Hello All…..sorry that I wrote my reply this morning and was in a bit of a rush. There was a typo….my Doctor said there was a 90% chance that the AF will NOT heal with drugs if it keeps healing and re-tearing.
Last but not least, hopetoheal did nothing wrong here. All she did is tell what she believes is correct based on her experience as well as others on this board. If someone freaks out and cannot handle the truth, well that is not any one’s fault and certainly not hopetoheals’s. I for one would much rather hear the way it is based on others peoples experience and as I said take that and form my own opinions based on MY research as well as a few doctors. I am very sorry this person felt the way she did. However with that said, and while this sound very callus, it is what it is..... either you deal with it or you do not.

Hope, Wecc,
I agree 100% with both of your comments. I needlessly suffered for 8 months because of fear. Their weren't a whole lot of folks in here who were having good recoveries when I came in here. I felt like the whole situation was hopeless. That's why I stayed in this forum after my surgery. I wanted others to know it isn't hopeless, that surgery can be a great option.
My fissure was 5 months old when I came in here... Looking back, I know It was chronic and I didn't stand a chance in hell to heal without surgical intervention...
Fissy was the first to really bring it to my attention that I probably really wasn't healing when I told her I had pain but no blood. She told me she had only seen blood 2x's in the two years of having a fissure and she had two LIS's. Of course I didn't want to believe I wasn't healing but the truth is I wasn't. I wanted to hold onto false hope, but that really got me no where but a few more months of agony and feeling like a failure every time my fissure would re-tear.
Everyone encouraged me while I was on the ointments and that was helpful at the time, but in away I wish they would have told me that I didn't stand a chance in hell with a 5 month old fissure that was still re-tearing and getting older.
I try to encourage people to heal conservatively in the early weeks or months but realistically it probably just aint gonna happen once a fissure become chronic.
I refuse to lie and give false hope to something I believe in my heart isn't going to happen... I will encourage and support decisions that others make on their own and I will tell of my experience and give them hope, but I can't tell anyone that something is going to happen when every post in here points in another direction or I haven't experienced myself.

Davo wrote:Oh my god - I feel sad reading this!
I understand that everyone is here for help and encouragement and I know that hopetoheal was just trying to be honest and open without giving any false hope but i also felt the same when i first joined.
I myself have only had my fissure around two months and it was only diagnosed five weeks ago. When i first started posting people immediately told me to go for surgery and forget about non-surgical options such as creams and lotions. I guess thats not really what i wanted to hear at such an early stage of having my fissure - If i had been suffering for maybe 5 or 6 months then my circumstances maybe different.

Davo,
If you could please point me in the direction of the threads where you were told to go for surgery and forget about creams, I'd like to see them?!

http://anal-fissure.org/t3953-i-only-have-pain-following-bm-gtn-new-user#66474
This is all that I've found and unfortunately we can't control what every person in this forum comments. For the most part, everyone has encouraged and tried to be helpful with your decisions to use the creams from what I see in this thread.

Wow – Just caught up with the posts following my last comment and I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding which is probably due to the bad wording of my last post.
There are two issues here, the first being Rosiebottom’s dilemma and the second being my first experiences of this message board – unfortunately they both seemed to have got a bit jumbled up in my last post.
So to clarify (and I address this to Hopetoheal)… Your response to Rosiebottom’s initial post was fine, sympathetic and gave good advice. I think after having a fissure for 18 months I would be desperate for surgery but I believe Rosiebottom came here looking for a simple over-the-counter cure which quite clearly does not exist! If anything I think your post may have even been too polite and she needs to face the facts that LIS is probably her only remaining option. So please accept my apologies if my thread was confusing as it was not aimed at your response to Rosiebottom.
My second point was based upon how I felt when I first found this board – I had barely had the condition four weeks and I was surrounded by people who had had this condition for years and who were all discussing surgery! Now don’t get me wrong if surgery is the best option then I am absolutely fine going through with it – I would much prefer a week or two of pain rather than a lifetime of re-tears. My point was this though – A GP told me my best option is a stool softening diet combined with GTN and I have to base my actions on a medical professionals advice in the first instance. Reading up on line the success stories vary but on average it has a 70% success rate however it also has a 40% re-occurrence rate. Being on the positive side however that still means the people that 60% of the people who have healed have gone on to have a tear free future. (Well for the following three years anyway). In the UK the NHS will not authorise any prescription drugs unless their benefits outweigh their risks – GTN is approved which means they believe the product is capable of fully healing patients.
Which brings me on to the re-occurrence risks – Constipation caused my fissure which was probably due to the crap diet I had at the time – no fruit – hardly any water – no fibre and just generally all junk food. The one positive I can take from all this is that the fissure has made me change my diet for the good, after healing (whether via medication or surgery) I intend to keep up the fibre, water & fruit as well as increasing my daily exercise. So if GTN does do the trick for me I should be minimising my chances of a re-occurrence.
Fortunately for me my employment includes private health care and so I have decided to go and see a specialist CRN. I rang to make an appointment today and my consultation is at Harley Street tomorrow at 7pm where I hope I should have a better understanding of the condition of my fissure.
So to summarise I don’t have a problem with the responses to Rosiebottom’s post….. sorry guys!

Hi Davo - Thank you for your post. I appreciate your clarification - it makes a lot of sense :)
It is difficult to help people out sometimes if they are not in the head-space to deal with information and advice objectively. I really feel for poor Rosiebottom. Fissures can cause people to get very emotional and irrational - I know because I was almost out of my mind with the pain and anxiety myself. This forum saved my sanity and I'm so grateful to the folks here. What really helped me was hearing that even the worst-case-scenario of surgery was not the end of the world, and it would even give me my life back. I was in such a dark place and I felt like my situation was utterly hopeless. It's really frightening how many times I've read posts on this forum that talk about hoping to die, but I understand the feeling. Being reassured that surgery is a good option if all else fails, I think, really helps take the death option off the table.
I'm sure that if I had met doctors who knew what they were talking about when I first got my fissure, I would have had a very good chance of healing with the ointments. But I had some bad luck and things went on too long. I'm so very glad that you got the right kind of treatment so early. I think that means that the odds are good that you will be among the 60% or so who heal with the ointments. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
I hope your appointment tomorrow goes really well. Please keep us posted on your progress. We are rooting for you!

Thanks Hopetoheal,
Fortunately i have a 'Straight to the point' GP who would not let me leave her surgery until she has carried out a full internal examination and this is during every visit. She diagnosed my fissure from day one and made me come back every two weeks for progress examinations.
I did feel like my life was ruined - BM's were agony, the spasms for the following 4-5 hours were just as bad as the BM itself - I couldn't walk, sit, stand or anything and was the most miserable person you could ever want to meet!
It is now six weeks to the day that my fissure was diagnosed and after initially using the fairly uselss Lidocain and Prostocydel i have now moved on to GTN (Nitro). I have been using GTN for 10 days now - since starting with the GTN my BM's are now pain free and my spasm pain has improved by about 90% (my pain factor went from a 10 to about a 1.5). This pain (well actually its more just discomfort now) only lasts around 20 mins about 1 hour following my BM and i seem to have my life back a bit. Two weekends ago i could not walk for more than 30 seconds, this weekend gone i was out walking for about 8 hours on the Saturday and 5 hours on the Sunday. However I am not taking anything for granted, i can use a mirror and still see the fissure and i still want advice from the CRN going forward.
Would you consider the removal of pain a sign of healing or would you think the GTN has just acted as a pain killer?
By the way if anyone has any general questions relating to fissures i can try and get them answered by the CRN tomorrow if you let me know. (obviously they have to be general questions and cant relate to an individuals specific problems)

Your doc is really awesome! I'm so glad you found such a great doctor. :D And I'm so glad that the GTN is working so well for you. It's just great that you aren't suffering like you were. Oh, do I know what that's like!
I don't know much about GTN. I was put on Dilt. But from what I've read, I'd say that the removal of the pain is a very good sign. I would take that as evidence that there are no spasms (or at least there are only very minor spasms), which I think is very promising, since it's spasms that mostly prevent healing. No spasms = better chance of healing, from what I've read. I don't know what kind of GTN you got. I think some are compounded with painkilling ingredients; but given how extreme the pain can get, and how long it can last when spasms are involved, I'm not sure that a topical painkiller would account for the kind of relief you're experiencing, since topical painkillers can wear off relatively quickly. As you know, I'm not an expert, but it does sound to me like your making really great progress. I also think you're being really sensible by seeing a CRN too. Smart people hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. I wish I had been so on the ball when I went through my orderal! :D

Hi
I just wanted to pitch in to Hopetoheal and say I think you gave sound and kind advice.
What Hope said is in line with current medical thinking and research. It can be very difficult to face the prospect of surgery so I do empathise with Rosiebottom, but its misplaced to be angry at Hope because she mentioned the option.

Thanks, Shakeit. I appreciate the support. :) I really do hope that Rosiebottom heals very soon and doesn't have to face surgery. But if things don't work out that way, I hope she knows that we are all here for her. This is really a great forum with so many knowledgable and supportive folks - it's too bad I had to get a anal fissure to meet so many nice people! :D