I've had a fissure starting the 2021 pandemic, it happened in winter around Jan/Feb and it was horrible for the first month or so.

I was inactive, not drinking enough water, stressed, I ate a lot of foods that would generally harden the stool. A recipe for disaster while my mental health was deteriorating cause my personal life was very bad and lonely, lots of troubles with people I new.

I had a big hard stool that cause a big tear initially. Some symptoms I experienced were muscle spasms, pain, feeling of a golf ball being stuck in my rear. I had a lot of difficulty sleeping, I was scared of bowel movements because the area had become so sensitive from the repeated stress and trauma to it.

First thing I did after a few weeks was to address the constipation, it was tough cause I was still in pain. But changing my diet to something that softens the stool started to help and I took more sitz baths to ease the pain and started walking more. Slowly the pain factor decreased but the blood was still present.

I used to have blood leak throughout the day, if my muscles stretched the cut a bit, it would bleed. I'd be sitting down and just move my buttocks sliding on the chair to adjust my posture and it would bleed. There would be a lot of blood on the toilet paper.

Some BMs there was a lot of blood in the toilet bowl, almost like a leak. All of this was very frightening and add more to my stress and tension.

This kept up as I tried to adjust my lifestyle to a healthier one by eating more fibre, drinking more water, and being more active by walking to promote healing and get my mind off things.
What I learned was that fibre was sometimes causing the stool to harden as I needed to up my water intake.

Once I did do that, I learned there was 2 kinds of fiber and you need to have a fine balance. Cause you don't want a stool so big that it hardens if not enough water is taken in or if the transit time is too long. You also don't want it so big that it stretches the sphincter and affects the cut.
Sitz bath helped a lot with easing the pain, so I kept going experimenting with my diet. Eventually the pain stopped and the bleeding minimized. It was now just on the TP but every BM I always had to strain a bit. I tried Squatting on my toilet but it didn't feel as comfy since the toilets are rather small and it puts a lot of pressure on my joints.

I started to develop a sentinel skin tag since my fissure was now classified as Chronic. Learning about this rare problem and not finding a solution or enough info was so stressful and it made the problem worse for me sometimes.

I saw a CR who recommended Nifedipine, I'm not sure it helped or not.
Eventually I sought therapy for my mental health as my relationships were deteriorating and I was under a lot of tension, I ended up confronting people who hurt me and it lifted a large part of the internal stress off my body. I could feel the pressure lifted off my body AND my sphincter area. Usually it would be tight all day but now it was a lot less tight. My mind wasn't having a constant stream of negative thoughts either. This was a step in the right direction!

Next, I got a squatty potty, please consider this product, it made passing stools so much better since I was pain free and only minimally bleeding. The squatting posture with little tension on the joints made me able to relax my entire body more for each BM. It's an active process to learn to relax! My mind got conditioned to be tense cause

I was afraid of going to the bathroom, now I'm a lot less worried and looking forward to challenging myself to relax, this change in attitude also removed my fear of each BM.

I shifted my fiber source to fruits mainly and this helped me reduce junk sweeteners like chocolate drastically. I stopped a lot of bread, rice, banana, dairy or anything that hardens a stool. My diet mainly consists of fruits, meat, and verrryy little wheat, junk foods. I'm adding in more veggies slowly but I just prefer eating fruits.

I added Avocado and Plums into my diet too and they changed my BM overall into a healthier one. This worked for me and I was keeping track of my BMs daily to see if I bleed. Throughout this entire time I was just more concerned with the sentinel pile growing vs the blood in each BM.

June 2022, I started having BMs without blood on and off!!! I couldn't believe that! I even had to pass a stool that was rougher without any blood at some point. Soon my daily tracker had more days without blood, like 7-10 days out of the month of June and then same for July. If you drink lots of water please know you'll lose electrolytes, I wasn't eating much salt but when I did start, my stools got better.


Finally I went to see my CR again in August 2022, doc was very happy to see my progress and the condition of the fissure. She said it was now superficial and not deep, and it was half a cm long unlike before. I have 0 pain and minimal blood loss and a minimized fissure.

All that effort throughout the year paid off in getting me this far. I haven't processed this little victory just yet. I'm so happy that the effort got me this far a lot of it thanks to people sharing their stories here and also a Proctologist on youtube talking about this stuff. You can look up Dr. Albert Chung on youtube, his videos really eased my soul and gave me hope to change my attitude towards my problems.

Now my CR prescribed Nifedipine again and told me to keep going on this track and take a laxative powder called Lax A Day in small amounts, she thinks I won't need so much of it but it's a powder that I can take indefinitely since the body doesn't develop too much of a dependence on it.

I'm looking forward to staying diligent and disciplined and tackling this next step of my journey with a positive attitude. It's gonna be a long ride but I hope I can heal and I hope all of you can heal too!

I'll write another update way later once I have something of significance to share.

Hi there

How are you going now?

I've got 2 fissures, one is quite deep. It keeps retearing when the front hard piece of the stool comes out. The rest of my stool is perfect. It's very frustrating. Did you get any mucous sometimes too when you had a re tear etc?

I feel so despondent. I get 7 days with no blood then a slightly hard piece and back to square one.