How do you gauge your UC?

Hi everyone- how do you all decide how good/bad you're doing on a day-to-day basis? Is it # of bm's,  consistency of bm's, ability to sleep thru the night, presence of blood, presence of gas/leakage, urgency? How?!?!? Reason I ask is because I always seem to go a lot- regardless of what I've been eating. It's always anywhere from 5-8 bm's a day, soft but entirely formed. I haven't had diarrhea in god knows how long (aside from recent GI bug). I have urgency in the mornings, but then it subsides. 90% of my bm's are done within the first 3 hours of waking also. I see blood every few days, not a lot, & with no regularity or rhythym- sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. I generally sleep thru the nights. I believe my GI told me once the consistency of your stools was a good indicator of how your UC is. And the presence of blood. I personally feel I'm doing pretty well these days, even though I'm still going a lot, with urgency, & occasional bleeding. I know things aren't right, but I don't think they're too wrong either. How do you all gauge your progress, or lack of?

I don't know, I guess it's subjective. If you feel you have a pretty good quality of life with your UC as it is, it's not interfering too much etc., than that might be enough. We are new to this (my child has UC, diagnosed last summer) but I'm still frightened of everything - the simmering inflammation and the damage it could cause, cancer, it spreading to joints etc etc. But the doctor of oriental medicine who's treating her now is trying to convince me that inflammation is a normal process and as long as she's not in pain, chained to the toilet, losing a lot of blood, that's good and that we can treat the inflammation slowly. Maybe if you feel okay you can test out slippery elm, psyllium seed etc to see improves your UC even more?

For me personally, it's not about the number of bm's or consistancy but rather how I feel. If I feel good then I say that I am good even if I have a bit of bleeding. If I start feeling like crap, have more bleeding and left sided pain then I would say I am doing bad.

I think I just gauge it by how well I'm able to get on with my normal life. If I'm too tired, or in the bathroom too much, etc. then it's a bad day. If it doesn't keep me from doing things, I generally don't even think about it.

Eva I noticed you said if you see blood sometimes you dont pursue..or something along those lines..
but im wondering..if one is always a bit blood, or a bit urgent..or a bit something else..arent we always on the verge of a flare? isnt the constant inflammed state not good for the disease or risk of cancer??

Oh I know I'm in a constant state of low-level inflammation, & anytime I get a scope it shows active disease. And yes, I do also know that that particular type of chronic, long-term inflammation increases one's cancer risk more than someone who has a bang-up flare every other year or so, then goes into true remission. But I chose not to have surgery at this point, despite the cancer risk. I have definitely looked into surgery Christine- I had a proctocolectomy scheduled for about this time 2 years ago. After upping my Remicade dose to the max, & shortening the duration between infusions, I went into a remission decent enough to cancel the surgery. But, I have to say, after meeting the surgeon, discussing the procedure, & doing research, I'm ok with it if it comes to that. If I go into a full-out flare again, I won't stick this one out! But so far, I've been able to work, go out, etc. without too much impact. Sooo... I'm ok for now. The high Imuran dose doesn't bother me- when I first started it, at 100mgs, I was groggy, spacy, etc. I switched it to once a day at bedtime, which took care of that. Then when we upped the dose another 50mgs, it just didn't seem to hit me much. Maybe a little more tiredness for amonth or so, but nothing bad. And my WBC is always fairly decent. Lucky me!

Yes. The consistency of my stools is a good indication of how I'm doing. If my stools are perfectly normal, then I know I'm doing okay. Urgency is also a good indicator. If I'm experiencing any urgency, then I'm flaring. And then I look for blood. If there is blood, then I'm definitely flaring. With this last mini-flare, I thought that perhaps some of the blood could be hemorrhoids-related, because I was having bright red blood that was totally separate from the poo. It turned out that all of the blood was flare-related. I just happened to have a very small flare at the very bottom of my rectum; so the blood emulated blood from hemmies.