ulcerative colitis 0r crohn

i had 3 colonscopies in last 2 1/2 yrs, all shows pancolitis dx active ulcerative colitis, but my barium meal showed fast transit time i.e 90minutes only suggesting inflamation in small intestine, i had some expensive blood tests i.e serological markers, the results of which are also confusing. i am intolerense to mesacoal and on & off on prednisolone, now dr prescribed imuran and told me to continue with mesacoal eventhough i got side effects

thanx kazbern, is it ok to continue mesacoal despite its side effects

Tomorrow, I will be having a colonoscopy and I will be swallowing a pill camera to see what my small intestines look like.  I have been diagnosed as UC but want to see what the camera shows and might be crohns.

kazbern said...
I don't think it matters at the moment which IBD name they'll tell you. What's important is to find a treatment that relieves your symptoms and gets you to remission.

Couldn't disagree more. UC and Crohn's are different diseases, and consequently have different treatment plans. There are things that tend to work well for Crohnie's, such as the SCD, that don't work so well for UCers.

Your first priority should be determining not only exactly what disease you have, but the best approximation you can to its cause. Many, many people on this forum found long lasting relief from their disease after they successfully identified whatever was causing the problem in the first place (i.e. food intolerances, vitamin deficiencies, specific species of invasive bacteria, etc). Knowing what the cause is necessitates knowing exactly what disease you have.

Otherwise you will be shooting in the dark trying out a huge variety of meds until you simply get "lucky", if you ever do.

Figure out what's wrong with you. That is the first critical step to healing in any disease. Your chances of hitting the target are minimal if you can't even see it.

UC and CD are different but from the same family (IBD) and with crohn's colitis (which I have) the symptoms are most similar to UC compared to "classic crohn's" affecting the small intestine only...with crohn's colitis, the same RX are prescribed as used for UC. We also tend to get bleeding as a common symptom with CC and proctitis is also more common for those of us with CC. Oddly enough, even smoking helps me more than not smoking (which is suppose to be a complete no no for CDers).

That said, SCD can work for either regardless if it's UC or CD that you have, because basically IBD in general is a very individual disease over all, no 2 UCers or CDers are the same.

Try whatever you can to find relief and best of luck to you with it.