A question I've gotten a lot is how did I hear about Kshar Sutra. I'm a librarian by trade and a researcher/bookworm by nature. So when the doctors FINALLY found out what was wrong with me and diagnosed me with having a rectal abscess and then a fistula, I researched my butt off. Everything/anything I could find - books, websites, message boards, medical websites, medical journals-you name it.
While educating myself about this topic and surgical options for high complicated fistulas, I came across a method called Kshar Sutra. This method was the only one that made sense to me, to be honest. The other options seemed to have a high failure rate and a worrisome recurrence rate. Of course, visiting the message boards and reading heart breaking story after heart breaking story didn't help. Also I never understood how traditional Canadian surgical methods would work since a) doctors here seem to want everything to be a day surgery - slice the patient, and send them home as quick as possible. The lack of after care in a hospital for surgeries that were so invasive worried me. b) The area never really gets left alone. So you're going to have a surgery, then basically poop on your wound every day or so. That plus the moisture and darkness which promotes bacterial growth and the fact that the area is always stretched (whilst having a poo)...it all just worried me.
If Kshar Sutra had been available in Canada, I would've chosen it, hands down. But it's not and part of the reason for that, IMO, is that western culture is very arrogant. We tend to believe we're the 'best' country. Even terms like 'first world' seem very elitist to me. I found the doctors and especially the surgeons I'd dealt with to be nauseatingly arrogant. They were not the types of individuals, it seemed, to be open to different surgical methods or to be open from learning from professionals of a 'third world country'. Also, western culture (again IMO) is all about 'new'. Everything has to be new or it's considered to be no good. Think about it. We always want the newest clothes, phone, cars etc etc. What's wrong, though, with older things? If there's a technique, for example, like Kshar Sutra that was developed thousands of years ago, why not consider it? If that technique were trash then it wouldn't be practiced any longer. Another factor, I think, is that western medicine does not, and even frowns upon (IMO) herbal treatments. I believe in herbal medicines. If I have a cold I'm more likely to reach for turmeric, ecomania or ginger as a first line of defense than running to a doctor or the pharmacy for pills. So since Kshar Sutra is a herbal treatment, it seems a lot of doctors (if they've even heard of the treatment. It doesn't sit well with me that 'professionals' here can be ignorant of a treatment that's so widely practiced in a whole country and that a simple google search of 'fistula treatment options' can bring up results talking about it. I mean...we live in the information age for crying out loud. How hard is it to find information?). To me that speaks more to arrogance and laziness than pure, innocent ignorance.
Kshar Sutra has been practiced for thousands of years which gives me far more hope of it working than a procedure like LIFT which was developed not all that long ago.
As I mentioned before, during my nightmare journey I had 3 misdiagnoses, 1 surgery I didn't need at all, 1 botched surgery and a final surgery that drained my abscess. By the end of all of that my faith in Canadian doctors and surgeons had been shattered. I no longer believed that if something went wrong with my body, I could go to a doctor and have it fixed. I learned that medicine is, in some instances, just as much an art as it is a science.
And after my last meeting with my CRS, my gut told me not to go with him. He didn't seem knowledgeable enough - couldn't answer a good chunk of questions I had for him. He seemed way too cavalier, arrogant and just plain didn't give two shits about my health struggles. I know doctors are overworked and that they can't care about every ailing stranger they see especially since they see people with issues all day everyday - but at the same time, this is my life and my health and I did want a doctor who was knowledgeable and who at least seemed to care that they were speaking to someone who was suffering.
I researched for months and had learned a lot about Kshar Sutra. I was fascinated. But the thought of going to India was just daunting. I'd never been there. I didn't know anyone who had gone there. I knew nothing about the country other than I'd always kind of wanted to visit but the cost of going so far seemed too high. Also, I'd need to find a reputable doctor. Not some scam artist or some quack who would make my butt issues worse instead of better.
A doctor named Dr. Bapat seemed to keep popping up everywhere I looked. The IBS forums talking about fistulas? He was there. IBD forums talking about fistulas? He was there. YouTube vids talking about...you guessed it? He was there. To be honest at first I dismissed his claims thinking he was a scam artist. Still, curiosity got the better of me and I visited his website and YouTube channel. I loved his video explaining the formation of an anal abscess/fistula and Kshar Sutra. I listened to the testimonials of patients who had visited him for Kshar Sutra treatment but what they were saying seemed too good to be true. I thought they were just paid actors and dismissed them.
At one point I'd resigned myself to living forever with a seton - even though it hugely diminished my quality of life.
Finally, as the months wore on, I got fed up with having a seton in - it is horrifically irritating to the anal area and having poop leaking out of the area chafes the skin and can cause it to crack and bleed. Very painful. I knew I didn't want to live the rest of my life that way and I also didn't like any of the surgical options available to me.
During this time, I visited Dr. Bapat's Facebook page. In it, he'd posted pictures of him standing with people he'd successfully treated and he tagged them in it. I was intrigued! Could they actually be real people and not paid actors like I'd originally thought?? I visited their Facebook pages to do a bit of snooping and lo and behold, they were real pages from REAL PEOPLE!
I messaged a few people so I could talk about the Kshar Sutra treatment and their experiences with it/going to India (I focused on people from the US and Canada to talk to) and what Dr. Bapat was like. The first person I talked to was a lovely woman. Her husband had undergone Kshar Sutra with Dr. Bapat a few years back and she had nothing but positive things to say. At that moment I was starting to truly become convinced and I started sobbing. Maybe, just maybe, my nightmare could be over. Over the next few weeks, one by one, the people I reached out to contacted me. Some emailed, some messaged over Facebook, some I talked to over the phone, some I talked to over video chat. The people were legit. Their stories were just as sad and awful as mine and not only did Kshar Sutra work for them, their fistulas didn't come back.
That was it! I plucked up the courage to send Dr. Bapat an email. I was shocked at how open and responsive he was. From my experience with Canadian doctors, you speak with the secretary who relays your message on to the surgeon. You never EVER get a chance to just email or call up a Canadian surgeon and ask for help or advice. If you're lucky, you will remember all of the questions you need to ask during your 10 or 15 min check in appointment and that's it. Not only was Dr. Bapat very knowledgeable about fistulas and Kshar Sutra, he was passionate and he was the only doctor to acknowledge that dealing with this health issue is stressful. He was the only doctor who offered any empathy at all. I spoke with him back and forth for a few months and as I was planning my trip to India to undergo Kshar Sutra with him, he was hugely helpful in offering advice on things like what to expect when I got to Pune - for ex types of clothing to wear when I get there (I had heard that in India women should make sure to cover up (ankle length skirts, no shoulders)and asked if that were true. He said it's not but recommended skirts, not shorts due to the treatment).
So, at the time I'm typing this, my husband and I are going to board a flight to India tonight. I'm nervous yet excited.
Please note - everything stated in this blog is my personal opinion. I am not a medical professional. Kshar Sutra treatment is not approved in Canada or the USA. People choosing to travel to India to undergo Kshar Sutra treatment do so at their own risk.
While educating myself about this topic and surgical options for high complicated fistulas, I came across a method called Kshar Sutra. This method was the only one that made sense to me, to be honest. The other options seemed to have a high failure rate and a worrisome recurrence rate. Of course, visiting the message boards and reading heart breaking story after heart breaking story didn't help. Also I never understood how traditional Canadian surgical methods would work since a) doctors here seem to want everything to be a day surgery - slice the patient, and send them home as quick as possible. The lack of after care in a hospital for surgeries that were so invasive worried me. b) The area never really gets left alone. So you're going to have a surgery, then basically poop on your wound every day or so. That plus the moisture and darkness which promotes bacterial growth and the fact that the area is always stretched (whilst having a poo)...it all just worried me.
If Kshar Sutra had been available in Canada, I would've chosen it, hands down. But it's not and part of the reason for that, IMO, is that western culture is very arrogant. We tend to believe we're the 'best' country. Even terms like 'first world' seem very elitist to me. I found the doctors and especially the surgeons I'd dealt with to be nauseatingly arrogant. They were not the types of individuals, it seemed, to be open to different surgical methods or to be open from learning from professionals of a 'third world country'. Also, western culture (again IMO) is all about 'new'. Everything has to be new or it's considered to be no good. Think about it. We always want the newest clothes, phone, cars etc etc. What's wrong, though, with older things? If there's a technique, for example, like Kshar Sutra that was developed thousands of years ago, why not consider it? If that technique were trash then it wouldn't be practiced any longer. Another factor, I think, is that western medicine does not, and even frowns upon (IMO) herbal treatments. I believe in herbal medicines. If I have a cold I'm more likely to reach for turmeric, ecomania or ginger as a first line of defense than running to a doctor or the pharmacy for pills. So since Kshar Sutra is a herbal treatment, it seems a lot of doctors (if they've even heard of the treatment. It doesn't sit well with me that 'professionals' here can be ignorant of a treatment that's so widely practiced in a whole country and that a simple google search of 'fistula treatment options' can bring up results talking about it. I mean...we live in the information age for crying out loud. How hard is it to find information?). To me that speaks more to arrogance and laziness than pure, innocent ignorance.
Kshar Sutra has been practiced for thousands of years which gives me far more hope of it working than a procedure like LIFT which was developed not all that long ago.
As I mentioned before, during my nightmare journey I had 3 misdiagnoses, 1 surgery I didn't need at all, 1 botched surgery and a final surgery that drained my abscess. By the end of all of that my faith in Canadian doctors and surgeons had been shattered. I no longer believed that if something went wrong with my body, I could go to a doctor and have it fixed. I learned that medicine is, in some instances, just as much an art as it is a science.
And after my last meeting with my CRS, my gut told me not to go with him. He didn't seem knowledgeable enough - couldn't answer a good chunk of questions I had for him. He seemed way too cavalier, arrogant and just plain didn't give two shits about my health struggles. I know doctors are overworked and that they can't care about every ailing stranger they see especially since they see people with issues all day everyday - but at the same time, this is my life and my health and I did want a doctor who was knowledgeable and who at least seemed to care that they were speaking to someone who was suffering.
I researched for months and had learned a lot about Kshar Sutra. I was fascinated. But the thought of going to India was just daunting. I'd never been there. I didn't know anyone who had gone there. I knew nothing about the country other than I'd always kind of wanted to visit but the cost of going so far seemed too high. Also, I'd need to find a reputable doctor. Not some scam artist or some quack who would make my butt issues worse instead of better.
A doctor named Dr. Bapat seemed to keep popping up everywhere I looked. The IBS forums talking about fistulas? He was there. IBD forums talking about fistulas? He was there. YouTube vids talking about...you guessed it? He was there. To be honest at first I dismissed his claims thinking he was a scam artist. Still, curiosity got the better of me and I visited his website and YouTube channel. I loved his video explaining the formation of an anal abscess/fistula and Kshar Sutra. I listened to the testimonials of patients who had visited him for Kshar Sutra treatment but what they were saying seemed too good to be true. I thought they were just paid actors and dismissed them.
At one point I'd resigned myself to living forever with a seton - even though it hugely diminished my quality of life.
Finally, as the months wore on, I got fed up with having a seton in - it is horrifically irritating to the anal area and having poop leaking out of the area chafes the skin and can cause it to crack and bleed. Very painful. I knew I didn't want to live the rest of my life that way and I also didn't like any of the surgical options available to me.
During this time, I visited Dr. Bapat's Facebook page. In it, he'd posted pictures of him standing with people he'd successfully treated and he tagged them in it. I was intrigued! Could they actually be real people and not paid actors like I'd originally thought?? I visited their Facebook pages to do a bit of snooping and lo and behold, they were real pages from REAL PEOPLE!
I messaged a few people so I could talk about the Kshar Sutra treatment and their experiences with it/going to India (I focused on people from the US and Canada to talk to) and what Dr. Bapat was like. The first person I talked to was a lovely woman. Her husband had undergone Kshar Sutra with Dr. Bapat a few years back and she had nothing but positive things to say. At that moment I was starting to truly become convinced and I started sobbing. Maybe, just maybe, my nightmare could be over. Over the next few weeks, one by one, the people I reached out to contacted me. Some emailed, some messaged over Facebook, some I talked to over the phone, some I talked to over video chat. The people were legit. Their stories were just as sad and awful as mine and not only did Kshar Sutra work for them, their fistulas didn't come back.
That was it! I plucked up the courage to send Dr. Bapat an email. I was shocked at how open and responsive he was. From my experience with Canadian doctors, you speak with the secretary who relays your message on to the surgeon. You never EVER get a chance to just email or call up a Canadian surgeon and ask for help or advice. If you're lucky, you will remember all of the questions you need to ask during your 10 or 15 min check in appointment and that's it. Not only was Dr. Bapat very knowledgeable about fistulas and Kshar Sutra, he was passionate and he was the only doctor to acknowledge that dealing with this health issue is stressful. He was the only doctor who offered any empathy at all. I spoke with him back and forth for a few months and as I was planning my trip to India to undergo Kshar Sutra with him, he was hugely helpful in offering advice on things like what to expect when I got to Pune - for ex types of clothing to wear when I get there (I had heard that in India women should make sure to cover up (ankle length skirts, no shoulders)and asked if that were true. He said it's not but recommended skirts, not shorts due to the treatment).
So, at the time I'm typing this, my husband and I are going to board a flight to India tonight. I'm nervous yet excited.
Please note - everything stated in this blog is my personal opinion. I am not a medical professional. Kshar Sutra treatment is not approved in Canada or the USA. People choosing to travel to India to undergo Kshar Sutra treatment do so at their own risk.
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