Dripping blood in toilet

I feel like I'm doing a little better as far as healing, I still have D but with semi formed stool but today I had blood dripping from my rectum into the toilet making the toilet semi red/pink and then blood on the tp as well. Can this be normal? Or okay even during the healing process? I know blood on the tp is a little less alarming but when it's dripping like that and turning the water red/pink it's frightening. I haven't seen blood prior to this for weeks (except the passed two day on the tp). Am I backsliding with the disease?

What if it's not during every bowel movement? Could it just be an irritated ulcer?

Are you taking Imuran or 6mp with the Remicade? If not, that is a good idea, and may give you the extra boost.

I think some bleeding as stool gets more formed is typical, but the question is if the inflammation is not being controlled by the Remicade.

Did you end up not doing the pred taper?

Maybe I should add that there is some straining at times. I have some steroid enemas that I haven't taken in a while. Should I start that back up tonight? Thank you guys for your opinions/advice.

Blood is never normal. I doubt you can swap prednisone for something else, you will have to taper off. Remicade seems like it works pretty quickly or it doesn't work. I would definitely want to get on 6mp or imuran quickly if I were you.

ki-wi said...
Sorry to be blunt but your posts are all over the place. I think you need to step back and try to understand what you're dealing with here. It's normal to analyse every single daily event and/or change in great detail and then seek to understand why, what, how but you are going to drive yourself crazy at this rate.

You're in a flare and it's not going to go away overnight. There are varying levels of severity, each indicated by various types of symptoms. You might have times where you go up and down over a course of a number of days and weeks for no apparent reason. This can be discouraging. Unfortunately the disease doesn't follow a logical course.

Dripping blood is bad, but you're not going to die. Give the medication (Remicade) time to work. Keep a diary and stay in regular touch with your doctor. Demand that they pay attention and tweak your meds if necessary. Plan your next few months as if you will be dealing with this for a while. It sucks but it will get better, it will just take a while.

Respected, I'm newer to the flares than most on the forum it seems so I lean on you guys for advice and opinions to help me cope with my symptoms since most have had more trial and error/flares than I have.

the fastest i've ever tapered was 10mg a week. It didn't end my flare sadly. Point being, you could go from 40mg to 0 in 4 weeks at 10mg a week...

Technically, I don't think Imuran makes Remicade more effective, except for these two points:

1. Imuran is a UC treatment and so is Remicade so by taking them both at the same time you are getting two treatments instead of one.

2. Your body can build up antibodies to the Remicade, at which point not only will the Remicade not be working anymore but you will be having an allergic reaction to the Remicade itself. Imuran can help prevent your body from forming antibodies to the Remicade.

Yeah I don't feel like I've gotten worse. The dripping blood turned out to be just during one BM which scared me to make this post. And once in a while I'll see blood on the toilet paper, but more times than none I don't. That's the only change I've noticed but it's not consistent or getting worse., today is day 4 of being off steroids and I still don't have any withdrawal symptoms except loss of appetite. I still have cramps, urgencies and D but I also have times where I push out a firm stool so things are kind of remaining the same I would say. I do notice that my D sometimes is yellow. Almost like pee. Should this be of concern? I've read different things on it but it's hard to figure out which one is related to my situation.

I've been reading your other posts and agree with what kiwi said -- you are all over the place! I also agree with what DB said that you need to look at symptoms week to week rather than day to day. It takes a while to heal and it's not always a continuous improvement. You will have up and down days.

The fast heartbeat you mentioned in one of your other posts could be caused by you suddenly stopping pred. I did a search and that was one of the things that was mentioned. You did something very dangerous. Hopefully it won't cause you any severe problems.

The yellow stool sounds highly unusual and could be a cause for concern if you continue to see it. You should probably check with your doctor. And be prepared to get yelled at for stopping the pred like you did ;)

Quite honestly, I am not sure why you are here asking for advice when you don't follow it anyway. More than one person told you not to stop taking pred suddenly but you did so anyway. I couldn't find a single source online that says it's ok to do what you did and every source cautions against it. You already have enough issues with UC, why play Russian roulette with your treatment? If something doesn't seem to be working with your meds, talk with your doctor. These drugs are serious and not like taking an aspirin when you feel like it. You have a serious disease that requires serious treatment.

I wish you all the best.

One thing I learned from Alice's link that I didn't know before is that while the combo worked better for remission they seemed to find that the AZA could be discontinued after 6 months, apparently not hurting the remission while at the same time cutting serious side effect possibilities. That's something to remember. They didn't really address the antibody thing after discontinuation but maybe they felt that if you hadn't developed antibodies in six months then maybe it is unlikely that you would after that.

You-See - you really can't compare Remicade to IV steroids. Two very different beasts designed to do two very different things. Actually, only one is a beast (the pred).

It does take time for remicade to work vs. steroids can work immediately or take 2-3 days. Unless you have steroid refractory disease in which case pred can prove to be pretty useless.

There is a test to tell how much remicade levels are in your body and I am surprised your GI has not ordered it. I am sorry but I forget the name of the test. But that will tell you if you are metabolizing the remicade too quickly.