Help with Anal abscess and Fistula

I had an anal abscess which burst open on it's own and started draining. I consulted the doctor and he asked me to continue the sitz baths and let the abscess drain itself. He said there might be a possible fistula but it can't be determined at this stage. The abscess has been draining for the last couple of weeks. The problem I have is that sometimes when I am about to fart it hurts the abscess area in a way where I kind of get a feeling that something is poking at it. Does this mean I have a fistula? or is it just the abscess? Help would be really appreciated.

Someone asked a similar question a few weeks ago, so I am just going to copy and paste my response to them here. :)

Did they not give you anything to pack it with, like gauze? With the abscesses that I have had, I would pack it at night with clean gauze. It kept it open and helped it heal from the inside out. Eventually the hole just got smaller and smaller until I couldn't fit any gauze at all.

That happened with my first abscess (no gauze given to me) and it turned into a fistula that still hasn't been able to heal 3 years later. It healed over on the outside but then filled up and burst on the inside.

I would go to the pharmacy and ask the pharmacist for advice on gauze to get. My second abscess is when I learned about packing. They gave me super thin strips of gauze, a little wooden stick (kind of like the ones used to push back cuticles of fingernails), and sterile water. Each night, my husband would squirt the sterile water into the abscess, then use the stick to kind of twirl the strips of gauze into the hole (kind of like a fork twirling spaghetti). Then a square of gauze over it and taped down. Then in the morning we would do it again, unless I didn't have to go anywhere, then I would just lay down all day and let the air heal the abscess.

Keep doing your sitz baths, too.