Could a flare up be caused by meds, or am I crazy?

Hello all,

This is sort of a long and convoluted problem, but I don't have anyone else to ask. I have had colitis for about five years, and I have been on Asacol since my diagnosis. I also take 150 mg of azathioprine daily, and Entocort on and off to control my flareups. I had a minor flare in February and immediately started taking the Entocort, and I have been feeling great since then. I took one of my last Entocort pills yesterday morning and thought I was fine, but I started to get loose stools and a bit of blood last night. This doesn't make much sense to me since I've been taking the same 30 mg Entocort pill daily for quite a while.

The only thing that changed was that I started taking my other meds again after a break of a few days. This was entirely due to my own laziness...my prescription needed to be refilled, and I procrastinated about going to the pharmacy, so for about five days I was not taking Asacol or azathioprine. I know this is a dumb thing to do. On the other hand, as soon as I stopped taking those meds last week, my stools became even more well-formed and less frequent, and I felt very good. As soon as I started on the Asacol and azathioprine again, I started to bleed. Is there any way that resuming these drugs could somehow be responsible for a flare? Is the problem that I stopped taking them for a few days, even I felt fine for that period? Or is it possible that one of those drugs irritates me and might actually be responsible for periodic flares, but is tempered by Entocort?

Thanks for bearing with me!

Hmm. I sometimes pass them whole too, but I guess I always thought that was normal.

The doctors always told me it was normal to pass them whole because the medicine was on the outside or whatever, which didn't make much sense to me, but I always wondered if maybe having these hard pills go through whole made things worse, like how corn goes through whole and always seems to give me D...