Hi,

Please can I get some urgent advice.

I’ve had long term problems and have resisted the thought of surgery (I think I will need to rethink this as this is getting silly now!).

I’m going away in 10 days time for a month (big deal for me, as never traveled alone or been away that long. Doing this to try and make some BIG changes in my life!!), however one of my fissures is starting to play up again and I’m getting the dreaded spasm coming in. Needed to sit with a hot water bottle wedged into my bum to ease it all evening. I can’t exactly do that sat on a plane, and will be difficult away from home.

My GP and the CR surgeons said it was ok for me to manage my fissures long-term on stool softeners. I take Dulcoease and have been doing so daily for about 3 years now (previous to that was just on and off it).

BUT…..it appears that in the last 4 or 5 months it’s not been working like it usually does. Now I have no clue what to do!!! I can’t risk stopping it to try something else as if it doesn’t work I’ll be in real trouble. I had leant the exact balance so as to not be too hard or soft and how and when to adjust this according to whether I was having an episode etc.

In the last few days I’ve twice experienced harder stools after taking an extra stool softener. In the past this would usually have made things just a tad softer and allowed things to start healing. I don’t know if this was just coincidence, but am now scared that maybe I have some kind of rebound constipation (I’m not constipated, just too hard to comfortably go without disrupting the fissure).

My last really bad episode (past 10 out of 10 for spasm pain, sat all day on a hot water bottle for several days) I was up to the full dose of stool softeners (5) and they were only just doing their job, which I would usually achieve with just 2 or 3 per day. I tried to back off and found that it didn;t make much difference so now have been taking 3 per day. Which didn’t seem to make things any harder.

Do you think it’s possible that I actually need less to make my stools softer again?? Scared to try it, but also scared to try more again after taking 4 things getting harder afterwards.

I’m not sure if to try switching, or how to do that without getting in to trouble finding the right balance.

I really need to get this under control for my trip :/ Which is of course too late to look at other options now before I go, a referral back to the surgeons would take months to come through.

Any advice welcome. Thanks.