I developed a fissure on May 2012, and I became a regular member of this forum for several months afterwards. It started healing on August 2012 without any surgery and since December all I have is occasional skin tag bleeding (my skin tag is roughly the size and shape of a small bean) without pain. For the last 2 months, not even that - occasional irritation but no bleeding or pain, although I'm pretty sure the skin tag would bleed given the "right" conditions.
I'm writing this message to tell people the things that have been working for me and to provide some hope for those who are currently suffering it.
My fissure was the most painful experience of my life - for such non-life threatening condition, it's incredible how much it can affect your life. Like most people here, my life and routine revolved around the fissure: where I could go, where I could eat, what I could do. It was hurting my work, my family life and my ability to take care of my child. Although I now understand that the surgery options are safe and have excellent prospects, back then I was scared and unable to make the right decisions to manage the problem. As you all now, life with a fissure can be HARD.
The initial phase of the fissure was typical: pain, bleeding and the non-stop research of doctors, medicines and options. I tried every possible reasonable medicine (food changes, Diltiazem, Nifedipine etc), but it wouldn't get better... Sometimes I'd see a small improvement, just to go back to zero out of the blue. This lasted for around 4 months.
Around August, I decided to visit my family, who lives in South America. The very thought of the trip was scary - a long international flight while my routing involved 3 bathroom trips (bloody and painful) a day. I endured through that and while there, I decided to visit a local doctor with national renown. He was very assuring and told me, without a doubt, that my fissure would heal and that he hadn't had to perform a LIS or any other surgery for fissures in five years. He gave Dinitrate Isosorbide, which is a medicine not usually prescribed in the United States. In 5 days, my fissure was GONE. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure the medicine alone didn't cut - support from my family and the reassurance from the doctor helped as much, but this was the first major victory for me.
In the next couple of months, I had to deal with another problem. The dinitrate Isosorbide left me with significant irritation that wouldn't go away - it was MUCH, MUCH better than the fissure but still a problem. I would still have occasional bleeding, sometimes for 1-2 weeks in a row, and would have burning and a some pain. I visited a doctor in the US and she told me that I could stop the medicine and that the main problem was that I had been using medicines in the area for so long that it left me with this irritation that would eventually go away. Another couple of months of problems but it did get much better. Another couple of months of improving my eating and finally I reached a "stable" situation where all I'd have would be occasional bleeding (not much really) from the skin tag with no pain whatsoever. This is where I am now, although I haven't had bleeding for a 2 months.
So to summarize, it was a long road but my life is back. I suppose that my life won't ever be the same again, and I know that the area will always be sensitive, but I think that my condition is now no worse than the occasional hemorrhoids or any other annoying problem that can happen as we get older.
A big part of this quest was to figure out what would work in a sustainable basis. I now eat much better than I used to before I had the fissure. And I can actually eat anything, as long as I moderate the amounts (alcohol, chocolate and junk food only in very small amounts - a full milky way bar would be too much already). Of course the eating has to do with hard stools, and you always want to avoid those...
Here is a list of things that help me and that took me months to figure out:
- Whenever I feel I'm having a hard stool, or stools with a "hard tip", I NEVER NEVER NEVER strain. If it doesn't fall sort of naturally, I stand up, walk around a little bit, jump a little bit (funny but it helps...) and try again. If it still doesn't come out easily, like if it is "stuck", I use Fleet's liquid glycerin suppository to lubricate the area. This ALWAYS does the trick. I used to do it 2-3 times per week, but I haven't used it for several weeks now. This is the single best thing for the bleeding skin tag problem. If it's bleeding, I tend to be a bit more aggressive with glycerin usage, sometimes using it a few days in a row until the bleeding stops.
- I stopped eating a lot of fiber. That's right, this is one of the first things the doctor in south america told me. It really depends from person to person, but since I was going to the bathroom 2-3 times per day, he said that a lot of fiber could make me worse. This one also very useful and I got very good results from cutting my fiber intake from 30g/day to around 15/day.
- The new foods I discovered that do great for me are: peanut butter, baked potatoes and lots of vegetables (especially red onions and lettuce). I eat salad every single day, but without any junk sauce. I just put lettuce, onions and some feat cheese to make an yummy greek salad. I also consume quite a bit of corn and peas, and most of the time this enough to ensure soft stools.
- Did I say potatoes? Food with a lot of water in them helps in a HUGE way. I read in a few places that the water that goes in the food is better to hydrate your stools than the water you drink. This is absolutely true for me. But avoid reheating starchy food, when I ate reheated rice for a while, my problem got worse. I also read that reheating starches can change the way they are, and I think this affected my digestion in a major way (hard stools almost every day).
- Replaced part of my cow milk intake by coconut/soy milk. I did better with coconut milk. It's more expensive, but it's yummy! I still mix it with cow milk and the combination tastes good and I do well with it.
- I have one capsule of probiotics and 1 capsule of magnesium every night with dinner. These are the only "medicines" I have, but they are both very mild and I think I can take them for the rest of my life without any side effects. Please note that I'm talking about "magnesium" and not "magnesium milk", which is a different beast. These 2 made miralax completely unnecessary to help soften stools, and they are much cheaper and "more natural".
- Daily exercise - walking, jogging, moving around will always help.
- Drink a lot of water - around 1/2 gallon per day.
- Know to relax in the potty. This one was the hardest thing for me because after months of fissure, well, it's just hard to do that. But in time I developed a "protocol" where I learned to relax my muscles better. The hardest part here is that I will sometimes feel the skin tag (not really pain, but like a minor pinching sensation) and this will make me contract a little. But with practice, I got better at it.
- And the hardest thing: try to remove stress in your life. I made some big changes in how I cope with stress, and actually my life now is 100% better than it was before the fissure (well, skin tag aside). I eat better, sleep better, deal better with stress at work. I even resumed doing stuff I love but had set aside for more than a decade! Also, my boy is turning four and we're out of the "terrible twos" and most of the "terrible threes" ( :)
. It's not his fault, but what can I say? Taking care of kids is hard and stressful. It didn't help at all when I was at the peak of my fissure, but now things are much better.The bottom line is: this is a challenge life is throwing at you. You will discover many things about yourself, about life and will realize how short your time on this planet is. You will notice how many opportunities to be happy you wasted, and that what you have is much more valuable than you thought.
At the end, this could be a blessing disguised as a curse - but through the thick and thin of the pain, through the moments of misery and even suicidal thoughts, be sure, ABSOLUTELY SURE of one thing:
You will get better, and you will get your life back. And it will be a better life than what you had before.
