I'm just curious as to why people get them removed? They don't cause any problems do they? I have a massive tag. I noticed that on a day when the whole area was excruciatingly sore, the tag was twice the size. So it seems to get smaller and larger. I'm just not clear on the relevance of the skin tags, why they get taken out, how people know it is a skin tag that is sore/irritated rather than the fissure. I seem to be getting new skin tags, all over the place.

Sika,
I think it's really a personal choice, and how much trouble the skin tag gives you. Mine was huge and caused as much pain as the fissure. It would swell and cover the whole anal opening. It was almost impossible for me to walk at times when it was at it's worse. It was easy for me to tell the difference because if the swelling was present, then my pain was worse. I actually had to hold my butt cheeks apart to walk for about a week. The only thing that would shrink it just a little was about two weeks of basically living in the bath. I imagine there's really not that much difference in the pain you would get with an external hemmie except we get the lovely fissure along with it.
Some folks and their CRS's opt not to have them removed. If their not giving you that much trouble then it's probably not necessary. I felt like I would have made a big mistake had I kept mine and so did my CRS.

:oops: sorry for my ignorance again :oops: what is a skin tag?

Hey Granny, when a fissure becomes chronic (older than 6 weeks) it can develop an external anal skin tag called a sentinel pile, and an enlarged papillae at the base of the fissure. It looks just like an external hemmie. They can become pretty painful and swell pretty bad with some but others don't seem to have as much trouble.