In The Beginning ..............

just for the halibut, i'm curiousness about how your affair with our beloved butt bashing started - this was the first line of a recent post > "I was diagnosed with UC about 5 years ago and am currently in my first horrible flare." WAAAAAAAAHT the ?

i myself was in an almost dead horrible flare when off i crawled to the ER and then to the doc, who said, oh my, looks like you have ulcerated colightess (UC) ! seriously, i have not been as sick as i was when first DX'd - but lots of other folks seem to have had as quoted above - i suppose my way was the preferred method, getting smacked from the get-go instead of going to the GI with a little spot of blood on the tissue, being told you have UC, and then after 5 yrs of reading this forum,and saying, " huh, this uc stuff aint that bad - what a bunch of whiners at HW " you get WHACKED !

so which way did y'all roll ..... the fist in the face or the slow ride to hell ?

I had bleeding for several weeks, not a trace of another symptom. I went to my doctor and he did a rectal exam (that sucked) and couldn't tell if it was a hemorrhoid so he recommended a colonoscopy but didnt seem concerned.

I came out of my colonoscopy and was told i had UC (that sucked too). However, I was given a low dosage medication due to me feeling no other symptoms, went home, took my medicine and within a few days i was absolutely fine.

I lived perfectly normal for about 3 months and even joked about UC and how this disease wasnt so bad. Then the flare hit and no more joking. have had the flare ever since.

Hospitalized first.

Late 2014, unexplained pancreatitis, which then required a crap ton of antibiotics. Most likely was having mini-flares in 2015-2016 for about 2 weeks at a time [mostly C, was likely just proctitis at that point], but by the time I was ready to admit that maybe it wasn't hemmies, it would stop each time. 2017 was the year of hell. Started with random hives a few days a week. Then super elevated liver numbers that caused full-body itching for weeks. They thought I had an autoimmune liver disorder, but the biopsy (liver biopsies SUCK) came back negative and they said, hey, you do have fatty liver though, so maybe you should lose weight. By then I had developed chronic hives. Then I started working with a nutritionist and cut out all processed food and started cooking 100% of my meals, and eating tons of delicious whole grains and beans and legumes. Then I started getting the big D, which I thought, eh, it's all the fiber! But then it turned into constant bloody D with urgency. I finally broke down and e-mailed my doctor when I crap bloody D all over myself in the 15 seconds it took to run from my living room to my bathroom. 'Tis history. As I am sure many know, the elevated liver numbers are related to the UC. The GI thinks the hives are also related because it's an inflammatory condition.

In retrospect, I probably should have made some calls in 2015-16, but I had always had issues with constipation & thus hemmies, so I was like, ehh, and I was just working a ton of hours & my insurance sucked and it kept going away. But I bet that if I had dealt with it, I might have been able to keep the disease at the proctitis level instead of letting it spread, and now be in a position where mesalamines don't work.

worse at the beginning. maybe a 1 subsequent occasion. Otherwise "sort of managed" along a very long slide into remission.

Mine came on very slowly. The only initial symptom was diarrhoea 1-2x a day, no blood, no pain, no fevers, no weight loss. It started a day or two after Christmas Day and I expected it to go away. It didn't, so a few weeks later I saw a GP. A few months later, after a colonoscopy and small bowel barium follow-through, I got a Crohn's diagnosis.

Things stayed much the same for the next 5 years - the diarrhoea got slightly worse, that was about it. Everything I read about Crohn's led me to privately question my diagnosis but, very stupidly, I never discussed these doubts with my doctors. I should have done. Anyway about 5 years after my diagnosis, I got hit by a truck with high fevers and feeling really ill. I recovered, but my Crohn's never went back to being mild again after that. Had eight more years of slow but steady deterioration until I ended up having surgery in 2013.

I started out as a mild case of UC, with blood in toilet water being my primary reason for seeking out a diagnosis (limited urgency and only 3 or less bms a day that were formed to mostly formed). I was just barely a proctosigmoiditis patient (extending a few centimeters into the sigmoid colon). The inflammation from the scope report said mild severity. If it wasn't for the blood, I never would've seeked-out a diagnosis. Prior to diagnosis, I was happy, excited to get married to my now wife and out hiking and enjoying the outdoors together with her. The lowest stress period of my life lol.

My worst flare was 25+ bms a day, pain, near-incontinence, you know the works. MY UC spread in extent (whole left side) and was now severe inflammation (my insides looked like raw, ground hamburg meat according to my GI). UC just kind of got worse over time for me. It's been pretty stable since I started remicade, with only a few little blips here-and-there.

UC is like a box of chocolates, you don't know what you're going to get. -Forest Dump

Hi Marcell,

Yes, still doing well. Thanks for asking. I have some issues if you want to call them that, but I'm back to playing tennis, gardening, working and doing it all pain free.

I think I may have started in my early 20's. I noticed I was starting to have very minor streaks of blood on some of my bowel movements. At the time I had no health insurance, and was working full time to afford college.. so I really didn't have money to investigate beyond going to an urgent care; where I was told it was most likely a hemorrhoid. I had a hemorrhoid before, so I was easily convinced that it may have just been something as simple as that.

Fast forward all the way to my 30th birthday. For weeks up to that point I had been experiencing a drastic change in bowel habits.. going 1-2 times a day more than usual, having very odd looking bleeding and mucus. It quickly escalated to loose and watery diarrhea with very mild pain, tenesmus.. mild symptoms. I got a referral to a GI doctor who immediately wanted to do a colonoscopy; and I was officially diagnosed with UC shortly after.

I have been lucky to have always been able to fight through minor flares and keep working while in them.. the worst thing that has happened to me with UC has been my recent battle with C. Diff.. that I am now thankfully winning the war on.

Mine was pretty slow and mild, a little bit of blood, going 2-3 times a day, minor urgency. I was way worse after my first scope in 2013. I don’t know if the prep or the scope did something but it was as though I went from annoying symptoms to I-might-crap-my-pants-so-everyone-move-out-of-my-way post scope. It took a good 6 weeks to feel human again. Then I had a major flare up in 2015, after two close friends passed away, that one was horrible and I had to take pred for 12 weeks. I’ve experienced a couple of “bumps” since then, but nothing major. I should say that in March if 2013 I was out in augmentin for bronchitis and a sinus infection as well as pred for my asthma which hadn’t flared in years. Bleeding started in May of the same year and I was first scoped in June.

Mine also began after a big time stress event. Literally woke up one morning with blood in the stool. I'd previously had several bouts of diverticulitis, although I hadn't had an attack for 18 months after a partial colectomy, but still, I figured that was what was up--and so did my dr. But he ordered a CT scan but in the process of waiting for insurance approval and then finding out I had other bigger insurance issues and my GI was no longer on my plan, it took several weeks and dwindling health. Bleeding continued, urgency was horrid, 10+ BMs a day with multiple accidents. Finally checked into the hospital where they misdiagnosed me with pancreatitis because my lipase or amylase number were so high. They did nothing for me there except put me on a fast and then a liquid diet -- no GI on staff. After 9 days I checked myself out and into another hospital for another 9 days, this time in a low-level ICU because i was in such bad shape. Finally got a diagnosis of UC -- oh joy.

The only symptoms I'd noticed before that morning (March 29, 2016) was I was having some uncontrollable wet farts -- couldn't figure it out but thought it might be the probiotics I was taking. Guess those were my warning signal.

Gotta love UC, right? All those fun symptoms.

When I was in high school I got SUPER drunk one night. Like that special kind of drunk that only a dumb inexperienced high school student can achieve without dying. A few weeks later the blood in the stool started. I was 15 so I ignored it. Then it kept coming. Then the diarrhea started. Then the pain. Told my mom, went to the doctor and had a sigmoidoscopy. Diagnosed by 16. According to my colonoscopies, I've never been in true remission. It's been 22 years. I only go through stages of "almost normal" to my current "take out my darn colon already". But it has just gotten progressively worse over the years. I feel like it was the worst when I was in college, but when I really think about it, I think that was more because I was trying to have a normal college life while pooping my pants running across campus and having to miss lots of classes. It's worse now, but I've learned how to cope and manage life around it so it doesn't seem as bad as then. Funny how that works.