Starting suppositories again. Let me hear your success stories!

I have moderate proctosigmoditis. I was on 1g suppositories 3 times a day a few months back. After 3 weeks I discontinued as I didn't see them making any dents on the UC, but only my wallet If they were cheaper I might have stuck with them longer. I am on oral 5ASAs (2.4g/day). I cannot tolerate orals above that dose. Get ridiculous nausea and headaches that even pills to suppress these side effect fail to work.

So the GI wants me to try the suppositories again and has asked me to stay on it longer as it takes "time to work". So those that had success with suppositories -

1) what was the extent of your UC
2) what was your dosage
3) how long before you started seeing initial positive results? ( passing of gas, reduced BMs, lesser urgency, etc)

I am also aware that people who had success with 5ASA meds rarely visit such forums. I just wish they did once in a while to give hope to their UC suffering bretherin!

I so badly want these suppositories to work.
Thank you again.

Well, there are many of us with success being on only 5ASA oral/rectal. You might not have read enough of the posts to realise it.???

I strongly suggest you ask your doc to get you on the retention enemas...4g. Try them and see how you do.

Better than supps, better coverage. You can use the supps for support as in during the day.

q

Canasa alone did not do enough for me. I have been on them now for about 3 months. After 2 months I added Apriso and noticed additional improvement. I am on a lower dose of the oral 2 pills a day instead of 4. Maybe that would work for you to combine and then eventually taper off of the oral?

Coming a bit late to this, but thought I'd respond to your questions.

1) what was the extent of your UC.  - Proctosigmoiditis, mild to moderate, inflammation mainly in rectum spread slightly into sigmoid colon.

2) what was your dosage  - 500mg, 1xday. (Plus 3.2g oral 5ASAs)

3) how long before you started seeing initial positive results? ( passing of gas, reduced BMs, lesser urgency, etc) - I actually had immediate improvement (literally overnight). Blood, mucus, and diarrhoea all cleared up, and was having normal BMs within 36 hours. I have since had a minor flare up when my GI told me to stop taking the supps, but symptoms were gone within 48 hours of starting taking them again.

Since, I have had, thanks to antibiotics, another mild flare up. Symptoms were helped by a course of prednisolone foam enema, and I had a flex sig last week. My GI told me from this that my rectum was free of inflammation, and there was only a patch that had spread a bit further into my sigmoid, which I've been prescribed 5ASA foam enema to hopefully deal with.

I do think that the supps are hugely effective if the inflammation is limited to the rectum, as they do appear over the last year to have completely dealt with it for me, but if it's spread further into the sigmoid it needs an enema to deal with it.

So, after that long ramble I'd definitely recommend sticking with the supps!