Over the past month, I've been having intermittent blood in my stool. I'm used to a little bit of blood, and some pain(usually I have to bite a towel or my knuckle), but this has been way worse than usual. I'm talking red toilet water, some splatter on the sides, stool coated in blood. The blood stopped for a little while, but came back with a very large poop I had last week. Then yesterday I pooped, and it was so bad. Horrible sharp pain, blood once again in the bowl and splattered on the sides, and a lot of the toilet paper. This made me so afraid that I didn't finish pooping. Today, I had to poop again, and again the same situation. That same horrible pain, and some more blood. I only pooped a very small amount again because I couldn't bear to continue that experience, which is an issue because I still have to poop, and will probably be forced to do so either today or tomorrow.

So, I just don't know what to do here. I can't stand another painful and bloody poop. Like I said, I'm used to having pain, but not this bad. I've been to my doctor a couple times, and he isn't worried. He didn't immediately identify what's going on, but said that's probably benign considering I'm not having diarrhea. The current working assumption is that it's internal hemorrhoids, but given that there's been so much pain only when I poop, and that the pain and the blood seem to go hand in hand, I lean more on the side of an anal fissure. He told me to take 500mg of magnesium daily to soften my poops, which is some advice I wish I had taken before I had that massive poop last week. I'm wondering if I should still take that right now, though, I don't know how far 'down' the magnesium works, i.e. would it soften the stool that's already ready to come out? Or does it just affect the stool that's currently being produced in the intestines? Also, I have some cream that I bought for hemorrhoids, should I use that too for the time being?