Hi there everyone,
I'm Sam, I'm a student, and I've had an anal fissure for what must be about 6 or 7 years now. When I first went to see the doctor aged about 14 it was diagnosed as a fissure straight away and I was prescribed rectogesic, but it gave me terrible headaches and I had to stop using it before I saw any change. I then started to use anusol, at my dad's advice (he having had a fissure himself in the past), which never fully healed it but definitely soothed it and made it manageable. And because I was lazy, I just left it at that for a bit, using anusol relatively often but without any particular regularity. Sometimes the fissure was worse than other times, but it was generally alright.
Over the last few years it's been getting worse though. When it started to get really painful again I went to see the doctor, was (eventually) prescribed diltiazem, which seemed to be marginally effective, but made my anus incredibly sore which forced me to stop using it. I was referred to a colorectal surgeon, but the fissure was annoyingly behaving itself the week I went to see him, but he agreed I could try a botox injection when I explained that it's often worse than what he saw. I've not had the injection yet, but hopefully it'll be organised soon...
Anyway, what I really want to ask about is the fact that, having started properly treating it again, it only seems to have gotten worse. It's always been painful, of course, but more recently BMs are quite simply agony, and wiping afterwards is even worse. It seems to me that as well as getting pain from the cut, the whole anus area is really sore. Anusol helps with the soreness, but not with healing. I'm a vegan, and my fibre intake is quite large, so I have BMs at least three or four times a day - which is tedious and painful. Has anyone got any advice about how I can help it heal until I have the botox?
I'd also like to extend a query about anal sex. Some of the doctors I've seen haven't seemed to really know much about fissures and so would sort of vaguely say "yeah, don't do it". This does seem to make sense. But I've actually found in the past that, as long as we've used copious lubrication, the fissure improves marginally afterwards - through relaxing or whatever, I don't know... Does anyone have any light to shed on this? I mean, right now it's far, far to sore to even think about putting anything penis-sized anywhere near it, but it is something I would like to do again at some point...
I lead a relatively active lifestyle - I run and do yoga pretty much every day. Has anybody found that these affect fissures at all? Because I have had a suspicion that some of the more spread-leg-esque yoga positions might be stretching the fissure unadvisedly. Any thoughts?
Thanks for reading all that!