Hey SC ,
Read the older post on here under considering surgery or already had it. There's a lot of information on others who had the surgery and posted their recovery. From what I've read, we don't even need to be setting on our butts for the first couple of weeks
From what I've read, doctors kind of down play the recovery time.

I see what you mean Dawn. Some of those are 4 years old so maybe some advancements have been made in the procedure since then. We can hope - right?
Again good luck on your appointment.

The recovery (for me anyway) has been very slow, it's that slow that it's barely noticeable, for a doc to say that you'd need no time off work is just ludicrous
I couldn't even contemplate sitting down for over 3 weeks after surgery because the pain was that intense, the only relief I got was from sitting in the bath which is why I took 3-4 baths a day for the first few weeks.
Your doc should also consider the stringent cleaning regime of the anus after BM, it simply couldn't be carried out at the workplace, I spent at least 30 minutes just cleaning up after every BM, I used cotton wool balls soaked in warm water, I still use them now, you have to make sure that every bit of fecal matter is removed after BM or it burns like hell and there's a chance of infection, it's best to use a small mirror when cleaning to make sure everything is gone, BTW, none of this information is given by the CRS or doc which is another reason why this Forum is a godsend, it's the help of other users/members that we learn to deal with these terrible things.

I agree, not taking time off from work after LIS is ludicrous. It's so outlandish that it'd be hilarious if it weren't so misleading. Most surgeons will quote ~1 week off from work, which is already highly optimistic. Yes, it happens, and yes, if you take the right painkillers you can probably make it back to work in a week if you absolutely have to even with slow healing. But very, very, very few people are fully recovered in a week, or even two weeks. It's happened on occasion, sure, but it's far from the norm.
I think in a so-called "normal" case, most folks will tell you that it takes about a month to feel pretty good. But some will have slow healing after surgery. As Steve says, he still has pain after 6 weeks. I personally had pain for months after surgery and didn't return to work for a month. I work a desk job (computer programming) and was lucky in that I just worked from home for that month. When I did come back to the office, I still took Vicodin on occasion because the pain was still very bothersome, and driving was pretty uncomfortable. Granted, my case was a bit complicated because I had a second surgery 2 weeks after LIS because my incision got infected, but still, I had pain for months after surgery and still do now but to a much lesser extent. Both of my surgeries were in May of this year.
I don't like judging doctors that I haven't met, but honestly, if you've got a surgeon telling you that no time off from work is needed, all there is after surgery is a little burning and discomfort, and that the procedure takes just 5 minutes, then I really don't know what to say :(
I don't think you should assume that you'll have slow healing or be an otherwise unusual case, but personally I'd assume a minimum of 1-2 weeks off from work and not feeling close to normal for 1 month even for a typical case.

smallChange wrote:I see what you mean Dawn. Some of those are 4 years old so maybe some advancements have been made in the procedure since then. We can hope - right?
Again good luck on your appointment.

I don't mean to scare you, but the procedure is exactly the same. Some of the others did have more than Lis done but even the ones who just had Lis weren't fine in a day or two. If it were that easy of a recovery then I would have had it done the day I got my fissure.
The one thing to be positive about is this is the best way to heal the fissure once it's done...
Like others have said it is a slow process and this isn't a quick fix. We will have to recover and stay on our fiber diets and softeners for awhile and expect recovery to take some time.

Thanks all.
I really don't expect to be pain free in the first week or two of the procedure. I do expect it since they are, after all, snipping some muscle in my backside. I guess I was just surprised at the 2-3 weeks off of work. But for me I hope that's not an issue since I work from home 100% (I'm a computer programmer too). To me I would have to be bedridden to not be able to work at least a little after the first few days. That isn't your experiene - is it? You could get up and move around some...I hope.
In my doc's defense, we really didn't discuss LIS in detail because he wanted me to contiue with Diltiazem since I seemed to be showing some improvement. I did specifically ask him about the recovery though and he did mention the discomfort. He did say the relief from the fissure pain usually resolved in about 2-3 days and that was huge for his patients. We didn't discuss how long the surgery discomfort would last or the intesity level though.
All these questions will be asked next week. I really appreciate all of your input because it has made me better prepared with the "hard" questions for him. I won't make a decision until I know more about his past patients recovery experiences. Is it approriate to ask how many he has performed and his sucess rate?

It's totally appropriate to ask about how many surgeries he's done and his success/complication rate.
And yup, I wasn't totally bedridden. Sitting wasn't really happening for me for a little bit though. In fact standing up was the most comfortable position for me for a while so I just kind of stood around on my computer while working from home.
I think the level of pain relief depends on how much pain you were in before surgery. When my fissure first started, in its acute phase, the pain was unbearable. If I had LIS at that point, I would definitely have felt a huge relief. As it stands, my fissure was chronic (1 year old) and the pain was relatively tolerable (just a big nuisance) when I went in for LIS, so it felt worse after LIS. IMO that one all depends on the baseline.

Thanks again NeuropathicGuy.
I'll take a few weeks or a month of having to work on my feet over having to deal with this day in and day out. I don't know if the pain is that unbearable but the mental toll is.
I scratched my cornea once and that was by far the most pain I have had in my life. I had to lie down in a darkened room for 24 hours and try not to move. Try not moving your eye for a day...not really possible. That was excruciating. But the next day it was healed as if it never happened. With an AF, as you well know, that just doesn't happen. It teases you with days of nothing and then as soon as you feel you are out of the woods, it rears it's ugly head. Then you spend then next week in hell trying to figure out what you ate or what physical activity you did that could have caused the setback.
I don't want to live like that any more. If I stick with a non-surgical treatment, I would always be wondering when it would come back because your chances, so I've been told, are pretty high that it will. At least with surgery I would be able to rest easier that the chances of recurrence are way lower (with the proper maintenance).

By having LIS your giving your fissure the best chance of healing because that nasty sphincter will have been cut, all those spasms that have prevented healing prior to LIS will soon be no more, don't get me wrong though, you will still get spasms for a few weeks after until the sphincter starts to calm down, but once it does, then the fissure can start to heal, which is why the healing process is so slow IMO.

SC,
I have waited 7 months and had no success. I agree with Steve about giving it the best chance to heal with surgery. I regret not doing this 5 months ago...At least I would be healed by now and moving on with life. Now I have gave 7 months of false hope and it took a huge toll on me mentally and now I have to have the surgery and go through all the healing from it. I feel worn out and now I have to do what I should have did months ago.
I did not want the surgery more than anyone could but once I came to grips with this is the best way to heal, it lifted a lot off of me mentally because all the set backs felt like I had failed...But the truth is very few people can heal a chronic fissure without surgery and we can do everything right and it still not work.
Don't get me wrong, I'm scared out of my mind, but I think it's the best choice at this point.