UC and Joint Pain

I've been a long time reader, but haven't posted much. I've had some interesting things happening the past few months that I thought I'd share.

Back story. I was diagnosed in '97 with pancolitis. I've been a Type 1 diabetic since childhood and found out pretty quick that prednisone was out of the question. Made my blood sugar skyrocket, so I've only used Asacol or Lialda. I've had a total of 9 scopes since then. Each time my colon showed some healing. The last scope was a month ago and only my rectum was showing inflammation.

I remember the joint pain that I experienced before I was diagnosed with UC. I dealt with the joint pain for some time before I finally figured out that it was UC causing the pain. After being diagnosed I started taking Asacol, switched to Lialda a few years ago, and I never had any major issues with my joints again.

Well, a few weeks ago the joint pain came back. It's been sixteen years without any joint pain. Funny thing is, the slight cramps that have always been present in my gut are gone. My gut, after 16 years, actually feels normal since my joints starting hurting again.

Seems weird that the inflammation is moving around. It moves from my wrist to my ankle to my knee. Never two places at once. As far as I can tell, as long as it's in my joints I don't feel it in my gut. Kinda feels like I've gone full circle, and it only took 16 years to do it...

A side note. For those of you that watch "The Walking Dead" do you remember when Hershel was bitten on the lower leg by a Zombie? They ended up chopping off his leg to keep the infection from spreading. I wonder if I chopped off my lower leg when the inflammation was in my ankle would I cure myself.

!!!I'M KIDDING OF COURSE!!!

Hey rogo, how great that you've been able to maintain your remission (mostly) with just oral meds. My best advice to you is to use rectal meds, too. These are really the only way you're ever going to get rid of the inflammation in the rectum. The oral meds just won't get there.

I started taking sulfazine a few years ago to help with joint pain. about 25% of people with IBD have joint pain associated with their disease. Most GIs and rheumatologists think that active inflammation in the gut causes the joint pain, so the most common strategy is to get the gut into remission. Sulfazine turns out to be good at both treating gut inflammation AND relieving joint pain (it's an old arthritis med). It has more side effects than most of the mesalamine-type meds, though, so you might want to try harder to just get rid of all of your gut inflammation (thus the recommendation for rectal meds) before going on sulfazine.

Rectal mesalamine enemas are the key to your healing my friend!

I do experience the same thing. Last week it was in my left wrist. This week it's in my right ankle. Once it ends in one spot it starts in another. Never 2 places at the same time. I do have minimal swelling but no redness.

The thing that caught my attention was the pain in my gut which has always been present at different levels is gone. It's like this pocket of inflammation got bored in my colon after 16 years and decided to take a trip with stops on it's way. I'm thinking it'll make it's way home soon. Sometimes this disease really throws me for a loop. I thought dealing with Type 1 Diabetes was difficult, but this is way worse. If I had the choice to get rid of one it would definitely be UC.