Support my treatment in India

Hi my name is Ana and I have suffered with a perianal fistula since 2016. It is a painful, chronic (and embarrassing) condition that Western medicine has completely failed to treat successfully. It began in 2012 when I noticed a painful bump deep in the tissue of my buttocks. It grew and shrank in size and also fluctuated in levels of painful. At first I was concerned that it might be a tumor so I saw a doctor that informed me that it must be a cyst because tumors don't grow and shrink. They told me to keep an eye on it and if it became too painful I would need to have it surgically removed.

Over the next 4 years I dealt with fluctuating pain, especially when sitting, until it suddenly grew very quickly, came to the surface, and became an abscess.

I sought medical help for the abscess and was told that if it didn't heal that it may be a "fistula." When I looked into this new term I learned that it is a tunnel of infection in the body that connects two places in the body that are not meant to be connected. It is more common than you would think, especially for people with crohnes disease or other digestive issues. It cannot be treated with antibiotics and while there are almost a dozen possible different surgeries most of them have little long term success, with months of bed rest recovery. The one surgery that is successful in taking out the fistula has a very high prognosis of life-long incontinence because they have to remove parts of the rectal muscle.

Despite this, early on I treated myself with daily large amounts of healing herbal teas and healed it for almost 2 years. I thought I had beaten what everyone said was a lifelong condition. When the fistula came back in early 2018 I was devastated. I followed my original herbal protocol but the infection was too established for my teas to work.

I went back to the internet and I found message boards of people struggling with my condition that said they healed it by injecting essential oils through the abscess into the infected tunnel with a syringe with a long needle. I pondered if I could do something like that or have a friend do it and ultimately decided it was much too risky.

My mother tried to push me to seek surgery but even the surgeons giving lectures about this condition online said there are so many surgical options because really, none of them are very successful. And the one surgery that is successful likely leads to permanent loss of bowel control.

Along with the everpresent pain of this condition and dealing with constant drainage and dressings it has been a source of deep shame and the feeling of being disgusting. It has shaped how I live and ability to enjoy my life. Over the last year I even broke down and got referrals to surgeons hoping that maybe surgery could even give me a break for a year or two, even if it was ultimately not successful and came back. The surgeons I reached out to were not accepting new patients because of the pandemic.

This was disappointing but I have spent years in resignation that this was just my life. It was a miracle that I had healed it for the time that I did. I havent had real hope since it came back in 2018. I told myself that others suffer with painful lifelong conditions much worse than mine and I should count my many other blessings. Besides this condition I am a very healthy person. Some weeks are not very painful at all and for that I am lucky.

Recently, I was having an especially painful week. It hurt to walk, sit, or move at all. The pain was waking me up at night. It's a mystery what causes the infection to get better or worse... and I never know when I'm making plans if I am signing myself up for misery. This week of higher pain levels than normal caused a shift. I had a moment where I broke through the resignation and decided there HAD to be something new I could do to try and treat myself.

I remembered something that I learned from my professional herbalist class about herbal tea enemas and thought maybe if I treated the source of the wound with herbs, the infected anal gland, I could heal it from the inside.

So I went to the internet. I found nothing about using tea enemas to heal fistula but I stumbled upon dozens of testimonials of people who had been treated by an ayurvedic doctor in India. Many of them had been healed for many years before making their testimonial. I spent the rest of the day listening, for the first time, to people tell the story of their struggle with this condition. I spent the day in tears listening to others tell my own story, but theirs had a happy ending.

Below are the the first testimonials that I watched. There are dozens of others that span over a decade. How has western medicine failed us so deeply? Why is it that this practice is not offered worldwide?

https://youtu.be/xJ5O-qYWlfo

https://youtu.be/yH9D6hQqazM

I sent these to my mother and decided that day that I need to go to India to heal myself, whatever it takes. The number of weekly treatments is dependent on the size of the infection and I gleaned from the testimonials that most people needed treatment for 6-9 weeks.

I have been in contact with the doctor and am in the process of gathering all the information needed to have a video consultation. I have shelved my current plans for the future and am solely focusing on making this trip happen as soon as possible.

I am asking for donations to help cover some of the cost of my trip. Please only donate if your cup is spilling over and you are comfortable financially.  From those who want to contribute but are not in the financial position I am grateful to recieve blessings and prayers. Even if I do not reach my goal here I will make this trip happen.

If you know anyone that struggles with this condition and believes that it a life sentence please share the testimonials I've posted and go to the links in the information portion of the video for Om Ayurveda Clinic.

Thank you for reading my story. I am on my way to a happy ending