I'm hoping to find out how others recovery has gone as mine has been sporadic at best so here's my story.

I've had this fissure since mid December though at first I did not know it was a fissure so I did all the wrong things and made it worse. Finally in early January I went to my primary care Doc and he diagnosed me with the fissure. Made an appointment with a CRS and finally go tin to see him mid January. Yep it's a fissure. Started to do all the "right" treatments (as well as some wrong ones while trying to experiment with what works....as everyone on here knows I REALLY wanted this thing gone). Anyway, it's been about a month that I have been serious about applying the creams (first the Nitro now using both Nitro and Dilt) and making sure my diet was set to ensure the proper type of poo.


At first it didn't seem to be working at all but then I went 4 days with little to no pain and I thought "YES on my way to being whole again"...wrong. Had a tough poo (mine are soft but full of bad stuff apparently) and set back for about a week. Then I went another few days with little to no pain and another set back. I just completed 7 days with little to no pain but had a tough one again last night and again set back.

My main question is "Is this normal?" should I expect to continue to have set backs? I was really hoping the recovery would be lineal and I would be on my way to being me again but now I am very frustrated and my mental outlook is poor. Hoping ya'll can help out with some stories of how your recovery went or is going.

All of us want this thing gone REALLY REALLY bad. Unfortunately this is not an easy task. I was diagnosed with this 2 years ago - there is a person on this forum dealing with this for 10 years now. For me personally - when all possible ointments didn't work I had to go for a LIS. I had my 6th operation last December - the 5 before all unsuccessful - wound kept reopening again and again. Now Im dealing with nerve damage pain because of all the operations and hope it will eventually go away some day.
What you can do is continue with the ointment - works for some people for others doesn't and see a gastroenterologist or a surgeon on a regular basis to follow up on results. If that doesn't help you should consider operation but if you do I hope you're wise with the decision on the right surgeon - as I said I had 5 different ones trying to close mine - and only the 6th one did it. It would have cost me much less stress and cash if I have found him on the first time.

I've read about many of the folks who have had this far longer than I and all I can say is that you all must be very strong people. 2 months of this has really sapped my mental energy (event thought it might be better to be gone from this earth at times). I hope and pray we all get relief from this ailment.

Met with CRS again yesterday and he's encouraged. I plan to con't with the ointments for the next month and see where it leads. I really don't want to do BOTOX as it seems like a souped up version of what I am already doing and from my research does not appear to offer the longer term results that LIS does. CRS was not to happy about that. He'd like to go the more conservative route.

Anyway, I believe my main question has been answer. Unfortunately yes, these setbacks are common and part of the recovery process.

The fact that you have 'only' had this for two months means that there is still time to cure this without surgery or botox. So, do continue with what you are using. It takes at least two months to work out if the ointments actually will work for you, but they do with 80% roughly of people who manage to catch their fissure in the acute stage.

And great that your CRS is encouraged, and you did the right thing by seeing a CRS off the bat as they are definitely the best doctor to diagnose this and deal with it. This is their bread and butter, so to speak.