Hi all,
It has been a while since I wrote last time and I thought that I need to write down the whole story in case if it will help some people! I think I owe much to this forum and all the nice people here who supported me through my darkest time!!!!! It will be a long story so I might write in in several goes!
You can see the beginning of my story above. I never took all the medicine my GP prescribed me in June 2015. I was scared of starting in case if I will become drug dependent. In fact now I realize that by that time I was so mentally and physically exhausted from constant pain that I didn't react adequately to any more or less difficult situation, I couldn't make right decision, I couldn't work effectively, etc. Anyway, I was crying from pain but too scared to start all these drugs. I always took it with me in my bag as a bit of assurance that if pain will become unbearable I will use a patch and start with antidepressants. In fact, the pain was unbearable, but it just shows in what sort of mental state I was. So I came to the operation and said that i don't want a flap and asked for LIS. He sort of immediately agreed which surprised me but we went with the LIS option. The operation went OK and I was home the same day. Next day when I went to toilet I actually had a pain free stool... Pain free after years of suffering! I was really happy but at the same time couldn't believe.... And I was right! Because next day the pain came back... And back again! And it was even worse this time. I went to see my consultant almost immediately and, as usual, he suggested it's too early to see, so suggested to wait! And I waited but the pain didn't go away... In fact it was becoming worse almost every day. I went back to my work but I wasn't functioning properly despite me trying really hard. For me to travel to the office by public transport I need to walk for 10 minutes to get a bus. I remember that the pain was so severe that I couldn't walk it in one go even slowly. In the middle of my work I needed to stand and sort of bend over for a while for pain to ease. Can imagine what people thought
. Also, i couldn't sleep because of the pain. Previously it was severe pain after I had a poo easing off towards the end of the day but by that time the pain became unpredictable. And it started to be dependent of my body position. I found out that I could sleep only in one position without pain.
After several visits to my consultant he admitted that he doesn't know what to do with me
It was a shock for me!
that he openly admitted this. He wrote back to my GP and suggested to refer me to a different consultant for the second opinion (he suggested a name).
Then it was waiting and suffering time for me. We didn't go for any holidays for two years and I really wanted. SO we booked tickets and accommodation in Spain for the 5th September 2015. I though that a good holiday and sea swimming might help me and definitely will not make things worse. So I was planning to recover from after poo pain during the second half of the day and go to the beach and swim afternoon. I was actually looking forward to this but at the end of August after a couple for especially painful days I was looking at my bump in the mirror and noticed (really sorry for being graphical) that it's sort of changing. Before it was one colour but I could clearly see some dark spots around my anus, a bit like small bruises. and it was progressing! so in a couple of hours them became quite prominent and.... it burst!!!! so I could clearly see pus coming out of there!!!! So as a result of all these mis-treatments I had developed anal abscess
. It was another blow! The only good thing was that the pain eased a bit when it burst. I phoned NHS line (it was Sunday - typical!) explaining the symptoms and they referred me to out-of-hours GP immediately who scheduled an operation next day. As if like I didn't have enough of them already!. This time anesthesia didn't work really well, I woke up in pain (again!) and felling seek. As a result of developing abscess and this operation we cancelled our Spain holiday (obviously lost money as you can't return low coster flights
. And it was just another thing - I was so much looking forward to it). Still not sure if that operation was necessary. The only thing they did was flushed fluid through the abscess which didn't help as pus was still coming out of there. In fact, in a couple of days another abscess burst near the first one but this time GP didn't refer me to an operation. So i was recovering again, taking time off work. And the recovery process was even more painful (if it's at all possible), as each day a district nurse came to my house to see the wand and put some tampons inside it (ouch!). Pain, pain , and more pain!!!
Meanwhile I was waiting for a letter from NHS with the second consultant details and a visit time. Finally it came and I visited him. He referred me to MRT scan to look for a fistula. Surprisingly I got a quick appointment. Surprisingly, it never showed a fistula which was wrong as the fistula had developed!!!!
So he said that I need a more serious ops for him to fix everything: de-roof my fistula and clean up my abscess, and see what else needed to be done. By that time I already had 4 (!) operations so was very skeptical about everything and lost any hope.