Patient 40

To: jackfaf6.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: the fissure
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 09:36:44 +0000

Here is my article, I hope it helps...

How to heal a chronic anal fissure without surgery

Introduction

Well folks, I'm an English 23 year old software engineer. I'm 6ft1 and not overweight. You do not need to be old to have an anal fissure. I've had an anal fissure for about a year and half and was diagnosed as having an chronic fissure a couple of months back. I managed to go from being in chronic pain to a wound with a thin layer of skin on in a month. It will take an entire year for it to heal properly thus I need to keep my stools soft for that time.

Lifestyle

I healed my anal fissure by having a rigouros diet and lactulose. I find the reason most people continue having a problem with their anal fissure is because they don't truely understand the lifestyle style change that is needed. Thus, if you have an anal fissure then you're going have to do the following for a year...

• Give up tea and coffee (no caffine)
• Give up all forms of diary products (including milk, cheese, cream because these are hard to digest)
• Give up red meat
• Only have a tiny portion of meat a couple of times a week
• Eat lots of fresh (not overcooked) vegtables
• Try replacing the meat you would of had with fresh fish
• Eat bran and prunes every morning
• Drink a min of 6 litres of water a day (this is especially needed for a high fibre diet)
• Don't over exercise
• Drink prune juice
• Only have brown rice and wholemeal pasta (No white rice and no white pasta)
• No white bread
• Take lactolose (Its a laxative but not a drug based one that could damage you in the long term)
• No eggs (or anything that contains eggs e.g. salad cream, ceasar salad dressing, mayonnaise)
• Olive oil
• Legs together when you go to the bathroom (don't spread your legs and skin all over the place)
• Do not push when passing a stool
• Don't eat any sweets or anything else deemed to be 'crap'
• You are what you eat

Sounds a bit drastic eh? Probably don't want to do everything I've written about eh? WRONG! Let me get one thing straight people, YOU WILL NOT HEAL THIS THING BY HALF MEASURES! My last year of pain has taught me that the odd cheese burger is NOT acceptable. If you go on holiday, you MUST keep to your diet. So pull your socks up and get with the program. Most of the people I've been reading about have healed it and its come back again. Why? It takes at least a year for a fissure to heal. Phew...

So people my conclusion is, if you want to heal it, you can. You will need to drastically change your diet to do so. There is no quick fix cure. If you don't believe me just try what I mentioned about for two weeks for some results.

But what if the diet is not healthy for me?

I am not a diet expert. I've heard of people going nuts with drinking too much water (e.g. a litre every half hour will be bad for you!). And I'm certainly not going to be held responsible for this diet. Just hang in there. You will need support from your partners, your family, friends you go and stay with, workmates etc. But this is the only way to get the fissure to heal. So I will leave you with this last and final piece of advice...

The golden rule

Keep your stools soft for an entire year!

Be strong, be safe and wipe properly, The happy young man.

Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 10:01:30 +0100

Hi Jack,

Even though I could contain my fissure with my diet I still found I needed the operation. Why you might ask? I had to two polyps (old lumps of skin inside my bum that were piles) that needed to be removed and a really tight sphincter. Even though I managed to get my fissure to heal, as soon as I stopped taking my laxitive all my problems returned. I had the operation last week and so far so good. My piles have returned though and I'm going back to see my surgeon on Wednesday (With a bit of luck he'll be able to inject them).

If you going to have to have the operation don't worry. Its not too bad. I had some pain the first couple of days but its nothing as bad as the spasming pain I use to get from my fissure.

I'll send updates of my progress.

The happy young man.

(Remember prune juice, prune juice, prune juice)