Hi All,
Here is my diary. I'm a 49 year old male. 6'4" and average weight. My intention is to post about once a week or so, and hopefully this diary will help me keep motivated in my attempt to heal myself of my chronic anal fissure.
Probably around three years ago I found myself with an anal abscess. I saw two doctors who told me it was probably piles/couldn't find anything wrong with me. I was then referred for a colonoscopy and told that there was nothing wrong with me. Eventually after excruciating pain I managed to get my GP to recognise there was indeed an abscess and he referred me for an MRI - which diagnosed an abscess and put me on the waiting list for surgery. By this time my life was in tatters and I was barely able to function, swallowing ridiculous amounts of pain killers. I felt badly let down by the NHS (although I understand they are under tremendous pressure), so I asked my doctor to recommend a private surgeon. I was referred to a Mr Wilson in Harley street who had me in surgery 48 hours later. He told me the abscess was only a few weeks away from rupturing and causing a fistual, so I'm thankful that didn't happen at least. In all it cost me around £3000 but I'm glad I did it.
It took me about four months to heal, and then I was back to normal. Then came the indigestion. I started suffering from very bad indigestion for probably around six months. It wasn't as bad as the abscess but was enough to be prescribed with permanent medication. This wasn't something I wanted, so I looked to change my diet in order to heal myself. This included a low carb diet, which - you've guessed it - made me constipated, and ended up causing an anterior anal fissure. (I cured the indigestion with copious amounts of yoghurt by the way).
Not knowing what was happening to me I went straight back to Mr Wilson who prescribed Diltiazem. The pharmacist gave me Anoheal and after taking this for a couple of weeks I thought I was healed - so I stopped using it (big mistake). Probably two months later I started getting pain again and went back to see Mr Wilson. He prescribed the same thing and said the fissure looks pretty much the same as it did last time. This time the pharmacy gave me Noezem. Unfortunately I reacted badly to this despite struggling to use it for probably six weeks.
I then contacted Mr Wilson again who told me to get my GP to specifically prescribe Anoheal, which is where I am now.
My fissure has been an odd one (perhaps because it is Anterior?), I certainly did feel a tearing when I was constipated and there was lots of blood, but no real pain. Nothing like the pain a lot of people report. However since then I think my fissure has turned "chronic" - and now I feel a fair amount of pain when I have been sitting down for more than 20 minutes. I feel like it's consuming my life and consequently here I am.
I'm about 5 days into using Anoheal and now my plan is to do the following for the next 8 weeks to see if I get any further improvement. I guess my fear is the fissure is now too chronic for Diltiazem, but what can I do?
Here's my plan:
Diltazem (Anoheal) twice a day, morning and evening
30 minutes swimming (it's the only exercise I can do, as I also have patellar tendonitis - something else I'm working on). I'm hoping increased blood circulation will help.
Multivitamins every day
Movicol everyday
Hot bath, morning and evening
Increase fibre intake with fruit and veg
I'm hoping this will help. If not it will be back to Mr Wilson and probably botox - not something I want to do at this stage.
I also have Marfan's syndrome, just add to the list of reasons to be depressed haha
Still things could be worse, so I'm going to give it my all for the next eight weeks and hope for some improvement of some kind.
If anyone else has any suggestions to add to my regimen, I'm all ears!
Wishing everyone here all the best and relief from this awful condition.
LemonMan