Hi everyone! I am new to this forum, although I’ve been following it since my first bout with fissures! My first fissure episode came about around 2.5 years ago. It was a week or so after a colonoscopy for unexplained and worrisome GI symptoms including months of constipation and abdominal discomfort. The good news - colonoscopy came back clear! No IBD, no cancer :) the bad news...I think the bowel prep combined with the months of straining with constipation gave me this fissure issue. In my first episode of fissures (both posterior and anterior ) the pain was absolutely awful. Gnawing pain and misery hours after every BM. After several weeks of nifedipine ointment, I achieved some relief. Ever since then, though, I’ve been getting relapses. Everytime I think I’m healed (at the end of 2019, I had been months without a serious relapse!) it will come back. Out of nowhere seemingly. It is so disheartening and I sometimes want to cry. Anyway, I have completely changed my diet since my pre-AF days, I use a magnesium citrate supplement which keeps my stool nice and soft. Nowadays, it doesn’t really entail that much pain, some raw stinging feeling after bowel movements and general discomfort throughout the day, but absolutely manageable. I am returning to my CRS next week to discuss maybe Botox injections or continuing my ointment.


Here’s my question though. Should I worry about fissures becoming infected? I can’t seem to find any information online about how big of a risk this is. For reference, I do NOT have Crohn’s or UC, which I know are major risk factors for infections in that area. I bathe daily, and I also make sure to gently clean after every BM with toilet tissue that I run under the sink to make it as clean as possible. I gently dab the area until I see nothing but the white toilet paper. Nevertheless, I’m really worried. Does anyone have any idea about this? I have used nifedipine ointment for two years basically, and whenever I reach the end of the prescribed time frame to take it, I relapse. So I am confident the ointment itself won’t cause any complications like infections, but I still worry. Am I cleaning the area enough? Should I be worried? Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

For what it is worth, because of my delay to sign up for LIS and worrying about nonsense like incontinence, I have caused my own misery, now my fissure got infected in a matter of 10 months and it cannot heal even with antibiotics pumped in my vein a the hospital, infection is inevitable given the length of time a wound like that is opened and feces constantly passing through it with so much bacteria.

So now I am probably dying at just 34 years old slowly and very painful. Because of my delay on surgery and only looking for ways to heal this fissure via use of things like Nitro cream which didn't do much, I now have to find out how I can put myself out of my misery in the most painless way and every way I could find available to me is just too scary and painful I don't know what to do now.

Did u make it bruh