My name is Medina Doku. I’m a 43-year-old school teacher when I developed hemorrhoid pile. I was pregnant with my first and only child. I have been married for 25 years with no child and when I finally got pregnant, I got into another frustrating experience which was the pile in my anus.

It began with pain when stooling and it graduated to different sizes of painful inflamed lumps forming around my anus.

At first, I didn’t pay attention to it because I thought it was one of the issues that happened to a pregnant woman so I took the advice of a friend and began to sit on hot water. According to her, the heat from the water would heal me down there and everything would be over before I knew it.

But it didn’t work that way. Rather, it got even more painful. Going to toilet was plain torture and cleaning up after using the toilet was traumatic.

I could not sit down properly and I was always scratching my butt because it was so itchy. Almost every time, I would have to excuse myself from the classroom or the staff room to go to the toilet to scratch.

Even with all this, I still didn’t think this was a serious case because the internet said it was not dangerous and could be healed by simple diet change and lifestyle change. 

I got ointments from the pharmacy and stool softener to ease excretion but nothing worked. It seemed like the more I tried, the more the pain and inflammation continued. I changed my diet, took only fruits but the lumps were still there and the itchiness increased.

I went ahead to buy some Aloe Vera when the ointments didn’t deliver results. It was recommended I rub the gel around my anus morning and night but this was only more frustrating because the itch multiplied overtime.

My stability and performance at school reduced drastically because I could not concentrate or even teach well, at the same time, I was heavily pregnant so everything was just so overwhelming. Whenever I was out in the public, I would always excuse myself to go scratch in the toilet.

Just when I should be happy about being pregnant after 25 years of waiting, I was dealing with a painful disease that made me uncomfortable all the time. I didn’t know if the pregnancy was a curse or a blessing anymore.

My excreta became bloody accompanied with severe rectal pain that when I go to defecate, I bleed. The bleeding was always bright red coupled with slimy mucus.

The situation became an obvious abnormality and required instant medical intervention. The doctor carried out a physical examination around my anus.

Medical reports showed I had stage IV internal and external hemorrhoids. According to her, people mostly had internal hemorrhoids or external hemorrhoids but I had both. This means that I had swollen lumps both inside my rectum and outside the anus.

Doctor confirmed it was hormonal imbalance that’s traced to late pregnancy in women – some hormones make your veins relax and there is increased pressure on the pelvis. She added that piles are common during pregnancy and usually resolve after the baby was born.

Further test reports indicated hemorrhoids are part of one’s aging process since the hemorrhoid tissues themselves are getting loose – being pregnant at 43 was a major contributing factor.

“But not to worry, piles resolve on their own within 6 to 12 weeks after delivery.” – doctor concluded.

She prescribed some corticosteroid creams and ointment to be rubbed around the area to reduce inflammation, painkillers and some vegetables was recommended as my dietary plans.

 The itchiness, difficulty in excretion and excessive bleeding continued. I had lost two pints of blood in 4 weeks, I got compulsory medical leave from the office   — I thought it was miscarriage.

After examination,  the doctor suggested hemorrhoidectomy (surgery after pregnancy), to truncate  the hemorrhoid tissues. The lumps were diagnosed to be inflamed and too filled with blood both inside the rectum and around my anus – so surgery was the logical option because if they burst, It could cost my life so I needed urgent surgery.

According to her, when hemorrhoids become problematic by not functioning in the normal way just as I was experiencing, some medical intervention was needed and since none of the ointments and medicine she had given had worked, hemorrhoidectomy was the best option to get rid of the internal and external hemorrhoids.

I was scheduled for old-fashioned scalpel surgery to cut out the hemorrhoid all the way down to its base so the blood vessel on the disease tissue can be

taken out after which it would be stitched up with suture material but that was just about it – I had a miraculous intervention.

A childhood friend (Ngeh Janet) who left the country for India was in town for summer break so she reached out to me – I was uneased and she noticed something was wrong so I narrated my pile ordeal to her.