What symptoms do you ignore?

Colitis for me is blood, and maybe mucus - no other symptom scares me as much e.g. urgency, frequency, diarrhoea, pain, etc. doesn't really get to me as much.

Bleeding is the one thing I cannot ignore, it freaks me out, drives me insane, drives my anxiety, and increases frequency due to IBS - which makes the even haemorrhoids worse. The anxiety and bleeding is a vicious cycle for me.

So for me, I can't ignore bleeding, even every mild specks on tissue, even the intermittent bleeding that happen every few days with no other symptom - I simply cannot cope.

What freaks you out the most?

I don't ignore any symptoms, they all suck but nothing makes me more worried than anything else in particular, blood doesn't freak me out, I've seen it more often than not over the many years of being sick with IBD.

The symptom I hate the very most out of the ones I have is the frequency (and especially with the IBS constipation because normally when someone is constipated even with IBD they don't "go" 5 or more times a day still) but one of my biggest fears due to the constipation issues I have is ending up with a prolapsed vagina and or rectum...that's what freaks me out the most, right up along side of fistulas, I hate them and they freak me out to the same extent as a possible prolapse happening....I suppose since now knowing what having an RV fistula is like, I will always be freaked out about it re-occurring again especially after finding out that it's only in remission (the tract is still there and always will be now) but when I flare again, it will re-occur again as well.

Those are the things that freak me out about having IBD.

There aren't any symptoms I "ignore" but rather some that I evaluate to determine if I think its directly condition related or caused by other factors.

For instance,

the other day I had D pretty bad, frequency was up, and some pain, yet, it was the day after halloween, I knew I had a crap ton of sugar from treats and apple cider beer (which I've quickly learned that ,while delicious, should probably be avoided), and determined it was 90% related to my activity the night before rather than anything from my UC directly.

Bleeding you should always watch for. I am also anemic (funny enough discovered during intake at the hospital), so I also look for signs such as disorientation, being off balance, etc, if I have noticed any symptoms of UC.

Overall you should just try to know your body the best you can

The worse the urgency is, the more anxiety I have. And I always have some level of urgency. It's like the difference between being able to wait 5 minutes or not wait at all.

When I feel like I can't even leave my house to work any more, I start to freak out. It's already the only thing aside from buying food and filling prescriptions that I leave for. It's unnerving when my doctor's office downplays symptoms like that, because I want to tell them, "This is my job, which provides me with health insurance, which pays for all of the diagnostics and visits you order. Take this seriously."

Urgency is the one symptom that most certainly drives up our anxiety and worry to almost insurmountable levels. Blood is a close second.

Stool consistency is the one symptom I tend to ignore, as I find it to be quite variable in a day-to-day basis, when healing, and even while in remission. Bms get softer then firmer with little rhyme or reason, from my experience.

I too ignore stool consistency. Mine too can change daily depending on what I ate, how much water I drank, stress etc.