by dmcff » 06 Mar 2016, 10:48
Going back to the "living with it" theme of this thread: I'm struck by the change in the way I'm reacting to the varying levels of AF pain this year. Last year I was constantly visiting my GP, to a point where I felt I more or less wore out my welcome, and when the pain got really bad ended up in A&E more than a couple of times. This year I still have the pain, though maybe not quite so severe, and have seen my GP only once (make that twice) since the beginning of the year. I have been to A&E precisely 0 times.
Part of this is due to the realization that A&E can't help me beyond supplying me with the creams and painkillers I already have. As far as hospital treatments go, I know that for me the next step is sigmoidoscopy and Botox injections, and I have to decide if I want to follow that route.
What I really want - or have thought I want - is to get back to the way things were before the fissures happened (largely, I feel now, as a result of stress).Yet somehow I know that isn't going to be possible: once things go wrong "down there" the chances of them returning to normal are probably not all that great.
I realized recently that my work is likely to suffer - last year I was able to do very little work because of the pain, and this year I started out optimistically hoping that I could get back to my normal working routine (I work from home), only to find that in the end the returning pain affected my ability to concentrate, and I had to back out of a fairly demanding project that a couple of years ago would not have caused me much trouble at all.
Maybe there is a cure for me, or maybe there isn't. Either way, I feel that AF has caused my life to turn a corner, and it's too late to go back now. And at the age of 71 maybe I need to rethink my priorities: perhaps work is not the be-all and end-all, perhaps there is room for some life as well, and I need to work on making that room.
2014 Anal fissure
2015 CAT, EUA, sigmoidoscopy, 2 MRI
2016 Pain severe then moderate to low
2017 Moderate pain
2018 Physical therapy, pain management
2019-20 Living with it
2021 Still AF
2022 Therapy, meditation
2023 Onward, up
2024 CT scan