“I Have What?”

Introduction:

My name is Kristine. I’m an average 30 year old new mom and wife. I live in Milton Ontario Canada. I enjoy camping, running, working out, hiking, snowboarding, mountain biking and simply being around people I love. I have just given birth two weeks ago to my first child-healthy baby boy.
I was diagnosed 4 days ago with ulcerative colitis-not what I was expecting after having a baby!

My Colitis Symptoms:

I have terrible diarrhea, blood that was filling the toilet and gas that makes even the grossest public bathroom seem to smell clean. I experience cramps that would make Chuck Norris double over and back pain that seems to linger forever. I was becoming extremely tired and looked like hell. I lost 30 pounds in about 12 days which is awesome because I just had a baby, but not so awesome because it was not in a healthy way-crapping out all your food almost as soon as it hits your stomach is not a great way to lose the baby weight. I had no appetite and I was beginning to feel afraid to eat because of what was coming out of the other end.

My Story:

I have just given birth to my beautiful baby boy about two weeks ago. 3 days after, I started experiencing bouts of diarrhea, cramping and some blood. I mentioned this to my family doc at my post delivery visit but she said it was normal after having a baby since your body is going though so many changes. Ok, I’ll take her word for it. A couple days go by and the pooing is getting more frequent, painful and bloody.

I mean I was starting to fill the toilet with blood.

Not to mention going poo anywhere from 10-30+ times a day. I really started to worry so I made another appointment to see my family doc. I explained everything to her-again, I was told it was likely hemorrhoids and to use some over the counter product to get it under control. Another couple days go by and now I’m in serious pain, pooing almost uncontrollably, bleeding like crazy and scared as hell! I saw her again and this time I was crying and freaking out about the amount of blood and visits to the toilet I was making in a day. I told her no way is this normal or is it hemorrhoids! She decided to take a peek at my backside-she instantly stood straight up and said “go to the ER right now”. This really freaked me out. So I called my husband at work, he came right home and took me to the hospital. 2 hours after being in the hospital, I was told I would be having a series of Xrays done to get a better idea of what was happening inside my body. Once the results were in, I was told my entire bowel looked inflamed and need to have a colonoscopy done asap.

My head was spinning! I couldn’t believe this was happening. I just wanted to be at home with my husband and baby. Anyway, I was admitted to the hospital for the night, started an awful treatment of laxitives to clean me out (funny enough I thought I was cleaned out from all the pooing). Bright and early the next day I had the colonoscopy. I was so nervous about what was going to be found. Soon after, the GI doctor came to visit me and told me I had UC and 100% of my bowel was severely infected. I was shocked but relieved at the same time that they knew what was happening to my body. I’ve spent the last 4 days in the hospital recovering and started taking the medication to help ease the pain, swelling and bleeding. It’s been a roller coaster these last few days. I think I’m more upset being away from my husband and new born than finding out I have this nasty disease.

I’m happy I have found this web site-it’s made me feel not so alone and scared. It’s comforting to know that there are so many other people who live with this disease and are living fairly normal lives, doing things they’ve always loved doing. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research the last few days, and to me it seems like a lot of success is being on a good diet, staying stress free and most importantly thinking positive. I’m going t o have to work on the staying positive, but I know once I start to get a handle on this, it will get better.

I’m afraid to go off the steroids and flare up again. I really hope my insides get better with diet before I’m off them.

Where I’d like to be in 1 year:

Hopefully in remission and living somewhat of a normal life with UC. Not afraid of having some kind of embarrassing accident and not always planning the closest route to a bathroom. I hope I can manage UC mainly with diet and not have to rely on drugs (although they seem to be helping me out at the moment). I want to be a positive roll model for my son, and be strong for him.

Colitis Medications:

40 mg/day prednisone (will be tapering for the next 2-3 months)
mesalamine (not sure of the amount)
Calcium supplement
Vitamin D supplemental
Multi vitamin
Iron

written by Kristine

submitted in the colitis venting area
—
—