Early signs of an anal abscess - hard swelling?

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I've had an external hemorrhoid (not thrombosed) since the beginning of January which I was able to manage quite easily. Around the end of March however, I began having more pain and attributed it to the hemorrhoid, and later thought that it could be an anal fissure instead. Well neither of those ideas panned out - the hemorrhoid never hurt when I applied pressure and I never had any bleeding or pain while defecating.

Recently, about a week ago, I feel like I've become more in-tune with my symptoms and I began to think that maybe I have an anal abscess.

Here are my symptoms:

- I have this hard swelling right around the posterior/left region of the anus (which happens to be close to my external hemorrhoid)

- I have pain for the 1-5 hours after I defecate, as if a pole is stuck up my ass (the swelling seems to increase)

- A few nights ago I had a headache and cold chills for two nights in a row

- The past two nights I've woken up with pain (didn't defecate before sleeping)

- It feels like the pain is getting worse over time

Well I went to the ER two days ago, and they could see that there was something (after inspecting and doing a CT scan) but they didn't detect anything they could actually drain (there is no pus yet, it is still hard). So they seem to think it is something that might develop into an anal abscess. The odd thing about my situation is that I've had this pain for a few weeks, and they said that normally an abscess would have formed by now. They gave me APO - Amoxicillin/Clavulanic acid 875mg/125mg to take for 10 days, and scheduled me for a colonoscope in about a week to see if anything else is going on and to be safe.

I don't know if I can link other websites, but this seems similar to my situation:

https://www.zocdoc.com/answers/21051/i-have-an-anal-abscess-is-it-true-that-it-shouldn-t-be-drained-while-it-is

Has anyone else been in a situation similar to mine? Have antibiotics worked? It's day 2 - I'm praying to god that these make it go away. I do not want to deal with abscess surgery and then probably fistula surgery - this is all a nightmare. I'm starting my first full-time job soon and I can't handle this.

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