Blood or no blood?

There are some slightly graphic descriptions to follow, so just a warning.

If any of you haven't figured it out yet, I have a tendency to be obsessive and am very analytical. So, as I have started bleeding less and less, I have started looking harder and harder for blood so I will "know" when I have stopped bleeding (as much as you can know just by visual evidence). I know it's creepy, but I have also heard some of you talking about digging in your poop too, so, there. Anyway, yes don't tell me it's creepy. I've had my fiancé tell me to "flush the toilet!" and my dad points to plastic utensils and says "they have some of his surgery tools." Haha, everybody laugh at the kid with UC.

OK, here is my question. Sometimes, like this morning, I find liquid that looks like blood. Just like blood. It consists of what looks like pure blood and a little bit of clear liquid in a non-homogeneous mixture. It you isolate that and then put a piece of toilet paper on it to soak it up, it looks like blood and clear liquid mixed together on toilet paper. But, if you smear the mixture on the toilet paper, there is almost no trace of red at all. You would almost swear there had been no blood whatsoever. But if you had seen the liquid before it was soaked up, you would have sworn it was blood. Has anyone ever tried or noticed anything like this? I have pictures to show my GI and I'm sure he will question the fact that the red blob is really the thing smeared in the following pic.

Anyway, it does happen sometimes after I have had tomatoes or even red peppers. This morning, for instance, there were tomato chunks from a meal Sunday night. I try to tell myself maybe it's just liquid tomato. But, while I can see the red tomato skins and red chunks making it through unmolested, I can’t see pure red liquid doing the same.

Lastly, please don't go off thinking "This dude is insane." I really am quite down to earth apart from this incessant need to quantify my progression/regression with UC.

Calling me insane?

That's just wrong.

Haha, couldn't resist that either.

I, too, go a little nuts looking for blood, and chocolate often puts forth a pinkish blood-like liquid, in addition to the foods you mentioned.
I try to remind myself that a little blood is not something to get upset about if the rest of the symptoms are improving. As long as the general trend of symptoms is for the better, that is positive progress.

This disease makes us all care about things the rest of the population tends not to think about. Instead of being "nuts" I see us all as keenly self-aware.....