Abu so helpful many thanks. It gives me some more options - it's tricky when I've eaten toast or cereal my whole life!!
I'm going to see how the dairy goes, it's still early days with the grains to really see if it's going to make the difference.
thanks again!!

My advice is not to change too many things at once. if you started with eliminating grains, keep at it for at least a few weeks and see how you feel. You can think about introducing diary later.

Ok I will thanks.good idea. I'm only on day four so far!!

My doc told me to keep taking miralax as long as it doesn't make my stools runny. But if I have er on the side of runny or hard, I assume I should er on runny right? What exactly is the problem with runny? Will runny stool prevent healing or something?

I decided to up the miralax dose just a bit to make sure I'm avoiding the occasional hard stool, and so far so good I have not had too much pain, but this means things are a bit on the runny side.

Bloodybum - I will be interested in what others suggest. I am not sure. i find hard stools are a nightmare for me, but I then wonder if runny is "ok". Today was runny and felt a bit burning. It is very hard to get a perfect stool!

There is not an easy answer. The watery stools are a God send when trying to get rid of fissure pain, and this is the tricky part, if they don;t "burn". Some watery stools you can barely feel when expelling while others are hot and burn like hell. these last ones are a definite no-no. How to have one or the other is not something easy to control.
Also, having watery stools, while helping with the pain and healing, might lead to something else: the fissure will heal on a narrower canal than normal stools will provide, because the canal doesn;t need to stretch that much. So when the time comes and you will weed yourself off the softeners even a normal, soft, BM can lead to a re-tear as the canal will stretch farther than when it did while having runny stools. And the recent tissue grown on the fissure, which has far less strength than the rest, might or will break.
This is why some doctors do not recommend taking softeners while healing, because they consider the healing should take place under normal BMs and not under ideal conditions which cannot be replicated for life. But, as it turns out, few people have the courage to endure the pain and prolonged healing without reverting to softeners.
In the end it is a choice we all have to make.

Sorry for not being more optimistic on this one :)

Abu what you say makes sense I see that the anal canal could heal narrower. Goodness a lot to think about.

Really it will heal narrower? Do you know if there's research on that or just something people have noticed? Jesus these things are insidious.

I agree it freaks me out!! Abu do you know much about this?

My CRS told me this and then I found others on this forum which received the same advice. Unfortunately I am too scared of a retear after so many years to try this method. If you search for this you will find scientific explanations. My intention is not to freak you out, I am sure we can handle this if we try slowly to reduce the amount of softeners. My definition of slowly when talking about fissures means months if not years.