As I lie here

Glad you gave them a go! I agree that they do help so much. I told my doctor that if he ever had patients who were hesitant to use them, to call me because they really work. I would use one every day for the rest of my life if that's what it takes to feel like a normal person.

I'm very grateful that I have somewhere to go to talk about poop and rectal bleeding too! Reading all the posts here has normalized the idea of forever medication and daily enemas. I'll be less alarmed now if and when my doctor prescribes this to me.

My wife calls the rowasa enemas "whipped cream" as that's what she says it sounds like when I squeeze the excess air out of that spill-proof valve in the enema (don't forget your whipped cream dear!). I guess it's similar to the sound of spraying whipped cream from a pressurized can from the fridge haha.

Try and laugh a little, it helps

some of us warm them under water or between our hands so they aren't too cold. I never had mine sound like whipped cream, but I use more whipped cream than anyone on the planet i'd imagine - not the enema type, the kind you eat. It's one of the great joys...

If there's one certainty with UC then that's inconsistency day-to-day! We all do have bad days that drive us absolutely mad. Remind yourself it's just one day and you need a series of days to tell you if you're improving, worsening, or staying the same.

What you take for medications during a flare and during a remission varies a lot. Do you know if you have proctitis (rectum only involvement), proctosigmoiditis (left side involvement), or pancolitis (whole large intestine involvement)? As that will also dictate what you should take in a remission. Proctitis patients can use just rectal-route whether that's a suppository or enema. Everyone else should be rectal-route and oral-route even during a remission but at lower dosage (typically 2,400mgs oral and 4,000mg enema twice a week).

Whether pentasa or asacol is better *shrug* most pharmacists or doctors would say they are the same/equivalent. Anecdotally here, some say one medication is better for them then another. There are slight differences in the chemical coating between them that impacts initial release point and dispersal rate of the medication, so it's possible there's slight differences in effectiveness. All you can do is try and then switch back if you're consistently worse on asacol.

You cannot be in a remission if there is still active inflammation. You can have areas of active inflammation and areas of inactive inflammation, and that's what your doctor meant. A flare can involve just the rectum, or it can extend further. It's inactive inflammation when you've had it there before but don't now.

Flexible-sigmoidoscopy is easy compared to a colonoscopy. Highly recommended for proctosigmoiditis patients like you and I, as the scope sees all of our active disease; no need to go further.

I'll do this scope & then he said if it looks to have progesssed further we'll need to do a full one. I hate the prep for colonoscopy so happy to give this a go.

Enemas are 1g.

I was doing colifoam steroid foam for a few weeks at night before starting the Pentasa enemas

Off the iron tablets this week & back to feeling sooooo tired. But I think they weren't helping for the inconsistency & therefore anxiousness

I think I had full blood work done & that's where the low iron read cane from but will check again with my doc.

I felt way better on the iron tabs but had to go off them for the breath tests & now the sigmoid scope anyway plus they were almost making me constipated some days I thought this might be a good thing but it just made it really unpredictable like I'd just go a little bit a couple of days then it'd all hit every few days. There's no winning sometimes!