PLEASE HELP, I THINK I'M IN A FLARE

Hi...You should call early Monday morning to get in to see your doc asap. Upper abdominal pain could be liver or gallbladder symptoms...so he/she might need to make sure there's nothing else going on.

What other symptoms are you having?

Are you able to eat?

quincy

Teresa, you do need to contact your doctor tomorrow when his office opens. Occasionally, UC is accompanied by serious liver disease that needs to be treated as well, so this needs to be ruled out.

A little explanation of the terms that have been used:

Pancolitis means that your entire colon is inflamed and affected by the disease. Others of us have left-sided, procto-sigmoiditis or proctitis, all of which involve the left side, or lower end, of the colon to varying degrees.

Your doctor said you have unspecified colitis, which means they haven't fully determined the cause. It could be ulcertive colitis or it could be Crohn's disease. The most important difference for you to know about this is that UC is limited to you colon, while Crohn's can affect any part of the GI system, from mouth to rectum.

I'd suggest talking with your GI to see what his treatment plan is. Simply putting you on very high doses of Prednisone every few months isn't really a plan. He should have some plan beyond that if the Asacol fails to maintain your remission, as they usually like to minimize the Pred usage whenever possible.

My only other suggestion is that you consider a good probiotic to replace the beneficial colon bacteria that are lost from the colitis and courses of antibiotics. Some of the ones a lot of people her use are Culturelle, VSL## and Primadophilus Reuteri.

I hope you're soon feeling better.