Hey!
I'm a 35 year old female who is excited to find a place where there are others who are going through some of the same bumps and bruises that I have been experiencing. It started (& quite honestly thought it ended) 15 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child. I wasn't eating a lot of fiber & went to the doctor when I had blood in my stool & severe pain when passing a BM. He prescribed me some suppositories & made me promise to eat more fiber and sent me on my way. The problem seemed rectified shortly thereafter. Over the next 15 years I had 2 more children and developed hemorrhoids, but never any serious pain. About 2 months ago, I went back to work (teacher) & started having the most painful BM's, but I wasn't constipated & there was no blood. The pain was so bad and would last 5-6 hours causing me to call out at work. I went to my family doctor who prescribed suppositories... I couldn't get them inserted (ugh!) so I went back to the doctor who gave me steroid injections, but to no avail! She referred me to a specialist... It looked like surgery was it! The specialist tried to look inside and said I had an old fissure that didn't heal properly, a piece of skin that grew across my anus that was probably pulling when I used the bathroom, and my anus was too narrow! We scheduled a fissurectomy. It has been a week and I haven't needed my pain medicine for 2 days. Today I got out and had lunch with my husband but had to rush home to have a BM. It wasn't painful, but afterwards the outer anus burned. I took a hot bath and lied down after. I am having a lot of pink leakage that keeps my anus raw. I hope it stops soon because I am supposed to go back to work Monday. Any suggestions are welcome! Thanks for reading!!

Hi Mamaof3 and welcome to our board!

I went through something similar after my surgery. I had a bit of burning fow a week or two after surgery (but the painful hours-long spasms were GONE ). I think that, at least in my case, having loose(r) BMs was the culprit in the burning sensation -- and honestly, the only thing that helped that was what you already did, a hot bath. If necessary, refresh the water with more heat after about ten minutes or so, keep it hot or at least good and warm.

The *hard* part is maintaining a firm but not hard stool. And beyond avoiding junk foods or high-fat foods, I don't know what to say to achieve that. If you are using miralax or stool softeners, maybe cut back on that some and eat your veggies -- get your RDA of fiber but never go overboard on eating *too* much fiber because then you just get bulkier stools.

I'm kinda out of touch with more current methods of treating AF since I had my surgery in 2006 and healed, but like you still had some miserable BMs for a week or so. May, though that is encouragement...for the next 6 months or a year you really need to continue to treat yourself like you have a fissure even if and when all symptoms disappear -- it really does take the bum a year or so to heal and regain strength so you don't wind up in pain again. So peruse this forum and when you read things that make sense take that advice and keep treating your bum like it still has the fissure to help ensure you heal well and don't get back to square one ever again!

But so far it seems you are on the right track -- if you are not having the spasms after a BM that in and of itself is a GREAT sign! Happy healing!