Is enema or suppository necessary to maintain remission?

I often can keep UC in remission for a couple of months without any symptoms, and my doctor tries to use only oral medicine (5-ASA) and does not want me to use enema/suppository unless necessary. I wonder how many of you find it necessary to use enema/suppository when taking oral medicine? thanks.

But for me personally, I stay on a maintenance enema schedule.  I have never gone completely off them but I know when I tapered too quickly and spaced them too far apart I started to flare.  So I think for me that yes, I need a regular maintenance schedule for enemas.

Is it a pattern for you?  Like when you've been off the rectal meds for awhile you begin to flare?  You say that you can be in remission for a few months then flare...is that after going of the rectals?  I would say that makes it seem that you need to stay on them and figure out a maintenance schedule for yourself.

I don't understand why docs want to make you come off something that's working.  The goal is long term remission, not a few months at a time.

Best of luck, keep us posted!

Good question and I always wonder this myself.  In the past I have not used rowasa as a maintenence drug and maintained years of remission, but my luck seems to have run out in recent years.  the past 3 years have been off and on flares, more on that off, and everytime a few months passes with no rectals I seem to slide back into a mild flare.  So based on me and my colon, I am going to keep the rowasa in for now.  how i manage that is, i will be feeling fantastic and forget to do the rowasa.  then i might see a trace of blood and i will do a rowasa more freq until all is well again.  to be fair, i can almost pinpoint the blood traces once i have reintroduced coffee back into my life.  right now i am experimenting with almond milk creamer instead of the flavored creamers i love (loaded with sugars and careegenen 2 things that i am almost positive bother me) to see if its the creamer and not the coffee that is bringing on traces of blood.  as you can see i love my coffee and want to make 100% sure that it is my trigger before eliminating it.  The longer i have this disease the more i believe that you have to listen to your body, and your colon, it will tell you what is what!  There is no textbook answer for this disease, and my colon doesnt read the textbook anyway, it just does what it wants!  so my advice its to try what works for you

Post Edited (i_love_coffee) : 5/26/2011 9:02:26 AM (GMT-6)

Dsm4life, I am jealous! I  too am sipping coffee and almond milk creamer right now, cross your fingers for me that ii will have no blood!

also wanted to add, that my uc is weird, first off, I have it throughout my colon, but it skips around, for years they thought i had crohns.  during one of my mild flareups i was in the gi's office and she did a flexs sig on the fly to see what was going on, and my rectum looked fantastic, but i still had mild inflammation a bit higher up in the sigmoid.  so i know alot of people here say the rectum was the last to heal for them, was not the case for me.  also, due to where my inflammtion still lingered, canasa would not help at that point. 

anyone know how far up rowasa reaches in the colon?  now i am kind of curious.