Need Some Advice with my Colitis

Introduction:

I am a single mother of 1 and a full time college student on my way to a bachelors degree. I am 29 years old and have struggled with this disease for 4 years. I am currently in a flare (for about 2 years now :( ) and have not been able to find what will help put me into remission.

Some more about me:

Overall, I have always been pretty health for the most part, always had great blood tests, never really felt the need for anything really (as in multivitamins), ate healthy for the most part (except for being a broke single mother/student, Ive gone through times where I couldn’t afford to eat very much healthy choices or had time to prepare meals). It puzzles me how I could have ended up with this, but after reading a lot over the last few weeks about this condition, I’m pretty certain I ended up with it after taking antibiotics 4 years ago. My sons birth was very hard, he was born with a condition that nearly took his life and he was int he NICU for awhile. Being a single mother, I had to deal with this all on my own, so, understandably so, I was extremely and still am extremely stressed out. During labor, I ended up with a fever, and shortly after his birth, I ended up with bronchitis, I was put on antibiotics and it was during this time, i s tarted noticing blood in stool. I and the nurse automatically took it as hemorrhoids (seeing as I had just given birth) so I was put on some medication, which seemed to do something because the bleeding stopped (for awhile), a few months later, I started to notice the tissue and then it all went on from there..

Symptoms:

Right now, I am in the middle of a flare. I have come to know that dairy and sugar is very bad for me (which makes me so sad because I LOVE dairy, anything dairy :( ) My main symptom is bleeding, a bit of mucus, hardly any diarrhea, but I have to keep up with my fiber intake otherwise i get constipated which in turn results in more bleeding. Its hard for me to say whether I have proctitis or colitis now.

I’m pretty sure I have UC now. I have noticed a change in my symptoms when I am irritated. Ive never really experienced the pain or cramping that Ive read about, but lately when I do eat badly (like with dairy), I cramp a bit and have to keep going to the washroom, and before this, I wouldn’t have diarrhea but now it has been starting to show, along with the blood and tissue.

My Story:

I have had two sigmoidoscopies and both had shown at the time that it was proctitis limited to a few inches of the lower, rectum area. I’m just going ot be honest and say that at the time, the way my doctor talked about it, it didnt seem like that big of a deal, I was given salofalk suppositories, took them for a month and instantly my symptoms were gone (this was after the initial diagnosis), I took this as me being completely healed and cured (I hadn’t taken much time at the time to google anything about it because I took what my doc said about simply keeping up with my fiber intake and drinking alot of fluids, and basically eating healthy). Well, being a single mother and a student, I couldn’t really afford the “healthier” foods that I would have loved to so I have eaten some pretty unhealthy meals because it was what I can afford at the time. Not long after (just about 4 months later), the symptoms came back. I got another sigmoid done and showed that it hadn’t progressed but that it was obviously inflamed again, so… I was given another medication, corti-foam. This instantly worsened the bleeding, I was having crazy symptoms after only 2 doses! (abnormal heart palpitations as well as others), and it scared me! so I stopped the corti-foam only after 2 doses and since then, I have not been able to get the bleeding under control. I am due for a full colonoscopy and am terrified. I just don’t know what to do, what to eat, what I should be taking :( I feel like im starving because Im afraid to eat anything, I have lost 10 lbs in 2 weeks, and I’m already tiny to begin with :(

4 days ago, I started on taking L-glutamine daily, and because I had read somewhere that we should start new supplements slowly, I waited a couple of days and then started on 8 billion acidophilus and bifudus and taking only 1 capsule a day. I also have not had much dairy (1 little easter egg last night), and also have recently gotten into using unrefined virgin coconut oil and extra virgin coconut oil. But, I am confused. Throughout the day, I have pretty much little to no urge to run to the washroom, which to me would be a good thing right? But when I do have a bowel movement (which is pretty much once a day for the normal kind of bm), there’s so much blood! Blood has always been my main symptom! It really scares me to see the red bowl of blood and water in the toilet every morning! Is there a possibility that the supplements I have taken can be making this worse? I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’m making too many changes all at once (eliminating dairy and sugar, changing my diet, starting on supplements all in a span of a couple of weeks) and it could be putting too much much stress on my colon?

Medications:

After spending a couple of weeks browsing this site, commenting here and there, I have noticed that quite a few of you have seemed to do well with getting your UC under control by going the natural/diet route! I have never taken any other meds other than the salofalk suppository (which only worked wonderfully the first time, have tried it a couple of times since, and it suppressed the symptoms only while I’m on it) and the corti-foam (which ill never take again). After doing the corti-foam and reading about other types of medications, I am terrified of them and refuse to have to resort to medication. I have very little knowledge of probiotics/supplements so any type of advice would be helpful.

written by Maria

submitted in the colitis venting area