Hello,
I am new to this forum and I have never posted on a health website before but I feel that there is so much despair with this chronic condition that my story bears sharing for the hope of others...
I am a 27 year old male who is a professional athlete and my first experience with my fissure was at 18 years old. I was playing in the junior ranks and was on the road every week. I would hold my BM's til we would arrive at the hotel but sometimes I wouldn't go for a whole day or two. My nutrition was not the best and I would have very large hard BM's. At first they did not hurt and no bleeding but as they persisted I felt like I was passing knives and could not sit without being in a lot of discomfort. Anyway I had no idea what was going on and was noticing blood on my stool and in the toilet so I went to the team doctor. He said it could be a fissure but could not "see" anything. He gave me miralax, which I never took, and off I went. Over the course of a few months I had on again off again bleeding but just ignored it at my pain went away. Still had occasional bleeding but no pain.
From that point til my 26th birthday I didn't have any problems with pain or discomfort, just very occasional bleeding, maybe a few times a year. Then the real pain set in!
It was in may of 2011 I started bleeding a lot, but still no pain but the blood was more then it has been. Then after a week of blood after most of my BM's the intense discomfort was back. I felt like after a BM my butthole would be so tight I couldn't pass anything. The pain would not go away, I thought it was hemmorhoids so I put some prep H on it....no help of course. So I went back to the doc and he noticed a tag of skin and called it a hemroidial pile but no fissure....by this time I was researching a lot of remedies and knew the anal fissure inside and out. This wasn't a hemroidial pile but a sentinel pile that represents a chronic fissure. I tried every home remedy from tinactin to dr wheatgrass superbalm and even ammoils for fissures. Nothing really helped... I made another appt and asked for nifedipine and used it religiously for 4 months. My daily regimine was miralax, nifedipine topical and a magnesium supplement. I noticed some relief but if I didn't have soft stool I would bleed and have intense pain. So I was referred to a gastroenterologist....bad idea!!!!! The gastro didn't even examine me, I told him my symptoms and he said yea sounds like a fissure so we should do a sigmoidoscopy.....I thought WTF!! You are going to stick a long scope into my sensitive behind to look all the way up my sigmoid colon when I complaining about a fissure.....so I went along believing he knows best! The sigmoidoscopy was so painful and he didn't find anything!!! I was starting to think maybe I don't have a fissure....so I had a follow up visit with the gastro and he told me to stop nifedipine and see how thing feel..,once I did the pain hit me again like a ton of bricks..I was so hopeless at this point. The fissure would affect my performance and workouts were a battle. I didn't want to go out bc the pain was terrible and I couldn't afford to eat the wrong foods to make my stool hard.
I finally broke down and researched on of the best colo rectal surgeons in my city and gave him a call. I got in to see him and within 5 sec of examining me he saw not one but two fissures (one at bottom one at top). The top one had a sizable tag. He said they looked like they've been there for a while and weren't even beginning to heal. He said I exhausted all medical treatment and recommended surgery. I said yes right away. He told me about the rare side affects (incontinence, infection etc) but said they are so rare. I had the surgery 2 weeks later. It was a breeze, I was sedated and I blinked my eyes in the operating room and asked them when they were going to start and they said "we are already done!". After surgery I did have some serious pain but I did not take any pain pills bc of constipation. I also had my tag removed...the first BM was not bad, a little blob but haven't had any since and I am 3 weeks out from surgery...I am back to my normal practice schedule and the CRS checked me out yesterday and said I was healing quite nicely and should be healed up fully in a few weeks. No more spasms, look or pain and my BMs have been larger then they were before. I am so glad I had this surgery and wish I would have done it sooner. Dealing with he fissure was way worse then the recovery....
If you want to get rid of your fissure, have the surgery if you can....it's the only way to go!!