That is what I keep telling them. I don't mind a skin tag but this is a swelling that hurts! I hope they listen. Maybe it is a small abcess?

It could be, but I don't know. The way I finally figured mine out was that I got so tired of the pain, I pushed REALLY hard on the tag and it erupted out of the fissure. I don't recommend doing things my way, but the pain and the lack of healing of that last little but of fissure were the only signs of the abscess. I didn't bleed or anything until I pushed.

I think I might have a skin tag too, mine sounds just like yours Lecia, it seems to swell and then it hurts!
It feels sort of triangular or cone shaped, like it comes to a point, but I haven't really had a look.
Sometimes it goes down, but one not so good BM and it's raging again.
I might do a google images search and see what that divulges :)

i had a skin tag, up until my dr removed it during my first LIS. it was weird b/c i noticed the skin tag about the same time as i noticed the fissure, not a few weeks/months after like normal. it started out small and after a few months got to be pretty large. it was a tender lump of skin - definitely not like a skin tag you find under your arm! the more pain i had down there, the more inflamed the skin tag seemed to be. i self-diagnosed it as hemorrhoids for months before i found out i had a fissure. i even saw 2 drs that said it was external hemorrhoids. when i finally saw my surgeon he said it was indeed a skin tag and he removed it with the surgery. it's still noticeable where it used to be, but i no longer have any skin tags down there. just the remainder of my stupid fissure that's been there FOREVER :(

I've got one too,and it got infected the same time as I got the abcess, but it seems to have gone down a bit with the antibiotics.
I really hope that yours isn't an abcess, Lecia, you don't need one of those as well at the moment!

Thanks ladies for your thoughts on this!
Juney, did you have any problems from the area tearing open after your doctor removed it?

I went to the CRS today and she put a band on the left internal hemorrhoid to try to cut off blood supply to the skintag. If it is still causing problems, I am getting a hemorrhoidectomy on that side and have the tag removed at the same time. She said that to just remove the tag could create a non-healing wound and the swelling would just come back if she didn't remove the internal source. I think that if that is what it takes I am willing to do that. She said I would be in pain for 2 weeks and it sounds like one of the worst operations but I have pain everyday so it may not be much different.

I go back on 1/21 and will see about scheduling surgery then. I need to see if I can have a family member come out and help though since the recovery process is quite prolonged.

Does anyone know of someone who has had this procedure? I guess like I said I need to find a hemorrhoid board and see what people say. Though it might just scare me more. It is kind of like labor. You get all of the stories about what it is like to have a baby but your experience won't be just like it and you can wind up making yourself worry so much ahead of time. So maybe I shouldn't!

lecia,
u r so brave! does the banding hurt? i forgot 2 ask u how the IRC procedure has helped u out? wouldn't they b able 2 do that instead of the hemmy-ectomy?
i love ur xmas tree. i wanted 2 put mine up but i was concerned about the pug bumping into it trying 2 get ornaments and stuff!
happy tuesday......

The problem is that my hemmies are not responding long term to the banding or IRC. I find the IRC more painful. The banding is just some soreness, nothing I coudn't deal with. But my bottom is getting so scarred from all of the procedures (15+ bands), slerotherapy and IRC that we need to look at a long term solution.

lecia, no i didn't have any problems with the wound tearing after surgery. but there was a pretty yucky looking open wound there for awhile until it closed up. i had to stick with the hot baths every day (which we all do anyway) for cleanliness. it took a couple weeks but it eventually healed up. you can still tell something was there, but it doesn't stick out the way it used to. from the outside i'd say it looks pretty normal (as far as butts go!! hehe).
i'm not sure if having the tag removed had any effect on my fissure healing, i don't think so though. i didn't have one removed during the 2nd surgery and healing has still been very slow-going....

Thanks for the reponse, Juney. Glad to hear it didn't seem to slow things down too much. My doctor didn't take it off but she said if I had the entire hemorrhoidal column taken off, she would take that off too, but just removing it isn't going to solve the problem.

Although this is a different kind of surgery than the boardies have had here and I can see the process of getting fed up and just finally wanting to do something.