Am I flaring?

After my diagnosis a few years ago, I went into a remission for years. The disease become more and more something that was well and truly behind me, and I could not identify myself with people who had ulcerative colitis in any way apart from the fact I had an episode of symptoms years back.

This year it flared up again. It has been a great few months of discovery, learning and changing my ideas about what I thought things meant. I didn't want to see myself as somebody with a disease, because I thought that self-image might make me more ill, it seemed unappealing, and I probably wanted to deny the fact that the symptoms could keep coming back. Well, 'it is what it is'. You fight against reality or you embrace and accept the reality of what's happening now.

For me, accepting what's happening now does not mean speculating about the future or being up in your head creating images of you as a sick person who can't do anything, I'm just talking about being honest with yourself about your symptoms, being honest with yourself about what that means (active inflammation) and being honest with yourself about the fact that unchecked inflammation is not good for your body, and if it gets worse (and it very probably will, just based on what tends to happen with untreated ulcerative colitis) it will start to mess with your quality of life.

If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll get the results you keep getting. Ignoring the inflammation isn't going to make it go away. At least try something, and keep trying things until you get it back under control. Experiment with diet, try probiotics, whatever. Preferably, take drugs that have proven efficacy. For a start, if you can tolerate mesalazine and you have a good response to it, I struggle to understand why you wouldn't at least take that regularly, however opposed to taking regular meds you are. It's a very safe drug and can help maintain periods of remission as well as treating active flares.

I think an even better plan would be taking the level of medication that is right for you now, discovered by doing a flexi sig / colonoscopy, preceded by some blood tests and stool samples for an overall insight into what's going on.

None of us want to be ill, so on that level the denial makes sense. But it soons falls apart when you realize that ignoring illness is just going to make it worse, which means at some point you are going to have an enormous wake up call. Who knows, maybe it's what you need.

Am I flaring? Yes, undoubtedly so. Call your gastroenterologist, get a stool test for pathogenic causes (to make sure you don't have cdiff). Time to confess and get on in some medications to treat your flare. It's best to catch flares early and not let them get out of control, so please don't delay.

What medications were you on before you ceased them?

Doctor emailed.. thanks guys. nipping in the bud, or butt is the plan now.. I've had my few weeks of denial

Quite nice to see some regular names from years ago on here too.

Sad to hear of your fathers diagnosis.

Obviously flaring actually. Hope you are getting both oral and rectal mesalamine. Considering your serious condition when originally diagnosed...please don't think about going completely off meds again.
Taper them to maintenance....but we have time to talk about that.

Welcome back,
q

Wow you remembered Old Hat! I fair very well here.. Except their health care (as brilliant as it is) confuses the hell out of me. Which is actually why I stopped as getting hold of the medication when I didnt think I needed it seemed more hassle than it was worth.

I found a box of Mesalazine in date but really need the enemas as they usually fix things. Its actually seems to have got worse in a matter of days so a bit concerning. But ah well, been there, done that, I should know the drill by now.

Sat on the toilet as i type. Ah.. Back to the good old days. 🙄