Hi everyone.
I’ve lurked here a bit but joined just to post this message as I know how hard it is to find and feel hope when suffering with an anal fissure. I’m now almost 7 months post botox (first and only time) and my fissure healed shortly after and has not reopened since. I experience a bit of discomfort every time I poo, and I’ve had a bit of bleeding from the scar tissue, but this is nothing compared to the searing pain I had every day for 6 months before botox*. I still eat a high fibre diet, drink lots of water and take movicol (also known as laxido and cosmocol) and fybogel each twice a day.
I think the movicol has also played a huge part in my healing. Before that I was on lactulose, docusate and fybogel but movicol is the only one laxative that works well and consistently for me. I heard about it from this forum, so thank you to whoever has posted about it! For UK based people, you can ask your GP to give it to you on prescription. I now have both laxatives on prescription and use the 12 months prescription certificate to keep costs down - lord knows I feel punished enough already.
Taking four laxatives a day definitely affects how confident I feel going about daily life, but I’m hoping at some point I can reduce them. My GP said it’ll be at least a year before I can have a “bad day” (ie hard stools) and it not reopen the fissure, and that my whole life will likely be either trying to prevent one or heal one. It obviously sucks, but I’ve moved to a mindset of long term management, and am just so glad not feel like I’m shitting glass anymore and to be barely leaving the house!
Anyway, just wanted to share in the hope that someone else may feel a shred of optimism that things will get better. I certainly didn’t believe they would.
*NB the pain was pretty bad in the first couple of weeks post-botox but after this it was SO much better.