New poster, longtime lurker. There's a lot of very experienced bottoms here, so it seems like a promising source of advice.
I've always had one spot on my ass that would occasionally hurt for a couple days after sex. In the beginning it was very rare (it happened the first time I ever got penetrated, and once or twice otherwise), but a few years ago it started to become more common until every time I bottomed, I regretted it for a couple of days. Around this same problem, I had some digestive problems, which resulted in a lot of extra pain and bleeding (the bleeding was brand new and distressing!). During this period my doctor diagnosed me with a fissure and did a few botox injections in the area, to little benefit.
Now it seems we're at the point where surgery is the next step. It has a small risk of long term complications, so I'm a bit nervous about taking that risk as I've started to lose hope that I'll ever be in bottoming shape again. Has anyone ever gone through a similar ordeal, and how did it turn out? What was recovery like - how long did it take, did you have to do any self-stretching, etc? I'm so frustrated that I'm now on prep, and can't go all in on taking it raw.