Time

The book On the Trail of Genghis Khan tells the true story of a modern Australian who travels on horseback to trace the Mongol empire’s route across the Eurasian steppe. His chats with present-day nomads include trail life, horsemanship, and—somewhat surprisingly—hemorrhoid prevention strategies. That this is a nomadic hot topic even now raises intriguing questions about the effect of anal pain on civilization…Did hurting hordes head west in search of conquest, or relief?

If such an historical undercurrent seems far-fetched, consider the view of medical historian Rudolph Marx (author of The Health of the Presidents) who suggests that French conqueror Napoleon, having been plagued with piles since boyhood, lost his bid for world domination because opium for anal pain made him too groggy to concentrate at Waterloo.

Or take the case of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, the energetic inventor of the cyclotron who helped usher in the Atomic Age. Portrayed in the book Big Science as an ever-enthusiastic promoter of atomic power and one of the busiest men on the planet, Lawrence nonetheless bore the bloody burden of ulcerative colitis even as he criss-crossed the continent trying to change the world.

You get the idea. Digestive issues have caused untold hours of anguish, frustration, limit, and loss. Even on a personal scale, it’s hard to escape how intensely a fissure can influence the past, present, and future. Without a doubt, time is a major part of your repair work.

Hopefully, the FASTR protocol has given you some ideas to help shorten the time between your current condition and finished repair. But, if my experience is a guide, any route you choose will probably take longer than you’d like. So here are a few more ways to deal with time:

Chronic does not mean forever. The job of a modern product designer includes evaluating words, not just for their meanings, but for their ability to produce a desired result. Some words produce great results. Others, such as the appallingly broad “incontinence”, which can mean anything from a couple of unexpected toots to a lifelong stigmatizing condition, produce miserable results.

In my experience, the word “chronic” produces miserable results. Taken from the Greek “khronikos” (of time), the precise meaning of chronic is “persisting for a long time.” In that sense, “chronic” is used fairly to describe a fissure that lasts longer than eight weeks. However, “chronic” is also used to denote a condition that comes and goes. Or it can mean an ever-present, incurable, even “immedicable” (unable to be healed or treated) affliction. That’s quite a range.

My suggestion: don’t get locked into a self-dooming mindset by using the bleaker definitions of overly broad words like “chronic.” Chronic does not mean forever.

Take a moment before being momentous. As a designer, some of my best solutions have come from re-thinking commonly accepted conclusions. And, sadly, some of my worst results have come from acting or experimenting without first picturing possible outcomes. So my personal history says it’s important to think things through.

For all its smallness, a fissure can create outsized, even momentous, effects. I don’t want to overstate it, but many decisions—from major ones like choosing a surgical option, to seemingly insignificant ones, such as which food or drink to consume or whether to strain while passing stool—can carry a long tail of consequences. So for now, you may find it helpful to extend extra forethought and care to any choices or actions that affect your repair.

Choose your timeline. Medical insurance markets are designed to offer consumers choices to help balance risks, options, and costs. For example, a single person might opt for a plan with a low monthly fee but higher emergency services costs, while a large family might choose a plan that lowers costs by offering a smaller range of providers and covered treatment types.

Likewise, when it comes to fissure repair, how you balance risks, options, and costs can help you choose a timeline that feels fastest for you. Is a speedy, low-risk solution more important than trying slower but even lower-risk options? Will you be disappointed if you opt for a quick and costly solution now, only to have a future fissure form because an underlying issue went unresolved? Is it worth the extra time and cost to learn focused muscle relaxation? Answers to these and similar questions can help you choose the timeline that moves you toward your personal goals faster.

Watch the trend. Like weather, stock prices, and body weight, fissures can undergo gladdening or maddening changes daily, and unfortunately, a brief sense of being on the mend can quickly end, leaving you feeling worse off than ever. For that reason alone, watching the overall repair trend is useful, since it helps you forget the fluctuations and focus on the fix.

But there’s another reason to watch the trend: the minute you detect real progress, do everything you can to help yourself heal. In my case, an unmistakable sense of resolution was detectable but elusive: I had it, lost it, had it, lost it, had it…made a focused effort not to lose it again…and finally achieved it.

So for faster results, when you sense real progress don’t hold back on healing. Go all in: good diet, good sleep, good posture, good products, warm water, soft stools, relaxation—the works.

Easy is hard, but gets easier. “Easy is hard” is a Silicon Valley way of saying that great products are made when people work diligently to compress competence and care down to a simple, satisfying solution. In the best case, all the upfront endurance pays off in a result that feels easy and effortless, yet empowering. In contrast, a product born of bad decisions and a lack of care can burden its users with almost endless frustration and pain.

As I found, fixing a fissure is like making a product in reverse. Making an appointment with a qualified medical professional might feel like a hard first step. Then daily doing the right things in the right amounts to promote healing—cups of water, grams of fiber, number of Calories, hours of sleep, minutes of soaking, hours of stretching and exercise (12, 38, 2800, 8, 10, 1, for example)—can take extra time and energy. But as I also found, every early effort helps the body heal itself since you don’t push burdens downstream or leave repair to chance.

Fortunately, harder gets easier when doing the right thing becomes a personal pattern. The good results that start to surface are motivating: fissures heal, pain subsides, and related conditions can lessen or clear—swollen hemorrhoidal veins can shrink and assume a more natural position as connective tissue gets re-established, and pruritus ani can go away as inflamed skin calms and refreshes itself. And, of course, it’s no slouch goal to be fissure-free forever.

Let’s talk about that last point a little more in Being Better.

Last updated: June 2019