Firstly thank you from the bottom of my heart for this forum. To the founders, admins, moderators and posters - you are special people. It has probably saved me from myself on a number of occasions! And whilst people have not necessarily responded directly to me, the posts I have read from over the years have given so much support. I love that without even realising, people who have suffered in the past and posted their experiences continue to help the next generation of AF sufferers so much.
I want to give back to this - hence this account of my experience - in the hope it might be useful to someone else in time to come. Reading about everyone’s journeys has prepared me so much for my own and I thank every single one of you for this. The more selfish reason is that I find this to be a cathartic outlet and it helps me to organise my thoughts and process what is going on just now.
So here I am starting my LIS journey and whilst I wish I didn’t have to deal with this, I can’t be more pleased to be hopefully be on a healing path now. I am ready for whatever this recovery throws at me with the thought that surgical pain must be better than the uncontrolled pain of an injury that’s not healing and only getting worse.
I have been on this forum for most of this year under the name Conifer however yesterday I did something to my settings that now has locked me out of it (yikes did that feel like a bad omen!). So I’m back now as Conifer2 which is perhaps symbolic - updated name for a new, updated life I hope to be enjoying very soon!
(Safsaf you sent me a pm yesterday according to a notification email I got that can’t reply to so sorry about this - feel free to resend to this username)
A bit about me - I am a 37 female based in the UK with no children and developed this fissure in the aftermath of 2 miscarriages this year. I think a combination of emotional trauma and constipation caused it however I do think I’ve suffered in the past but it’s always cleared up after a week or so. I’ve been in a miscarriage-fissure cycle this year and it’s taken me to some very dark and painful places. After spending New Year’s Day in hospital due to the first MC, the tone of my year was really set so I am looking forward to 2022 so I can throw 2021 in the bin!!
Bms are not always that sore, more stratchy, though sometimes it’s like glass and often with a lot of blood. But stinging amd burning starts immediately afterwards and within about 1-2 hours the spasms kick in. These are really debilitating and a couple of times have paralysed me with pain where I can’t move or even speak through them. Sometimes they last until mid/late afternoon but often until the evening and sometimes a duller version right through the night. Baths can relieve them a little bit but I take pain killers like they are sweets.
Tried GTN first in January and it worked but had a couple of minor retears then in May things became bad again and it’s been up and mainly very down ever since. Have been housebound for months and mostly working from bed for the last 1.5 months - even doing my online teaching (work at a college) from bed. Horrendous. If I needed to do anything work wise and leave home I basically had to not eat the day before to prevent any bm the next day so I could function. The eating thing is an issue actually and I have lost 1.5 stone in about 2 months and look really quite sick as a result.
Tried all the usual things after GTN including diltiazem, sudocrem, Vaseline, all the water I could drink, laxido, dulcoease, sitz baths but nothing worked. Initial plan was to do Botox and excise the sentinel pile but I don’t have time on my side to see if it will work due to family plans so my consultant agreed to go straight to LIS and just heal the damn thing. I will then opt for c-section in the future if my pregnancy plans work out (which I’m sure they will).
So this is my background - thanks for reading. I plan to update my surgery day information later in a follow up post when I get home and will update in the days going forward. Currently I’m in that sweet place of no pain due to local anaesthetic and the first bm is not on my immediate horizon so I’m feeling quite relaxed.
Let the healing commence….