New and clueless, can anyone help me out?

Hello

I'm 20 and I've just recently been prescribed Salofalk suppositries.

Just a little bit of background.. The first time I went to the docs with my symptoms (blood and mucus in my stool, awful stomach pains, wind, constant diarrhea) the doctor said I probably had piles and sent me away with a pile foam.

After obviously not improving, I went back and was referred (by a much better doctor!) to hospital for a sigmoidoscopy. I recently got the letter back saying that they'd found inflammation.

So yesterday I got a call from the receptionist at the doctors saying that they had received a letter from the hospital and that my prescription was ready for me to pick up from my pharmacy and that was that.

Basically I feel completely clueless about what is wrong with me and how long I need to use this medication for and how severe it is etc etc. No-one has talked this through with me. I only knew to come here for advice after googling the name of the medication that has been prescribed to me and seeing what condition it is used to treat.



Any advice on where to go from here guys? sorry if I sound completely stupid I'm just in a flux, worrying myself and everything.

Another question if anyone can advise me is could I get this medication (mesalazine) in another form like a foam or oral tablet as I hate the thought of putting anything there with the pain and all.

Thankyou so much!

I'm in England and I don't have a GI doctor. I have a local doctors surgery where you just get an appointment with whichever doctor has appointments available.

Do you think I could make an appointment to ask what is happening?

You can get to see a GI on the NHS. You can search this forum for "NHS" and see what people have posted on this. You can start a new thread (or edit the title of this one and indicate that you want advice on how to manage this in the NHS) and you will get a lot of great suggestions.

I would like to also say welcome.

And! You need a complete colonoscopy. A sigmoidoscopy is not enough for a good diagnosis. There could be inflammation higher in the colon that would indicate you need oral meds in addition to the rectal meds.

Finally - you are going to have to bite the bullet, so to speak, and get used to putting medicine in your bum. It is absolutely the best way to treat inflammation in the rectum.

Beeee, I am not in the UK so I do not know how to answer your question about paying for a GI. I believe that you can schedule an appointment with a consultant without having to go private. Please ask the forum for more knowledgable assistance on this.

And here's some advice on rectal meds and boyfriends - while this may remove some of the spontanaity from your love life, you can always plan to insert the suppository AFTER any night-time action.

Also..... do as much of your own resurch as you can - this is a great place to learn but remember everyone is different and you may need to try a few different things (not all at the same time).

If you can get a good treatment plan that works for you it does get better - remeber to be patient as it can take time.

Hang in there

I'm from the UK. No, you don't have to pay to see a GI, but you do have to get a GP to refer you. Make an appointment with the doctor who referred you to the hospital for a sigmoidoscopy, tell him what happened, and that you want a referral to a GI.

You don't have to ask if it's possible; you should have been referred to a specialist already. Here is an NHS 'Map of Medicine' for Ulcerative Colitis. It's basically a flow chart of treatment, showing the sequence of steps all the way from suspected UC through to surgery (don't worry, surgery will probably never happen! It is reserved for severe cases.)

healthguides.mapofmedicine.com/choices/map/ulcerative_colitis1.html

I don't know if that helps or not, to see the process by which UC is meant to be investigated, diagnosed and treated, but hopefully it does.

One last suggestion from me. Try to pick a GP who isn't too useless and whom you like, and stick to seeing only that GP. Even if you have to wait longer for appointments, you can specify to see the same GP every time. (The same goes for hospital consultants too by the way, although hospitals would probably rather die than tell their patients this.)

Good luck.