A year ago I decided my life to become serious about working out. The gym was going to be my new addiction-a healthy addiction. I joined a gym, I started going spending on average 2 hours a day 5–6 days a week, while at the gym I would do squats, I’ve always prided myself on my legs, my butt so squats, deadlifts, elliptical, Step workout classes, Zumba, and body pump were obvious choices for me. I could spend hours pushing my legs, my thighs to the limit squatting at my highest record about 100 pounds, 120 pounds on the leg press, I was happy, I was impressed, my ego was huge, and I craved to go further, push harder, go heavier. I wanted strong legs, I wanted strong arms but vanity kept it limited. I was on a mission to become what I thought was the perfect figure. By the end of September 2018, I was getting happier with my body but I hadn’t reached the perfection I was seeking, I joined a new gym, got a personal trainer, and worked even harder. I was obsessed with protein shakes, gym classes, training, and trying new forms of workouts. In October 2018 I tried a spin class-I had been told they were fun, hard-but fun, I entered the class and it was the typical instructor a woman who had drunk a ton of coffee and spent the class talking about pedaling faster to earn the mojitos later that night. Sitting on the bike wasn’t an option, spin bikes are the most uncomfortable things, standing was painful but I persevered because there was no way I was going to give up halfway through a 60-minute spin class. At the end of the class, the instructor told me she was proud of me and away I went to continue my workout with weights.
A few days after the spin class I noticed an odd pain on my butt, I noticed I also lumped- I ignored it figuring it was a side effect of having never done spin class before. A week later the lump had grown and I was experiencing pain on my butt. Again I ignored it, it was just in my head there would be no reason for a lump to form and surely I was exaggerating the entire thing. The lump grew to the point where it began to hurt to sit down, I couldn’t go to the gym and that upset me so I grudgingly made a doctors appointment and proceeded to google my symptoms. Google provided me with plenty of suggestions ranging from a hernia to cancer so I went to the doctor full of dread. The doctor was one of my worst experiences she informed me it was a lump, maybe an abscess but there was nothing she could do about it because it wasn’t at skin level and I just had to wait. I went home discouraged and in pain.
I began googling at-home methods of curing an abscess and I found that using essential oils such as tea tree oil could help speed it up, I rubbed it on my skin and felt my skin burn, but something was happening! 3 days later the abscess was worse, I was in agony and I went to an urgent care doctor’s clinic where they told me they could drain it. Draining an abscess is a new form of agony- they can’t numb it and to drain it they have to cut it. They put a needle directly into the abscess claiming it would help numb the pain, they then took a scalpel and cut it open. After cutting it open the doctor squeezed it to get out the infection and put gauze into the wound, “packing it” he told me to keep the packing in, take baths, and to come back in 3 days. I went home in agony took some Tylenol and within an hour the packing had fallen out, calling the clinic I was informed it was okay and to just follow up with my primary care doctor in a few days. The next day I was once again in agony, it wasn’t improving, everything I read had said once I had an incision and drain that I would feel relief but I felt the opposite.
A week later after excruciating pain I went to my primary care doctor, she told me she would refer me to a surgeon, I called the surgeons office and begged them for an appointment as soon as possible. I couldn’t walk right, I couldn’t move without pain, I had stuff leaking out of my body, I was in agony, I couldn’t do my daily routines, I wanted my life back, and even more I wanted my dignity back. The surgeon diagnosed me with a perianal abscess and proceeded to stick a needle in my butt cheek 5 times around the area of the abscess hoping to dull the pain, he cut open the abscess even larger than the urgent care doctor had and sent me home without packing and with instructions for baths every few hours, and with the knowledge that about half the cases of perianal abscesses turn into fistulas but don’t worry surely it won’t happen to me. I knew that day that it was going to happen because I had lost all faith in the doctors.
I went back to the surgeon a month later and found out the news that I had indeed formed an anal fistula, I was reassured it would be a simple matter to fix, I would undergo surgery and during surgery, the doctor would be able to see the positioning of the fistula and would fix it. Fistula’s while horrible aren’t necessarily life threatening-they can cause rectal cancer, and they are a chronic illness affecting your life in a variety of ways. The fistula caused liquids to leak from the wound they had made to drain the abscess, it hurt constantly and I constantly felt disgusting. I was losing who I was, I felt nasty and discouraged, I put on a smile and continued my life but it wasn’t what it had been. I began counting down till January 2019 when I would have surgery, they were going to put me to sleep and fix it, I just had to hold on until then. December 2018 was the longest month-a month that should have been jolly and happy turned into despair, depression, faking happiness, and misery.
January 7, 2019, I had perianal fistula surgery, the doctor determined during surgery that the best course of action was inserting a cutting seton. Pausing here I would like to say one of the worst things about this whole debacle of having a chronic illness like a fistula was that I wasn’t told about other options, I wasn’t referred to a colon expert, I wasn’t told the difference of setons, and I was never once given the option of having an ultrasound or MRI. Any of these things would have provided me with greater knowledge instead I was lead to believe by a surgeon that surgery was the only way to find out what the fistula looked like. Cutting setons are risky-something the surgeon didn’t tell me. Cutting setons have a high risk of incontinence and I was way too young to have to deal with this yet the surgeon determined while I was unconscious that this was what was best for me. After 3 weeks of having a seton I was losing more hope, I had pain, I could feel it pulling inside of me, I had leakage-more leakage than ever before, the feeling of nastiness was increased, the surgeon just told me to have patience, and even worse I knew that he was going to cause me to be incontinent.
By February I was getting more and more discouraged. I had been reading alternative methods-something I should have done before but I was taught to trust the doctor. I had heard of alternative treatment and I became obsessed with it. The treatment was called Kshar Sutra and it is available in India, a treatment using Ayurvedic medicine that’s been used for centuries. I had read about every treatment available in the United States at the highest success most only had a 70% chance of success and that was often after multiple tries. I couldn’t bear to continue this constant pain, constant disgust. I became obsessed with Kshar Sutra, I wanted to go to India and have it done, I began plotting of how to do it. I had an upcoming wedding, I was trying to work out, I was constantly spraying myself with perfume and taking showers on average 4–5 times a day.
March rolled along and I agreed to go snowboarding, snowboarding was always a pleasure while snowboarding and sitting in the snow I was able to forget about my fistula for a time, I could feel the seton but chose to ignore it. Once I got back from Snowboarding the seton broke and came out, the leaking stopped, and then life happened- a tragedy, one of my dogs died, I couldn’t bear to go on so I got an opportunity thanks to an amazing person to go to India and gratefully I took it. Traveling 16 hours from Los Angeles to Dubai was an uncomfortable plane journey, thankfully I was sleeping for half of it, walking the Dubai airport for 8 hours was an unremarkable uncomfortable 8 hours, and finally boarding the plane to Bangalore, India I was excited in a short 4 hours I was going to be in India, I was going to meet the Doctor in the evening and finally my life would get better. Hope was on the horizon.
I met Doctor Ramesh Bhat in Bangalore, India for the first time on March 27, 2019, approximately 6 months had elapsed since I had begun the journey of getting an abscess. I was tired, jet-lagged, but willing to do whatever needed to be done instore my fistula. The doctor examination was an uncomfortable experience, I lost yet more dignity, yet I didn’t care because he said he could cure me. I was told to get a TRUS scan the next day and sent home. I didn’t know what a TRUS scan was until I heard about it from Dr. Bhat- I was going to have a Rectal Ultrasound Scan, it was yet another dignity removing exam, a painful experience. The scan showed my fistula, it also showed that indeed my sphincter muscle had been cut my suspicions of it having been cut had been removed, but on the positive, the fistula wasn’t too complex and the doctor would be able to cure me.
Surgery and treatment for Kshar Sutra were scheduled to begin April 1, 2019. Surgery was performed in the doctors office, I had chosen to not be put to sleep instead of opting for local anesthetic which turned out to be 6 shots in the butt, the doctor cut open my fistula, “lay open surgery” and he then inserted a seton to begin the process of Kshar sutra, and he finished it off by cauterizing the wound to get rid of the dead infected skin, I was kept in the office for 3 hours post-surgery and given instructions to come back every day for wound cleaning/packing and starting the next day I was to take sitz baths 3 times a day or after movements. The surgery process was by far the hardest part for me for the Kshar Sutra treatment-followed by having the packing changed daily, the sitz baths, all were extremely painful though I was the type of person unwilling to disclose my pain spending hours walking around ignoring the pain. Life soon after threw me a loophole allowing my mind to focus on things other than pain and before I knew it I was having a culture test and being prepped to have my first Kshar Thread change.
Leading up to the first thread the pain seemed to increase by ten-fold but the day of the thread changing rolled around and the doctor was quick about it. After having the thread changed the pain decreased significantly, I began to be hopeful of the process again, and excited to be able to get back to living my life to the fullest. Treatment started passing in a blur with minimal complications, the hardest point after having a thread changed was counting down until the next thread change and avoiding a reoccurring stomach bug that wouldn’t go away. 4 months later, multiple thread changes, knowledge of having a sphincter muscle cut, the possibility of incontinence for the rest of my life, and a usual doctor visit and I was pronounced cured. The day of the cure was like any other day, I went in for a thread change- it was more painful than normal, it felt like they were cutting the thread, the wound, which was almost fully cured, after what seemed like an hour of excruciating pain the doctor helped me up and said I was fistula free. I was in shock I walked out of the room confused, unsure of what I had heard, and shared the news with a friend and fellow fistula warrior who brought me out of the shock. Not only was I fistula free, and the incontinence was also gone, and there was hope for a fun bright future.
I was fistula free, my wound was almost fully closed, this long, painful, depressing, life-sapping journey was coming to a close. I was no longer a victim of a fistula, I was no longer at the mercy of unqualified doctors. I had traveled to a foreign country alone and afraid and I had survived and come out stronger an ayurvedic treatment had healed me. So here is my message to the world. Having a fistula may not be life-threatening but it is a chronic illness. It’s an illness that can lead to cancer, it can lead to debilitating, depression, anxiety, self-hate, disgust, it takes away your quality of life and can make you feel utterly alone- but there is hope. Have faith and if you can make the trip then India is the place to go, it’s renewed my faith in doctors, medicine, and in life.
