I assure you this blog is still family-friendly.

Pardon the crude title of this post. But I really have some serious pain in my bottoms.

Last week proved to be a challenging one for the Kao family. First, Ben had gastric flu. A few days later, Becks had fever. Some sniffles and chesty cough followed. Then fatherkao had the sniffles too and didn’t feel very well himself. While this was all happening, our littlest baby’s nose started to run and he started having a bad, bad cough.

The construction downstairs hasn’t ended (are they building a palace in the flat or what?), so there were sick people in the house who couldn’t get any rest. It was noisy. And smoky (the workers downstairs were all chimneys needing their tobacco fix almost every hour). And dusty. We couldn’t really ventilate for fresh air. So I guess the viruses must have had a heyday mutating.

So when they finally attacked the last [wo]man standing, who already had many sleepless nights herself taking care of coughing children, she was knocked out flat for days. This time I fell really sick. My nose ran marathons and my cough was so phlegmy chesty, I was bummed out. And that was the reason for the bum issue.

Let me explain in detail. You see, after pushing three kids out from your v-box, things aren’t really the same again down south. Everything is stretched. Worse still, you get pathological swollen tissues and engorged blood veseels in your rectum because pressure from the fetus during pregnancy causes them to enlarge, and pushing the baby out with all your might (when the midwife yelled, “Push like you’re really angry!”, I got into the role and gave it my best, ok!) leads to increased intra-abdominal pressures. Simply put, do this three times (nine months of pregnancy, plus natural delivery, multiply by three) and you’ll get piles.

But piles have different grades, as I’ve learnt. Wikipedia says Grade 1, no prolapse. Grade 2, prolapse but will spontaneously reduce. Grade 3,  prolapse but can be manually reduced. Grade 4, hopeless! Prolapse and cannot be manually reduced. After the first delivery, I was at Grade 2. After the second and third, I was hovering between Grades 2 and 3.

This recent phlegmy chesty cough was so annoying. I coughed day and night. As with the coughing, incontinence was inevitable (bummer!). And the last I checked with Google under “Can excessive coughing cause hemorrhoids?”, the answer is a resounding yes. This evening, I had an inflammation. All the tissues were prolapsed. And I couldn’t manually reduce them. I was in great pain.

Congratulations, motherkao, you’ve reached the level called Grade 4 in the universe of piles.

Google also said when you’re at this grade, you need to seek. treatment. immediately.

So excuse me while I make an appointment with a doctor for stapled hemorrhoidectomy. Meanwhile, in case you didn’t understand a single word I’ve written, let me show you what it means to have pain in my ass.

You’re welcome.

Update: I’ve got my problem fixed. No fancy stunts; just good ol’ surgery done in twenty minutes at the specialist’s. I was sedated and the problematic piles were removed. Yay.