Hi all

I introduced myself a while ago after acquiring a fissure from severe constipation caused by chemotherapy drugs. After 3 lots of surgery for breast cancer, I finally seem to be clear which is great.

The bad news is that no amount of conservative treatment has fixed the fissure (had it since last September and been through 3 tubes of GTN cream now).

The only way I have been able to manage the fissure is by having laxido every day, eating no fibre, drinking at least 5 pints of water/squash a day and sticking to cereal, ice lollies, some ice cream, croissants and boiled sweets for food. I am now down to 6 stone and dietician has given me soy based build up drinks which she hopes wont cause me problems.

Colorectal surgeon has decided to finally put me under general to give me botox and have a good look around to check nothing else going on given my history. This is due in 4 to 6 weeks depending on his list.

As long as I stick to my routine, my daily bm is very soft and falls out with no pain. If I go more than once though it revs things up.

My question to those of you that have had botox is how much is the poking around and injections going to increase my pain and for how long. I realise this is a bit like how long is a piece of string, but I am a bit nervous about it all. For months I was in extreme pain with it and my guess is that I go back to that short term after the procedure and it then gets better?
It's pretty sore again now after him just poking around externally, he didn't even bother trying to attempt anything else whilst I was awake.

I wont take anything stronger than paracetemol to make sure I never get constipated - even after my breast surgeries I refused anything else and had 2 of them done under local so I avoided the constipation issues of a general.

Any info would be appreciated.
Thanks

Sakura1, What a story, first and foremost as you know keep those BMS soft. I had Botox almost 3 months ago and go back to my CRS wednesday. I believe I'm healed, I have an annoying sentinel tag but not the pain. I manage my food intake to keep my BMS soft and try to have no more then 2 a day. I recently tried making sweet potatoe hash in oil found it threw my BMS off. Everything has been trial and error. I find if I change only one thing I know what the effect is. As for botox, here is my advice to everybody, I did a lot of research. The 2 most important factors are placement of botox and quantity. You want a large dose, I had 30 units on each side and 16 in the fissure itself. Read my response to the thread in this section "Botox tomorrow" I included a link to several studies. The botox doesn't kick in for about 1 week, the first couple of days were not fun but we have been through that. It gets progressively better after that. Measure it in weeks not days. I kept a diary of food pain and BM. I wish you the best...

Thanks for your reply Apes. Have to admit that I am getting more nervous about the botox the more I read about it. It is so difficult when I have managed to get myself in a place where I have relatively low pain.

My main issue is sitting for any length of time is painful and the thought of a 3.5 hour drive to my favourite holiday destination in the UK is just unthinkable. As long as I eat right, there are days when I barely notice the pain from the fissure, but every so often it plays up just to remind me it is there.
Of course, the way I have managed to keep the pain level down is strict food control and I am very slowly wasting away (dietician estimates I will be down to 5.5 stone around the time the operation is due).

I kind of want to get it over with, but am also dreading it at the same time!