Symptom or side effect?

Last night I tried my new med regime (checked with my doc first) to reduce asacol to 2 3x a day but add Rowasa at night, with a plan to taper that to twice a week (thanks to reading so many of Quincy's posts which made sense to me).  I have been losing a LOT of hair on just asacol and I hoped this change would help.  In general I've felt fairly good, 3 or so bms/day, with a few days here and there of D.   

But this morning I woke up with stomach pains and have had D several times.  So how do I figure out whether it's a side effect or the beginning of a flare?  How long do you give a change of meds to decide if you're having side effects or symptoms?

I'm a little nervous making the change, messing with something that was working ok.  But then I didn't want to be bald, either, LOL.

Thanks for sharing any feedback you can.   

Hi Quincy,

I've noticed you always ask the good questions.

I stopped the 3 asacol at once, yesterday.  That definitely could have been too much too fast.  As today has gone by this feels more flare-ish than a side effect, so since I only decreased asacol yesterday, I can increase it again tonight and continue the rowasa.  I had been on rowasa during my flare, but stopped it with the doc's approval in March, when he upped asacol to 3 x3/day.   

I'm fairly certain the hair loss is both asacol and/or age.  It's been going on a couple of months, several weeks after I had tapered off the pred.  And I'm pretty sure it's not the omeprazole because I've been on it for years.  My GI doc agreed that asacol can cause hair loss. 

The hair loss didn't start bugging me until last week when my scalp started to itch.  My detective work found that people who are on chemotherapy can have an itchy scalp when they begin losing large amounts of hair and find it easier at that point to shave their heads.  

What you've written about enemas makes sense to me, and I thought they'd be good to have in my "arsenal" in case of a flare. 

No bleeding still, yay!  I need to go to a pretty bland diet for a bit, though, I think.  Thanks for your input.  I'll make this change a little more slowly.