Posted 8/20/2013 2:14 AM (GMT 0)
My partner's family (immediate and extended) has an annual trip to Canada; he's gone nearly every year of his life and it's very important to him. I was supposed to go with him last year, but my UC got so much worse right before the trip that I had to stay home at the last minute. This year, I achieved a very delicate symptomatic about a month ago, with a combination of 6MP, Remicade (10mg/kg, every 6 weeks), and hydrocortisone enemas.
The day before we made the trip up to Canada, we didn't want to cook (we'd eaten up all the food and didn't want to dirty any cookware), so we ordered pizza. For several reasons, we ordered from a place we hadn't tried before; the reviews for it were actually pretty good, although they warned that the pizza was greasy. But we live in a college town--ALL the pizza is greasy--so we went for it. The pizza was fine; it was a little greasier than usual, and it also was a little different in terms of seasoning. We ate it, and the next morning started the drive up with my partner's brother and sister-in-law.
After the first bathroom stop, I started to feel really crampy and sick. After about an hour, I had to request an emergency pit stop--fortunately, we had to take a detour anyway and there was a bathroom I could use. I was really dismayed to see that I had diarrhea. But I also don't have BMs every day since hitting remission, and I'd eaten a lot earlier in the weekend, so I assumed it was just like ... lotsa poop and now I'm fine. But when we stopped for lunch, I still felt terrible, and ended up having to run to the bathroom in the diner about 5 times. It was really embarrassing--I'd hidden most of my symptoms from my partner's family for a year and a half, and now they were seeing me make a ton of trips back-to-back.
I was freaking out because I had stupidly only packed two hydrocortisone enemas (thinking, "Hey, I'm not sick anymore, why should I waste space in my suitcase?"). Pharmacies in Canada won't honor prescriptions written by American doctors; I'd either have to go back across the border to get treatment, or I'd have to pay a lot of money to get treated in Canada. My partner and I decided I would take one enema that very night, see how I felt the next day, and then re-plan from there.
I felt fine the next day, although I bought emergency Imodium just in case. By the end of the week, I was having almost entirely normal BMs, so I waited till the last night to take my second enema, to make sure the car ride home wasn't as bad as the ride up. I also avoided spicy foods and salad, which have worsened my symptoms in the past (I couldn't avoid greasy food--there's a lot of fried food in Nova Scotia).
Since getting home, I'd had nothing but COMPLETELY normal BMs. I think the pizza I ate retriggered my symptoms, but they're back under control now. It definitely made my vacation a lot more stressful than it needed to be! Just WORRYING about whether I was getting sick again was really unpleasant, although it did distract me from the stress of my first trip with my partner's family ...
Anyway, tl;dr: My stupid UC was retriggered during a 10 hour car ride at the beginning of my vacation. Although I'd only brought two hydrocortisone enemas with me, I managed my symptoms pretty well and it seems like the mini-flare has ended. Also, be careful about ordering pizza from a new place the night before you have to be in a car for long periods of time.