The UC disease is one which makes its sufferers ask all kinds of questions. This is one that most everyone asks themselves from time to time. How long will the bleeding go on for with UC? It’s a great question. A few weeks ago I received an email from a newly diagnosed ulcerative colitis patient asking me these exact words. I replied that I would someday write a post trying to answer his question.
Let me start off with making it clear, I am in no ways a doctor, and this post like most others is based off my experiences and opinions regarding the ulcerative colitis disease. I’ve been diagnosed now for about 18 months, and have a family history of IBD.
Bleeding is one of the most common symptoms in ulcerative colitis patients. For me, it went on for years before I was pushed into the urgent care center in my local town(by my wife) to get my problem fixed. I had no idea what the bleeding was from. But one thing that was for sure, the bleeding had been around for quite some time, and it was acting like it was here to stay. So, as you already guessed, the doctors recommended a colonoscopy to look inside, and I was diagnosed with UC right away. And like many of you, I was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis at the time.
So everyone’s personal bleeding with ulcerative colitis might be very different. Probably no two of us have the exact same bleeding scenarios with our UC disease. But, it is possible for the bleeding to STOP, and that’s what is important.
One thing that is for sure, just because you might be bleeding for months and months, or even years and years, doesn’t mean that you are a lost cause. I don’t count my life as a loss, and I was bleeding for years. And if you are a lucky UC patient, you might just start bleeding for a few days or weeks or months, and then get your disease resolved, lucky you for sure if that’s you.
Can the Bleeding Stop?
The answer is yes. For sure yes. Bleeding from active colitis can 100% for sure stop. It does not always just go on forever and ever. No way!
This is where there is no cut and dry answer. No doctor out there can prescribe a single medication and tell you 100% that your bleeding will stop in 3 days, or 2 weeks. Everyone is different. That is for sure true. In my own theory, there has to be an amount of time for the insides of our digestive system to heal themselves to the point where there are no more open cuts bleeding into our gut. Depending on how severe someone is, I feel is a factor in the healing process. For me, I eventually came out of a very inflamed and severely bloody looking colon, all the way to a colon that was no longer bleeding at all and working pretty darn good. That process from being at it’s worse to working great again was about 20-30 days, and I was able to see positive gains almost from one day to the next. Of course there were a couple of days where things went backwards, but not by much.
If you can do one thing when you are feeling bad symptoms, just imagine your colon and what it looks like inside. And then imagine it being totally inflamed and bleeding like crazy. And then finally imagine that there is a really, REALLY, REALLLLY good chance that it can someday be working properly once again. It’s truly amazing to be feeling so bad, and then a few weeks later to be feeling well again. And to then know that there is no more bleeding with your colon, and it remembered how to work properly afterall. Even after you were starting to think it totally forgot how to operate as a colon.
Finally, if anyone has their own opinions on how to answer the question of how long you bleed when you have UC, please share them. You can email ihaveuc@ihaveuc.com and it can be added as a new post, or you can leave a comment below. Thanks either way. Adam
I started site shortly after being diagnosed in October of 2008 with severe pancolitis (when my whole colon was inflamed).
For me, it was a very rough start with severe symptoms. Getting bounced from medication to medication was not easy or too helpful. But, I did meet another UC’er, changes several parts of my diet, and of course the rest is history.
Leave a comment, ask a question, take advantage of our past experiences here, use the search boxes, they are your friends to0:)
I’ve written 2 different ulcerative colitis ebooks, you can check them out here.
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