When I booked the follow-up app, I insisted on seeing a different doctor at the Rudd Clinic, so today I saw Dr. Sternthal. He is way better than McKenna! He was gentle and compassionate. While he was inspecting and poking, he hit some raw areas and I let out a wee yelp; nothing major, but he immediately said he was sorry and reassured me! What a difference!
The news is I’m healing very well.
The fissure is epithelialzing and the skin tag is almost completely healed. The doc said I’m making very good progress for three weeks along – no infection, no problems. Yeah!! 
He told me I didn’t have to go back unless I had a problem and now I should focus on healing (which should take 6-8 weeks). He said fissures can take over your life and be debilitating, and I should try to forget about it as much as I can. He didn’t say it like “oh get over it” - it was more like, “try to put this horrible experience behind you”. It was actually nice talking to a doctor who seemed to understand the impact a fissure has on your life.
He did ask why I wasn’t going back to McKenna and I told him that the surgery was quite awful. He asked if I was in pain during the procedure and I said that I was. He said that the freezing needles can hurt, but after that there should be no pain afterward and I told him that there was pain for sure. He seemed very sympathetic and took extra care not to hurt me during the exam.
So – as you can imagine I am very happy right now. For the last few days my butt’s been a little delicate, but not painful. I’m even sitting down longer each day and increasing my activity level. Today was a bit rough, though, because the butt was tender from too many BMs. I was so happy with the first one – it was a work of art! I almost took a picture of it. It was like a soft-serve ice-cream. I had to admire it for a long time before I could flush. But then I had a few more anxiety-induced BMs and felt a bit raw afterward :(
Despite the raw butt, I’m feeling really good. I know I still have healing to do, so I’m forcing myself to stay calm about some mild pain/rawness just now. I think the next step for me will be to deal with anxiety. Getting a clean bill of health has already really helped with that!
Thank you so much to all of you who helped me when I was going through the worst of all of this (or what I truly hope has been the worst of all this). I hope everyone is doing well and having a good butt day
(I'm pretty sure it was the skin tag.) The good news is, it doesn't really hurt, so I'm trying not to get worked up over some blood, but that is a bit difficult. I did more yesterday than I've done in a really long time, so I think that might have contributed to the bleeding.