I'm 30, male from London. Been suffering from AF for almost 3 months now. Went to see my GP 2 months ago, but he was clueless even after a digital examination. Kept insisting it was hemorrhoids for some reason but I knew it wasn't, to cut a long story short, I was turned away with a promise of referral to a specialist and a couple of blood tests.
I took it upon myself (with help from my wife) after the visit to diagnose what was wrong with me. This forum was immensely useful I have to say. So a week after I got another appointment with a different GP and went in armed with pictures and references that I had collected myself.
It took only 2 pictures to convince the GP this time that indeed it is a fissure! hurrah! this encouraged me to ask him for GTN which he promptly gave me a prescription for.
Far forward 2 weeks, been on high fibre diet and BMs are excruciating because stools are bulked up too much, it's been tear/heal/tear/heal for over 2 months now ... GTN seems to be doing nothing but giving me headaches ... been drinking loads of water (2-3 litre is normal for me, now I'm drinking at least 3-4 litres a day) but I'm finally going to see a specialist soon.
Got tired of painful of BMs and its back to GP, but this time she refused to listen to anything as my referral to specialist is coming up soon .. anyway, convinced her to prescribe some sort of laxative (got lactoluse .. I think I am lactose intolerant and might even have IBS but oh well .. why not! right now I'm willing to try anything). Some more blood tests and MMR jab to put the icing on the top .. think I've given a pint of blood by now (and lost another pint down the toilet .. the bleeding has become so bad)
Finally went in to see the specialist this week, he had a good look and can't find anything abnormal apart from a "very small fissure" .. but he offered me sigmoidoscopy in 3 weeks time to make sure we haven't missed anything; to which I agreed promptly.
He also asked me to stop using GTN and prescribed Anoheal instead. Said we'll see how it goes for another 3-4 weeks otherwise, we'll go for Botox.
In short, lactoluse is a life saver for me .. my BMs are now very soft and tear/heal/tear/heal has turned into heal/heal/heal I hope .. I'm not bleeding heavily with every BM and have slowly started to eat normally as well .. been using anoheal for only a few days now so can't say .. but so far so good.
Looking forward to be an active member of this forum!
