How long does it take rectal inflammation to fully heal?

I've heard that the inflammation in the rectum is one of the hardest areas to get into remission. How long did it take you to get that area 100% healed? What meds did you use?

I really have no idea when my rectum fully healed, or if it really is fully healed; I've only had one scope so far, which was the scope that diagnosed me, and unless you have a scope, there's no way to know if it's fully healed. As to getting into remission, I used Asacol (12/day), mesalamine enemas (nightly), and a fairly short course of pred. I almost got into remission w/o the pred, but I caught a tummy bug that stirred everything up again, and needed to get well ASAP for an interview, so went on pred.

      I had ulcerative proctitis for twelve years.  It stopped responding to treatment.....6MP, Colazal, Remicade, Humira, rectal meds....not to mention that dreaded prednisone on which I became dependent.  Like Suebear, I resorted to surgery.  Had a total colectomy with end ileostomy on June 28th.  My GI doctor said proctitis is much more resistant to meds than UC...sad that they had to remove my entire colon , as I only had mild diverticulosis in there.  Oh well.

I've had inflammation mostly in the rectum, but creeping up as high as about 12 inches when I was trying to taper off steroid enemas... to quickly I now think. The reason I know how high it got is I had a flex sig after my symptoms re-flared when I was tapering.

I have been fighting it for about 9 months now.

The weird thing is, my symptoms have dramatically improved over the last month or so. I had some salofalk tablets in my cupboard that I wanted to use up so I started mixing in a few with my asacols. Within a few days, i felt way better. Urgency disappeared, swelling in the rectum went away, as did the pain when passing stool, tenesmus gone, mucous gone, blood gone, and no more accidents. I am now able to sleep in until 8 or 9 am on the weekends without having to rush to the bathroom. Before I was up at 6 or so with urgency.

The reason I switched from Salofalk tabs to asacol was because I am living in the US and salofalk tabs are not available here, so I had to buy them from Canada and they are bloody expensive ($700 for a 3 month supply).

I bit the bullet and have ordered more from a Canadian pharmacy, and I hope they are the reason I am feeling so much better. Sometimes playing around with different forms of mesalamine and 5 ASAs can give you relief, even when most of your problems are lower down.

I don't know that I healed 100% (although I felt great from last spring until just recently - and even now my new mini flare seems to be under control), but it took me 8 weeks of nightly enemas and 4x lialda to get from severe left sided inflamation (15-20 bathroom trips per day) back to once a day, normal BMs.