Yes it took about two months but now (fingers crossed) I am completely pain free. I still take one movicol a day at the moment although my CRS said to stop. But taking it doesn't bother me and why chance stopping it?
I had botox tho which will last about one more month so the real test will be whether things continue to be ok once the botox has fully worn off.
One thing I would say though is whilst I had post op pain nothing was ever as painful as fissure pain. So I wish you a speedy recovery and I am sure you will be fine. The main issue I had was stressing over whether I was healing properly tbh. But I guess that is natural and it obviously takes time heal but I was in a hurry!

Not to take issue with anyone, or discourage you Steve, but for me the post-surgery pain was definitely worse than the fissure pain, until about Day 5. The BM pain post-surgery was also much worse than the BM fissure pain for me, again until about Day 5 or 6.
Having said that, BMs were never painful for me when I had the fissure - the pain would come after the BM and last for one or two hours. But still, the BM pain for the first few days after the surgery was worse than any pain I had with the fissure.
I just don't want you to think something has gone wrong if it hurts you more than your fissure did for a few days. I think that's also pretty normal, and even with that, at Day 10 I am now in considerably less pain overall than I was before the surgery.
Perhaps it was the hemmorhoidectomy that hurt so much, but you must be doing better than me, because I was not well enough to type emails until Day 3.

Hey Steve, I'm still in limbo myself. If I have a lot of BMs during a day, my anus still gets pretty badly irritated to the point where it hurts. And I still get some pain from both the fissure site and the LIS incision site.
Things have indeed gotten better slowly, but it's now 3 months post-op and I can't say I'm fully recovered. I'm sure you'll do better, though, because from all that I've read, I'm definitely a big outlier.
Also, my rheumatologist is pretty sure that I have fibromyalgia, so I don't know if I just have some kind of chronic pain problem. I've had chronic pain of various sorts for years now, but have never thought of any connection between it and my slow healing after surgery. So possibly some complicating factors in my case -- don't take my statistical non-conformance to heart too much :)

For me, all the packing caused me a lot of pain. I was wondering if they had used all they had in the room after seeing how much came out. :D After passing that with the first BM things were better.
Also, I used a squeeze bottle with warm water while on the toilet to soothe/clean the sites that have been cut (5 in my case). The pain for me was different from the fissure. Very sharp burning, the kind you expect from a cut.

Oh, about the seepage, Steve: yes, knock on wood, it seems to be a very rare occurrence these days now. I can't say that I never notice any, but it's uncommon. Took a while to get there though. Hope things go well for you today. I wasn't able to sit for a while so don't worry about that, it's pretty common IMO and to be expected. I really only felt the soreness the first day after surgery, and then I felt all kinds of weird sensations in my butt over the next few weeks.

Day 2..
Been awake since 05:30 a.m, had 2 slices of wholemeal bread toasted and a cup of coffee, then around 8 a.m. I felt the urge to have a BM so went to the toilet, I passed some packing but no BM and to my amazement there was no pain, there was a bit of blood but not much, I then rinsed my bum with the shower head and decided to have a sitz bath with some salt in, I can't really say that I'm in pain it's just more of a discomfort and a bit stingy, anyway I dried my anal region the best I could with a hair dryer, just now I'm having weird feelings within my anus, feels like things are moving around and I feel like if I pass gas then something will come out with it (gross I know) from what I've read on here it's most likely some drainage/leakage so I'm wearing a pad down there just incase, have took my antibiotics and ibuprofen but no pain killers and will stay off them unless absolutely necessary, I'm hoping I have a BM sometime today but won't be forcing myself, as for sitting, that's still quite painful so I'm laying on my side, I'm just so glad that I took the plunge into surgery despite the discomfort, I will do all possible to look after my bum from now on.

Steve,
Do they have Ensure or Boost (nutritional supplement drinks) in the UK? I drank Ensure when I was trying to gain weight a couple of years ago. That would help you get the nutrition you need to help heal your body. Good luck and stay positive!!

Hi Steve
I had discharge from the wound site for about 7-10 days I think. I certainly got thru a lot of gauze pads!
My experience will be different from yours as we didn't have the same procedure but everyone is different anyway as proven by NP, Fissys and Philber's posts.
Some of my discharge may have been leakage but it is difficult to tell. I had botox which slackens the spinchter significantly I'm mot sure how similar this is to a LIS but beleive me if it is similar you won't have to strain! When you gotta go you gotta go!

Hey Steve, it sounds like you're doing well to me: I felt like I was going to poop my pants while passing gas for a while after surgery. And I had really weird irregular BMs for several days (even with Miralax) from the anesthesia.
One thing doctors don't generally tell you is that your butt will be kind of haywire for a while after surgery. Not necessarily always pain (although there is that of course), but from odd feelings in general. I had everything from soreness to pinching to stinging feelings. There was little rhyme or reason to it.
You sound excellent for 1 day post op!

Excellent for one day post-op!
It sounds like you are doing great, Steve. As others have said, there is bound to be grossness and weirdness in your butt for a few days following surgery.
I must have forgotten to ask my doc for the 'no-pain' version of the surgery! :-)
Keep it up!