide to go.

We go to a regular doctor who just goes to take a look at my butt. We get a younger newer guy...he spreads my butt cheeks with my hand and I scream. He touches the area and I scream more. All he says was "I don't see anything really, it's just a little red and tender."

Okay, I understand my ass is probably hairy, like really. But holy shit dude I'm fucking dying and all you can say is "its a little tender". Wow. Anyway, that guy actually lost his job eventually so I guess it's all good.

That night I go home and get in the bath, and the pain is so bad I decide to call my brave sister in Noelle to take a look at my butthole. But realizing that my hairy ass could have been a factor in fully seeing my puss pocket, I decide to shave a little around the area. Eventually I call her in...she said something along the lines of:


"HOLY FUCKING SHIT DUDE YOU HAVE A GOLF BALL IN YOUR ASS."

Okay so now we know something's up for real and that doctor was for sure a piece of shit. We schedule something was a colon/rectal surgeon for the next day...a good ol' fashioned lancing. The rest of the night is spent by me waking up every hour from a cough or sudden movement and jumping in pain...and then proceeding to rub "Boil Ease" all over my butt.

The next day we go to the doctors, by now I'm not really sitting down on anything, more of an awkward hovering thing or sitting on my tailbone everywhere kinda like laying down.

We meet the doctor, and I tell him the situation. He says something like "okay, let's take a look and see if we can see if it's an abcess or what's going on." So I lean forward onto this table like thing and drop em and he takes a look. I remember him spreading my butt and just saying in the most serious Indian accent

"Oh. Yeah. Yes, he definitely has an abcess."

So they were going to need to lance it, by now my mom is across the room. I'm still leaning over on this table thing. And the doctor and his assistant are both getting ready to wage war on my asshole. Once again, like with the surgery, I am in so much pain I am just like "just do it."

All of a sudden, this table thing tilts 45 degrees forward and my ass is in the air pointed at their faces like a cannon. By now this thing had to be fucking huge, extremely tender, and really painful. So when I hear "okay we're going to inject a local anaesthetic," I am not stoked.

"MOTHER FUCKER OW OW OW OW FUCK".

Okay so the numb juice is in this thing that's in my butt so things can't really hurt more. Next thing I hear is something like: "alright we're going to make an incision at the top of the abcess and we will squeeze the puss out."

"FUCK FUCK SHIT MOTHERFUCKER SORRY OW FUCK SORRY."

Tears are rolling down my face. My asshole is in the air with the hands of two strangers going to town on it. I am screaming obscenities in a small office, but I still am courteous and apologize for cursing. I feel warm stuff running down my leg, lots of blood and puss. And I am punching the metal base of this table thing as hard as I fucking can. I really wish someone videotaped this shit.

Probably only like a minute later, the worst is over. The nurse then proceeds to TAPE MY BUTT CLOSED. She packs it with gauze, then tapes it from buttcheek to buttcheek. She then tells me to try to not poop for like 24 hours. Which actually wasn't that bad. I get one of those yellow cushion things to sit on for a few days.

The next day I remember taking the gauze out, and looking at it. This is also one of those times where I said "holy shit", and took a picture with my cell phone...but unfortunately this was two years ago and I go through like 3 cell phones in a year. But my friends can vouch for me, the gauze was completely drenched, from top to bottom in blood. Like, more serious than any kind of menstruation ever.

A few days later things aren't so bad and I'm feeling better and moving around. A follow up colonoscopy (butt camera) confirms that I do have Crohn's disease. Colonoscopy's aren't bad at all, they knock you out and stick a camera in your butt, and they snap a few pics. You wake up and that's it pretty much, you make air poofs out of your butt a little because they blow air in to get the camera.

Another thing to watch out for after draining an abcess is getting a fistula. Which is when a tube forms between two places and puss is draining from one place to another. I still don't really know, I think I had one for a little and it went away. Google it, fuck.

After this awful experience, abcesses came back again like a few months later. Of course, I try to handle it myself, which is where that marshmallow poker comes in. Fed up with my persisten abcesses, I throw my hands up, maybe say "mother fucker", and go upstairs into the bathroom, locked and loaded with my sick ass weapon of choice. I get a hot wash cloth and put it on the abcess to make the skin soft, and I poke it hard. No drainage or blood. I keep trying but it's not really working, then I just try to grab the abcess between my two hands and squeeze as hard as I can. This hurts a lot. But I wipe the abcess with some toilet paper and there's yellow/green stuff on it. Pus! Yum. So I get some pus out and this relieves the pain, but I'm not really trying to squeeze juice out of things in my butt every few days. So I go to the doctor and he gives me antiparasitic pills, and maybe some antibiotics too. The thing goes away in a few days and all the puss drains out.

The moral of this story is really just don't be an asshole or you'll have a throbbing one. If you think you MAY have an abcess, you should probably just go to a gastro doctor asap to take care of it...before it gets way worse. DIY stuff is only cool when it involves you not sticking stuff in your butt, you're better off leaving it up to a doctor..it's their job.


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Anyway...update on my life. I went to the doctor's last week and he said he wants to meet with me in a month to talk about starting to reverse this bag. Already! Kinda bummed, there are so many more good jokes to be made. Living with this thing has become really too easy to even write about, but maybe I'll take some action shots of me doing things with the belt on.

I also went to another doctor to talk about how we're going to medicate my Crohn's from now. He recommended 6MP which is a pill you take once a day. It's anti-immunal, so it'll lower my white blood cells...but it should also reduce my chances of going into any Crohn's recurrence by 50 percent. At least that's what the doctor said.

So I'm just doing in a little more reading up on 6mp now and then we'll probably call my doctor for the prescription, I didn't want to tell him definitely right then and there because you never know!

I feel good, incision is almost closed completely, I'm eating like a champ, and my epididymitis has gone away. I will write about my adventures with epididymitis another time.

later.