Overview:
My Colitis Story:
I’m 25 years old and my names Gene. My wife and I moved from Southern Cali up to Sacramento to continue our education to become teachers. We’ve been up here for over a year now, and over the course of the first six months up here (Newly-Weds, New town, and searching for new jobs= Excitement AND HIGH STRESS) I started to notice the scary mucous laden bloody stool, but didn’t mention anything, figuring it would just go away on its own. Well, as we all know, it didn’t. I didn’t/don’t have health insurance, so I wanted to go to the doctor, but couldn’t afford it. I would also like to mention I found a commission based job up here that was highly stressful, I no longer work there after my diagnosis. Anyways, after six months of ruling out what it might be, I finally got a referral to a GI. I went in and was set up for a colo-scopy. Turned out, that my ENTIRE colon was ulcerated and was administered into the hospital because I lost almost 30 pounds (I’m a tall, lanky dude with not much meat on my bones to begin with). After being released, they put me on 80 mg of Prednisone and 800mg of asacol in the morning and 800 mg at night. Thankfully I worked the system as much as possible to get my $25,000 medical bills dropped down to $2,500……….. WHEW, I couldn’t tell you how overjoyed I was to hear that. (anyone in El Dorado County reading this can get the same charity care that I got without insurance.) I’m no longer taking steroids, just the asacol generic mesalamine from canadadrugs.com, its WAY WAY cheaper if you don’t have insurance. For the joint pain the doctor prescribed me Norco, which is a highly addictive opiate derived pain medication. Well, I’ve been known to party and I irresponsibly developed an addiction to these pills.
I was wondering though, Is there any benefit to taking these?
I know opiates make you constipated. I kicked them cold turkey three weeks ago and I’ve noticed more diarrhea lately, no blood thankfully, but for instance, if I eat a good leafy green salad at night, the next morning its right outta me almost in original form. Two months ago I had another colo-scopy and it was all healed except for in the rectum area, which was another great relief, but I’m beginning to think these norco’s were the devil’s guise, not any help.
Are there any other UC’ers out there that dealt with this? If so, PLEASE do share.
The Pendulum of UC, How to deal? Norco prescribed struggles, and questions/thoughts.
