After 3 years - I am healed
Hi my name is Angie and my fistula journey began way back in 2013 at the age of 44, when I first had an anal fissure (or so I believe, as I don’t think it’s proven that fissures necessarily create fistulas. Or do they ?).
I remember that horrible day as I passed my usual daily bowel movement to only end up squealing in excruciating pain. If I had not known better, I would have sworn I had just swallowed broken glass and was now excreting it through my anal passage.
At that time I had no idea what it was but I ended up at my mothers for the following 3 weeks too afraid to eat because I was afraid of having another painful bowel movement. Each time I did though, I would plunge my rear end into a bucket of ice cold water. Little did I know though that I kind of had the right idea. It should have actually been warm water to promote blood flow and healing to the area that is recommended and is actually proven to do the trick.
I ended up going to my GP several times and the emergency department and I was simply sent home with no answers and Endone, that did little to nothing to curb the pain. So I turned to doctor google and Bingo! I was 99.9% sure it was a fissure and a visit to a colorectal surgeon the following week confirmed it. Ointments were administered and several weeks later I was healed.
Having suffered constant diarrhea throughout most of my 20’s and 30’s and now midway through my 40’s, I believe that was a contributing factor and possibly the cause of my fistula journey in 2020.
Early one morning as I was showering, I noticed a hard lump under the surface of my skin on my buttocks very close to my anus.
As I had several abscesses surgically removed, on my bikini line over the years caused by ingrown hairs, I didn’t worry too much. So I let it sit there for 3 months, ignoring it, but unfortunately it never went away.
I ended up applying a poultice in the hope I would draw whatever was brewing under the surface to the top. I believed that it worked and one week later it burst and my toilet seat was a bloody mess. However after a couple of weeks of it not healing (although it appeared it would start to heal and then burst open several times), I went off to see my GP.
Three visits and three rounds of antibiotics later I turned to my trusty friend Dr. Google once again and I was convinced I knew what it was. An anal fistula!
This time I demanded my GP to send me to a specialist as I told him I thought I knew what I was suffering from and it turned out I was right.
It turns out my specialist Dr Damodaran Kumar wasn’t even a Colorectal Surgeon but a General Surgeon with special interests in Gastrointestinal Surgery, Laparoscopic Surgery, Laparoscopic repair of hernias, stapled haemorrhoidectomy, breast and skin cancer surgery, endoscopy. He is qualified with MBBS and FRACS.
Dr Kumar did a cursory internal examination for 30 seconds and confirmed what I knew all along. It was a fistula and he assured me then and there that he would perform a fistulotomy and heal me.
A week later he performed a colonoscopy to rule out two things - that I didn’t have bowel cancer or Crohn’s disease. I didn’t have either. A week after that, Dr Kumar performed the surgery.
I had a community nurse visit every day for a period of a month to clean and pack my wound. As I had been stood down from my job of 10 years due to covid, I spent a lot of time on my own, slowly healing, draining pus and feeling sorry for myself.
Approximately 6 weeks later my open wound was totally granulated and healed albeit a little flap of skin close to my anal opening. In October of 2020 Dr Kumar performed a little cosmetic surgery procedure and here I am 3 years later - FULLY HEALED!
