Hi friends. In two days time a whole year will have passed since I started the infusions with my second donor. Somehow it feels much much longer than a year. Perhaps because there have been so many ups and downs throughout these last 12 months. I feel it is a good time to look back now and review the situation and evaluate the effects of this therapy on my condition. I'm most encouraged by Pete's last post and can be more in-touch with a more optimistic view of the process I've been through. I would like to share my inner-debate with the ones who are not too tired by now of this very long thread.
For relatively long time now, as long as I'm careful with what I eat, I have normal BMs once or twice a day. So for me this is a great achievement! I usually divide the history of my UC to two parts: the first 12 years (from 2000 upon a course of antibiotics), when I could more or less control the symptoms with diet, and the 3-4 years that followed them, when the there was an immediate nasty shift, the symptoms became much more severe and my diet had to be even more restricted. From the onset I could not have anything at all of the animals apart from chicken and eggs, and couldn't have gluten, dairy, yeast, dry beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, millet, and corn. Then, after the initial 12 years, I also couldn't have fresh fruit and vegetables, and even when that was kept strictly there were many times when the disease had its upper hand on me. Throughout the years I also started to feel other organs inflamed, these are the knees, the lower back, the left thigh, and the sinuses and these of course caused a general fatigue.
Now, after the long therapy there is an obvious significant improvement and I again can have fresh vegetables and a small amount of fruit. The colonial symptoms are much less severe. In fact the 'wrong' food seems to have less effect on the colon and more on the rest of the body. For example, during the beginning of this week I had lots of gluten. As a result I felt a bit discomfort from the gut and the stool became gradually softer, and today it's back to normal without any intervention. This reminds me of what Briggs had experienced with FTs. Many of you know the disaster that a tiny piece of bread can cause and the long time it takes for the body to recover from it. This was my situation for many years of life with UC without medication. However, the gluten I ate this week did have a bad effect on other areas and I suffered from migraines stemming from the sinuses, until the body was clean off gluten (I drunk lots of water in order to speed up the process). In general my knees are not back to what they used to be prior to the onset of UC but this problem could do with other dispositions or, on the optimistic side, could take longer to heal.
So I think I will soon give myself the greatest 50th birthday present, a place in the success list, which I created so long ago, with the hope to be in it one day. Unfortunately, my other wish, to give-up Healing Well all together upon entering the success list, cannot be fulfilled. I will carry on managing the lists and I still hope one day in the near future to declare myself as CURED and to manage to find someone else on this board to continue with this work.
Lastly, there are two people on the 'In Progress' list who started the FTs at the end of 2014, twiggs and Nenuss. I remember Nenuss was a kind aunt-donor of a young man who was in a very bad state and experienced an immediate relief upon the initial FTs. We've not heard from both of them for a long time now. Twiggs and Nenuss, if you happen to read this post please let us know how your progress went and advise us on what should appear next to your entries in the list. I would love to see you taking the two next places in the good list even if it means that mine will have to be number 13!
Pete, I'm sending you a hug back and thank you so much for taking your time to read through my posts and your great empathy. I think you were very lucky to be blessed with the ability to predict a possible progress of UC through the experiences of others and through logical thinking (I'm afraid many of us have lost the latter to UC). This probably helped you in choosing the least desirable treatment when dealing with a relatively young disease. In my opinion, this attribute of yours has saved you many years of misery.
Wishing all of you great success with FTs
Sharron
Post Edited (sharron19) : 7/31/2016 7:12:21 AM (GMT-6)