Hi! Glad to be here and thanks for the site! I've had a tendancy to get canker sores since I can remember, I have been put on zantac and nexium both, which didn't have any lasting effects. Mild diahhrea has been a common thing my whole adult life, (you just get used to things and don't think much of it till further developments.) When I was about 40 I had several weeks of agony starting with lots of gas, bloating and tummy sounds followed by moderately intense pain and diahhrea. This first happened while out hunting with my husband, we were up the river a ways and me always having to put on the tough gal act roughed it out. Keep in mind we are out at camp eating mountain house prepacked dried foods & trail mix....as you can imagine things only got worse. Next thing I know and we are home by this time, I have this horrible pain in gut upper middle between my ribs, feels like someone has stuck a heavy sharp object in there and it's still there, I feel pretty sick and my hands and feet are cold and clammy and I have a low grade fever. This lasts for several days and then comes and goes after that for several days. I wait till I "feel well enough to go anywhere" before I go to the doctor and he tells me sounds like your gallbladder. So he (General Practitioner) gets me in for an ultrasound and I have a large "sludgeball" in my gallbladder. So he makes me an appt. to see the surgeon who keeps saying you just don't have typical gallbladder symptoms, which is exactly what I was thinking! But it's getting pretty intense and since there's proof from the ultrasound they get me in right away and get the gallbladder out. Now keep in mind by the time I get in for this surgery I've been on a liquid diet for a week already and several days after because I'm afraid to eat cause every time I do that's when it hurts.... So after all this I start to feel better and it lasts for the most part for a year and a half. Then one day I have the gastric disturbances with the typical gastric disturbance pains not like before accompanied by bright red blood....which lasts several weeks then goes away. I ask my doc about this and he says it was likely something I ate that irritated my bowel. I also ask him about this pain I have every 3 months or so, it is just a bad pain in my gut that lasts about a week and I have diahhrea with it and by the end of the week my guts feel like somebody has beat me up! He says it probably something caused by my gallbladder surgery to take this stuff called cholestyromine, so I try it....nothing happens. I don't go back to him right away because the pain once again subsides. So the next time I get all the symptoms together, I am in major pain I feel sick, I have bloody diahhrea and I notice that most of my pain is on the right side. I go see my GP doc again and he says, hmm sounds like crohn's or maybe ulcerative colitis but keep in mind that I am not a specialist on this and we have no specialists within 400 miles of here. I get a ct scan and he tells me, "good news! you don't have crohn's!" Next he says I need a colonoscopy and refers me to a doctor who does them and is said to good at it, but is not a GI either. So this doctor tells me I have UC in the rectum, here are some rectal enema's of mesalamine take them for two weeks and see your GP again, he says that does not explain your other symptoms you probably have IBS! So two weeks go by no change in the bleeding and the GP says, "just use the enema's for as long as you think you need them. As far as your gut pain I don't know what to tell ya, if a liquid diet helps it then that's what you need to do, it's not like you are dying from it and you don't have crohn's, you don't want to have crohn's!" Well duh, I don't want Crohn's! Thanks Doc! So thousands of dollars and several flares later here I lay in my bed having a flare of some unknown thing and thinking if not crohn's then what!? So I wanted to ask you who are familiar with crohn's symptoms and I am aware that they can be different for everyone, but really does this sound like rectal only UC, Crohn's or what? thanks to all who listen!