Been reading around here for the last few weeks so though I'd chime in here.

I'm a 30 year old male recently diagnosed with anal fissures. It all started 3-4 weeks ago. About once or twice a year, normally around the holidays when I'm not drinking enough water, and eating crappy (no pun intended) food, I'll have a hard BM, with a little bit of blood. Nothing to painful, but for 1-2 days after, BM's will hurt and my butt will be a bit sore, but usually it always healed up quickly and I was good to go.

However, this time was different. Still had the normal amount of blood I usually get after a particularly hard stool, but man this one hurt like something fierce. I have a high pain tolerance, but this one had me flushed, and sweating profusely from the pain. Ended up taking some tramadol I still had, but that really didn't do much. The only thing that seemed to help was walking around for 1-2 hours till the pain started to decrease. I finally decided enough was enough after I had a dentist appointment and I ended up cancelling it because I was hurting to bad to sit still in a chair. I made an appointment with my primary care Dr. for the following day.

He did an examination on myself and wasn't sure what the issue was. Said maybe hemorrhoids, but he couldn't get deep enough I guess to really find out. He prescribed me some Hydrocodone for pain and anucort hc suppositories. He also called a CRS he recommended and had them make me an appointment for the following day. The hydrocodone in my opinion didn't really help that much. I could still feel the pain pretty good even after taking 1 or 2 of those guys. Maybe it's because he gave me a lower dosage of the hydro's, but that's the first time I've taken a drug like that for pain in a few years so I thought it would of at least helped more than what it did.

Anyway, the following day I went to the CRS and had a brief discussion with him on my symptons. He then proceeded to do his exam and very quickly, after doing the initial visual exam on the outside told me I had an anal fissure. He used a couple different tools he stuck up me as well, and I'm not sure what they were, but one of them hurt pretty good, and he ended up stopping so he wouldn't cause me any more pain. He prescribed me Diltiazem 2% to apply 4 times daily, and Lidocaine as needed for pain. To be honest though, the lidocaine hasn't really helped that much.

The good news is that as of the past 4 -5 days or so, I don't really have any pain anymore with BM's. They're all pretty painless with the exception of a little twinge with the first part of the BM, then after that it's painless, but what I do have is a delayed pain anywhere from 5 minutes to 20/30 minutes after a BM. It'll get fairly intense, but not so much as to where I need a pain pill, but it's still very hard to sit still for any length of time for 1-2 hours after a BM. However, I have had 1 BM and had no pain at all even after it. I'm thinking my fissure is healed, as I haven't had any blood in quite a while and what I'm experiencing is a mixture of my muscle contracting and some skin tag irritation.

The CRS told me to make an appoint for a month out and if all my pain is gone by then, then just cancel the appointment. I have approximately 1.5 weeks till that next appointment, but I am definitely in considerably less pain than when all this started. and am hopeful maybe it's just some skin tag irritation that he can cut off, band or whatever. He did tell me he would treat this with the diltiazem ointment first, botox second, then LIS if those 2 options failed. I'm feeling hopeful that I won't need LIS, I think maybe the botox if it comes to that will be enough to weaken the muscle enough to let everything else finish healing.

Currently, I try to eat the 20-30 grams of fiber via some fiber cereals like grape nuts, and some fiber powders + vegetables. I also take some stool softeners daily to keep everything squishy. Seems to be doing the job so far.

Thanks for reading.

Hi,

Welcome, and thank you sharing you experience.
How are you doing these days?