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after anal fistula surgery, anus still leaks

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Jeff726
Jeff726

Hello - First time writing on here.

So I need some advice on what to do. I'll give you a quick synopsis of what my story is:

47 year old - male

  • Went to a colon doctor, as I was referred to, because I had an abscess in my / near my anus that was quite painful.

  • Had surgery on it - I thought was all said and done.

  • Never really went away, and found out that it created a fistula.

  • I had another surgery to remove the fistula. Doctor met with me after my surgery, and said everything went well, and I shouldn't have any further problems.

  • I have had follow ups with him and he checked out the surgery and said everything is looking great. Every time I went ( about 3 or 4 times after wards ) he said it's healing better than it was the previous time, which was great. I still had minimal leaking, but I thought that was going to go away.

  • Fast forward 9 months after the surgery, and I am still leaking. I have went back him to see him - the colon doctor - and told him what I am experiencing, light stinging pains sometimes and still leaking - like a little trickle. It's not fecal matter - It's just wet - body water or something? It's not brown in color - but it is annoying and uncomfortable. I goto the bathroom stall and put my hand back there, and it is wet. He said it still looks fine, and all of my muscles are strong back there. He thought the next step would be to do a Colonoscopy, which I just did about 1 week ago, and that went extremely well. No pulops, or anything. Very clean. I haven't made a follow up appointment with the colon surgeon juet yet ( as this coronavirus is too crazy to go anywhere right now ) But I don't know what to do?

Right now, it's most comfortable if I put 1 square of toilet paper in between my cheeks, so that my bottom stays dry. I asked my surgeon, what's wrong, and he simply didn't know. He said have the colonoscopy and I asked then what? What if that's fine, and then what would be the next steps? I asked him, is this is my new normal? To have this leak like this, and he said, we could do surgery again. I'm very nervous of surgery again, as you can imagine - and perhaps having it be worse than it is now.

I just don't get it.

If anyone has a similar story, or any advice, I am all ears.

Thank you for listening.

-Jeff

0 likes, 1 reply

1 Reply

  • jo14511
    jo14511 Jeff726

    Posted

    Hi Jeff,

    This sounds exactly like myself.

    I believe I had haemorrhoids but my own doctor put a camera up with caused a fissure back in 2016. I had surgery, including Botox to fix it, did nothing, had further surgery to do a skin graft over the fissure, then changed surgeons as I couldn't ever get to see my own and he found that I had sepsis and a fistula that had been there so long it had gone hard so had to be operated on again to scrape this out, and lay out the fistula.

    Roll forward to 2020, I have had 5 surgeries, one being a GA for a colonoscopy as I wouldn't have tolerated the pain without the GA and still suffering now, but in a different way. I still have the fissure, they say this will never go now and I have to live with it, but I get a lot of thrush in my bottom area which I am told is due to me being overweight and its constantly wet due to sweat.

    I last saw a nurse at the GP's surgery as my own surgeon is now on a sabbatical for 2 months and she said I need to wash with baby wash only, I was using wet wipes after each poo, but she said this is removing all the good bacteria. I then have to only have one shower a day, but after each poo to cover the area in baby lotion to moisturise the area. So far so good and it's better than it was about a month ago.

    Sleep with nothing on that area to allow the air to circulate too.

    Hope this helps. Good Luck, it's the worse place for pain apparently as no painkillers help, I can confirm that!!

    Message me anytime, feel like I am the only person who has gone through this.

    Jo

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