Has anyone ever had fissure-related pain radiate upwards toward the lower back?
I've been dealing with some nether region pain/discomfort lately and am trying to figure out what the heck it is. It feels like fissure pain in that it hurts to poop, but is dull and more poorly localized compared to what I recall of fissure pain. So far I've seen a CRS who tells me it's rectal muscle spasms but it seems weird that I would sometimes feel it in my lower back as well.
The pain is on the left side only and feels like I have a bruise inside my butt and like the actual left butt check is sore/tender. However it can't be reproduced by touching the area. I'm seeing another CRS later this week and also my new primary care doctor who is an excellent guy that specializes in Sports Medicine and knows a lot about skeletal issues. Working out the ol' health insurance card. Any feedback in the meantime would be most welcome. I almost hope that this is still the fissure rather than a brand new problem.

P.S. Cheryl and Fiss this is the same thing I previously described as levator ani or proctalgia fugax. Lately I'm kind of doubting the diagnosis though because the pain doesn't feel like it's just inside the rectum. It feels like it's all around the entire left buttocks and also the left hip area. Not sure if I'd rather have another fissure or a back problem.

Hi, the levator ani or proctalgia fugax sounds like pelvic floor problems. I sometimes get this pain inside the butt that almost feels like a charlie horse when it happens. It's comes on suddenly and lasts about 15 minutes or so and then goes away. It's an awful feelings, literally brings me to my knees. I know it's some kind of spasm and heat and sometime nitro will help it but it's not the same pain as from a fissure. I have a lot of pelvic floor issues and have a few exercises from a pt that are supposed to teach you how to tighten up or relax those muscles. Guess I should start doing them again. I know breathing correctly helps. I guess I don't even do that right, who knew. Suzy

Hey Suzy, thanks! I actually kept seeing references to pelvic floor dysfunction when I was researching my symptoms as well. Seems like it's rare for men though. Are your pain episodes associated with bowel movements or are they just kind of random?

Hi NG, I started a thread a while back about lower back pain and fissures,
http://anal-fissure.org/general-anal-fissure-discussion-f2/lower-back-pain-with-fissures-t2119.htm
my left hip hurts a lot and sometimes into the left buttock, the pain can be quite intense and even more so when moving involuntary (like when you jump) or get up suddenly, i've had this for months now, I actually started physiotherapy on the area but give it up because I felt it wouldn't really help

Hey Steve, the pain I'm feeling can also sometimes be felt as high as my left hip. It actually hurts the most when pushing while pooping and when coughing or sneezing. Maybe because all of these increase intra-abdominal pressure or put stress on the muscles? Anyway when my fissure was really bad it never felt this way so I'm left wondering what to attribute it to
I know you mentioned you had problems with piles long before your fissure. Did you ever get this kind of pain with piles or did it just come on when you got the fissure?

Hi, sometimes the pain comes out of nowhere and other times I swear it's caused by something pressing on the area. Especially if I haven't had a bm or I feel like I have to. I saw a physical therapist for a very short time (because of my insurance lacking in pt care) and she told me pelvic floor issues happen in men and women. IBS made mine worse. When I was younger I had IBS with diarrhea so lots of times I found myself trying to hold a bm until I got home. I never knew this was going to be a problem but the therapist said that for all those years I was actually retraining my muscles the wrong way. I can understand that. I mean when you have to go to the bathroom you should go, but when your in a car and the urge for diarrhea hits you have to try to hold it until you can get to a restroom. With IBS this happened so many times. Basically I had a part in messing myself up without knowing it. I was given some exercises to do to retrain the muscles but it takes time. There are so many things I did wrong. I was lucky to have a nice pt instructor and she set up some rules. No longer than 3 minutes on the toilet if you aren't actually going. That's a no no and learning to breath correctly helps relax things too. Suzy

I have only developed this left sided pain since the fissure reared it's ugly head, it's pretty much what your describing NG, when I cough (because it causes an involuntary movement) the pain is worse, same with sneezing come to think of it, infact any kind of sudden movement causes a sharp pain in my left hip region, my physiotherapist said that I have decreased muscle tone in my left buttock compared to the right, but am still none the wiser as to why this thing has started, I can only hazard a guess that's it's related to the pelvic floor, but thought that was just a female thing, either way it's just another annoyance besides the piles and fissure, who knows, they might all be tied in somewhere!

Suzy, I can definitely relate to the holding it in part. Before my fissure hell started, I always had loose stools, probably from all the beer and coffee and junk food I ate all the time. I also traveled quite a bit for both work and leisure at the time, and thus ended up holding things in for long stretches at a time. And when I knew I was going to be away from a bathroom for a long time, I'd strain to "evacuate" myself completely before I left the safety of the hotel room or home. It definitely wasn't the greatest of bowel habits. I wonder if that has anything do with how things ended up taking a wrong turn too.
Steve, did your therapist venture to guess why you have decreased muscle tone in your left buttock? The way I experience my current pain/discomfort, I guess I could see it being a pelvic floor issue, but my primary doc today thought it might be a lower back issue, and that almost seems to fit the pattern better in my mind. I know that nerves run all over the rectal area but I just have a hard time imagining nerves in the anal canal causing discomfort as high as the hip and lower back. Since nerves run downward, I have an easier time seeing nerve impingement in the lower back causing problems in areas below it like the butt.
It's too bad medicine in reality is kind of a hit 'n miss affair -- see a doctor, he takes a guess, you try some remedy and it fails, then you go back and he takes another guess. It would be great if it were like it is on TV in shows like House (don't know if that one makes it over to Europe) where you get hospitalized and a whole team of doctors works on your case until they figure it out :)

I didn't keep up with the physio because of the fissure pain, it wasn't comfortable lying in different positions on the physio's table either, all I could think about was the fissure and all she could think about was trying to get my buttock muscles working!

I told her that I had rectal problems :oops: but she dismissed this, so I quit, the last thing I wanted was to be messed about with while the fissure was killing me!!