Misdiagnosed anal fissure - it was a STI

Hey, so I thought about sharing my experience as this might help someone struggling with the same symptoms.

Everything started with a change in my bowel movements for no reason, my stools were harder and had anal pain during the night, initially thought it was because the strain when passing the stools. I noticed I had piles and I treated as constipation, took laxatives a few days but understood that I cannot take it forever, so contacted my GP and got some fiber suplement, but this just made my constipation even worse, I then started having discharge, bleeding. I was feeling full all the time and it was painful to poo. I suspected this could be smth related with sexual infection, so I ordered the home test kit (it was the begining of pandemic so the clinic was closed), this took a week to get it and meanwhile decided to contact my gp again. Now i was prescribed lactulose to soften my stools. My condition deteriorated, contacted GP once again and was diagnosed anal fissure, got GTN ointment for 8 weeks. He was sure it was not a sexual infection. It was very painful time, at this point I basically spent my whole day in bed, many hours in pain. I had anal fissure in the past and knew that there was something else bothering. I got a face to face appointment finally, the GP fingered me and confirmed his diagnosis. I insisted that I could feel two ulcers in my rectum which are not fissures, also the tissues were swollen, but he was sure about his diagnosis so asked me to keep applying GTN. I could not wait any longer for the STI test results so called the sexual clinic and insisted to be seen as emergency. In the evening I was diagnosed lymphogranuloma venereum, best known as LGV. The doctor said the anal swab test results will be in a couple of days to confirm it, as he could not see any fissure in the proctoscopy he did and my symptoms were quite clear. I could start the treatment right away, three weeks of antibiotics. Two days after I was feeling better, and could restart my normal life slowly. I was not constipated no more, not much pain. After three weeks I still have some drops of blood, the doctor said it would take a week or two to settle down, which actually happened.

If you ever have something similar, and you practise anal sex, please do check for STI before the symptoms worsen. I had a check up three weeks before evrything started, so I thought I was clean but i might have caught it within that period.

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