Anal Fistula Treatment #4 - Holes

I've been slacking at writing this fourth part, but considering I'm only a few days away from my fifth surgery, I figured it's time. It's worth mentioning that since my last post, I had a colonoscopy which showed that everything was normal, so no crohn's, just unexplainable bad luck when it comes to my butt. I went into my fourth surgery two days before Thanksgiving. I went into the surgery expecting the giant hole that my CRS warned me about, but nothing can ever prepare you for the reality. 

At this point, I feel like a pro laying in that hospital waiting room in that big gown, grippy socks and blue hat. I know to tell the nurses that my veins are stubborn, and despite the warning, I'm always watching them prod around my veins on my left and right arm. I know that channel 53 is A&E and that at the time I'm at the hospital, there will always be a Dog the Bounty Hunter episode on (WHY CAN'T IT BE HOARDERS OR  WHY CAN'T THEY HAVE THE FOOD CHANNEL OR SOMETHING?!). I get wheeled into the surgery room with a friendly anesthesiologist talking to me about the margarita drug cocktail that I was just given and to brace the bump from being rolled over the door threshold. 

Before I left the hospital, my CRS told me the new wound wasn't "that bad"... WHAT WAS SHE LOOKING AT? DID SHE CUT SOMEONE ELSE? When my boyfriend first looked at the wound (now freshly adorned with a seton... making the total seton count 3!) he said that he couldn't see the bottom and that it was possible as deep as a shot glass. At first, it felt cold and numb to have someone change gauze. But as the drugs wore off and I regained feeling, pulling gauze stuck to a fresh wound is some of the worst pain I've ever felt. The kind that makes you see red and get dizzy. For the next three weeks, I had my BF pull pieces of bloody gauze until it was shallow enough for me to press gauze into the area. 

Beyond the discomfort from the gauze changes, the pain was impossible to control. I wasn't able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time for weeks because I wasn't able to lay on my back and moving would wake me up. It took weeks before I was able to sit normally. I've been hesitant to use my prescribed pain medication because I've seen too many episodes of Intervention and I don't want to cause constipation, but it turns out that was my CSR prescribes to me (Tramadol) sucks and makes me feel like I'm hanging on the side of a cliff casually puking. 

I saw my CRS surgeon again at the beginning of January and she ordered another MRI. Because we are now in 2018, I had to pay over $1000 out-of-pocket with my insurance which stings about as much as having to deal with an anal fistula for the last year of my life. For the first time since March 2017, the MRI showed GOOD NEWS, no new collections, no new fistula tract, everything was under control and getting smaller. When I read these results, I was so happy, I've never had good news dealing with my treatment. 

It's currently almost the end of February, I'm currently living as "comfortably" as I can considering I have three draining setons, open wounds that sometimes like to be a little angry with some cellulitis and I'm about to dive right into a fifth surgery. I'm hoping that this is the last surgery with definitive treatment, but I won't know until I wake up in that hospital bed. At this point, I'm just so tired of always leaking foul fluids and always being conscious of how my butt feels. I have to give it up to the strength of human adaptability because I don't remember what it feels like to have a "normal" life anymore but I'm just living my life with the inconveniences.