I hope you find it helpful. Just don't stay on it more than the 20 minutes at a time. His instructions for the first day were to sit on it and I just couldn't quite handle sitting on something hard! But the other way seemed to be just fine. His instructions also said that if I had more intense bleeding to sit on the bag of ice for 20 minutes and then to call his office if it didn't get better. I never had that happen thank goodness!
Bambi

Oh, Bambi! What a relief! It stopping the throbbing and now the sting is fading after like three minutes! Thank you!

Elphie- I'm so glad it is helping! I hope the rest of your day goes well.
Bambi

How do all the AF sufferers who DON'T know about this forum make it through this?!

Did my LIS and skin tag removal this morning. It all happened so quickly. Yesterday morning was horrible (pain = 10) so I went home early from work. Once I got home pain disappeared then returned with a vengeance last nite, so my wife and I went to the ER about 5am this morning. They started me on intravenous pain meds immediately and made a call to my CRS. His partner just happened to be in the hospital at the same time, was able to see me and offered to do LIS then and there as a operating room was available. Went into OR around 12 noon and am back home now. They've taped up by bum with a large gauze to deal with any post op dripping, etc and have stocked me up with Vicodin for any pain. I'm supposed to continue applying the nitro and lidocaine. But so far the LIS was pretty straightforward, hopefully there'll be no complications.

my goodness mbpaul! What an experience! Congratulations on getting the LIS done - that was an extraordinary way to do it! I hope you are resting comfortably now.
Elphie - I'm so glad you found relief - thank goodness for Bambi and the people here generally!

Wow! Good for you just jumping in like that! I'm only on day 4, just had second BM ( soft and fluffy thank u miralax) but post surgery pain is still way less painful than the fissure pain! Pain I can control but there's nothing that puts out the fire! Keep some frozen peas handy and if you have packing in there, I know it's scary, believe me I know, but try to get it out while your numb. While mine didn't hurt as much coming out as I expected, it was shockingly big! Right on the peas after that... Hope u heal fast you've done the hardest part, I hope it's all downhill from here!

Sound like you're doing pretty well, Elphie! The frozen peas idea is a good one and I may try that after the next BM. After having a watery one, my first "real" BM post-surgery was shockingly big too, but, surprisingly, the least painful.
mbpaul:
Good for you to get the surgery done and over with! It will be better than putting up with the unpredictability of the fissure pain coming on its own timing, not yours. And pre-surgery + fissure anxiety was much worse than the predictable post-surgery aches, fatigue and soreness.
Hang in there!

Elphie,
I am so happy for you. No one, and I mean NO ONE, can understand the amount of gratitude a person has after LIS unless the person has had an anal fissure himself. It is the difference between night and day.
I stayed pretty much on bed rest for at least four days after my LIS, even though it didn't hardly hurt at all. I just wanted to make sure I gave my butt plenty of pampering (and I LIKED laying in bed all day, watching DVDs). By day five, I was making short forays out into the gardens to weed and trim and what not. By day eight, I was back to work full time, and now, four and a half weeks later, nobody would ever know (unless they knew me before) that I had gone through the pain of an anal fissure. I'm even having a hard time remembering that I had one, life just seems so normal now.
Please, Elphie, take it very easy, give yourself plenty of time to heal. I ate lots of high fiber soup, jello, and some crackers for the first week of recovery. Above all, REJOICE! Statistics say that your fissure will become a distant memory from this point on.

It's true! I almost feel like my old self again! I'm hardly taking the pain meds anymore, more out of fear than anything, and habit I guess. I do have an aching soreness but I can't say enough WAY better than the pain of the fissure! I can't stress enough to the chronic AF sufferers out there who are struggling with ointments and needles how easy it is to deal with REGULAR pain! Now I just pray it doesn't come back and I will do everything humanly possible to make sure it doesn't! Here's to good butt days!