Thanks Abu. The problem is my BM is pretty much diarrhoea and has been for 11 weeks. I read on here that if you do that for too long that you lose the ability to ever poop normally due to muscles etc. I have confirmed this with a general practitioner and my dietitian.

It's been advised to start slowly lowering my dosage. I have dropped from full strength docusate sodium to low but at full dosage.
My next step is to drop down from 3 doses of movicol to 2, very gradually over the next 2 months. Things are still too stressful for me to attempt lowering my movicol dosage by a little just yet. I'll start in 2 weeks.

Then I'll remain on 2 sachets and docusate sodium for awhile before dropping down to 1 sachet. It will likely take me a year to get off of them completely.

I also have a blood test for hypothyroidism coming up thanks to the chronic disease nurse and my dietitian. The nurse believes it's possible that that could be causing my slight constipation problems and drying my skin making more susceptible to tears.

I'll definitely keep your advice in mind. At this point,I'm aware that I may remain on a low dose permanently for maintenance.

Yesterday, I ended up having diarrhoea after my evening dose of 2 sachets of movicol and my docusate sodium. I'd love to stay in loose stool land but the advice here about that is frightening. I'm aiming to drop that evening dose down to 1 slowly.

I'm with you here, definitely do something to bring consistency in the proper range. I also love loose (who doesn't) as it eliminates any kind of straining but I'm aware of the risks you mentioned.
Indeed, hypothyroidism is a cause for constipation and it's worth investigating it. Just know that healthy eating will also fix that in the long run. You just need to ensure you prevent any future re-tear and the body will take care of itself, provided you give it what it needs.
I wish you good luck and please share with us your future findings, it helps a lot.

How is your retear ? any Improvemnent

I don't have a re-tear but I am also not healed. Every year I experience setbacks, but minor and nothing compared to fellow sufferers here. But I want to help others with my 4 year experience and this is why I hang around.
As I explained above, I don't believe anymore in healing ever from this. As I see it there are only two ways forward:
- having LIS and praying to God it doesn't go wrong. This is the only real escape.
- staying on softeners for the rest of my life. This is what I chosen and so far, it works for me and I can live a normal life even though I have setbacks, some days are good others are not. But i prefer this struggle to the surgery since I am not in pain.
But that's just me, others might choose surgery knowing that is the only way out of this carusel.

Okaybum it's so great to hear your story! Was it GTN that healed you or did you have other things? I've been on GTN 3 weeks tomorrow and my fissure definitely isn't as bad as it was, I would say my BM's are more uncomfortable than painful, but some days I do get a bit of pain for an hour or so after the BM... Especially if I have two in quick succession (I have IBS so sometimes have incomplete bowl movements)/. I don't know if this means the GTN is working and the fissure is healing?

Had the fissure since the start of November but it was misdiagnosed twice!

Neds wrote:Okaybum it's so great to hear your story! Was it GTN that healed you or did you have other things? I've been on GTN 3 weeks tomorrow and my fissure definitely isn't as bad as it was, I would say my BM's are more uncomfortable than painful, but some days I do get a bit of pain for an hour or so after the BM... Especially if I have two in quick succession (I have IBS so sometimes have incomplete bowl movements)/. I don't know if this means the GTN is working and the fissure is healing?

Had the fissure since the start of November but it was misdiagnosed twice!

You're still in the early days yet. The GTN works slowly. I think it took 6-7 weeks. I recommend getting your BM more comfy if at all possible. I increased stool softeners and even started on docusate sodium on top of the movicol. I found docusate sodium to work better for me this time than the movicol. I increased the dosage until things were so smooth I could barely feel it.

I found that the GTN irritated me a little so if I got a stinging, it's usually a yeast infection. It took far too long to work that out.

Anyway every fissure is different. Mine was an outer one and anything solid retore. My fissure last year was internal and healed up quickly with just movicol. So try things, see what works for you
Good luck!

Thank you very much! Keeping my fingers crossed!