Remission – Finally

Meet Marko:

Hey guys, I’m Marko from Romania and I had my story posted here back in February – https://www.ihaveuc.com/i-have-ulcerative-colitis-since-2009-and-this-is-my-story/ . Below is a short summary of my previous post if you don’t want to read it entirely.

Marko’s Symptoms:

None

Marko’s Colitis Story:

This is an update.

At the time (Feb. 2012) I wasn’t doing bad, but I didn’t feel 100% awesome. Now I do. But before I get to the point of this, I just want to do a little recap of my disease: diagnosed in ’09, 7 cm of inflammation. Nothing worked, the bleeding never stopped, despite my poop being solid and having no other symptoms. 2011 – 70 cm inflammation. Was on Prednisone (it gave me a bad rash, my face, chest and back were full of some sort of nasty pimples/zits + the famous moon-face), mesalazine (Salofalk, Pentasa, Asacol) and when all hope was lost, Remicade, which finally gave my life back again. For one summer. In the autumn the symptoms came back, two weeks after my last Remi infusion, so I said ok, enough with the toxic meds already, I’ll try SCD. That worked, combined with 1 Salofalk enema every other day, with the intention to gradually reduce the dosage. This was December 2011. Then, March 2012 came, and I had the worst flare-up EVER. It was the firs t time my left side hurt so bad I thought I was going to die. I have no idea why that happened, I never cheated while on SCD and my lifestyle was the same. I managed the flare-up with daily Salofalk enemas, 6×500 mg salofalk pills/day, probiotics, omega 3 fish oil, weekly massage, tons of sleep AND the SCD intro diet + some boiled veggies for about 2 weeks.

Around May I was feeling decent, but I had terrible gas and diarrhea. Two times/day on the can isn’t bad, but the stool was so liquid I knew something was not okay. And the worst part, every single time, around 20 seconds before eliminating gas, I had very strong stomach pains. As I mentioned, they only lasted about 20 seconds, but damn they were severe. And this happened around 20 times/day, so you can imagine my life – everything is ok, then suddenly your stomach starts hurting like hell, at which point you know you’ll fart. And it will smell bad. So yeah, I started to not care about anything, thus I started cheating. Fast food, croissants, fries and all that crap. No sodas or alcohol though. And guess what, after day one of fast-food the pains were less powerful. I didn’t understand this at all back then and I don’t get it no either. But after a few weeks of SCD at home and fast-food around 3 times/week when I went out, the pains slowly went away. Two things didn’t change though: diarrhea and horribly smelling gas. So what did I do? I thought about parasites. Did the tests, and voila, giardia-lamblia. Got the treatment, and for a month and a half now I’m in the kind of remission I adore: 1 solid stool/day, gas that doesn’t smell and in normal quantities. Current meds: 1 Salofalk enema/week for maintenance, 1 Salofalk (mesalazine) 500 mg pill/day, omega 3 fish oil, a good probiotic (50 billion bugs/pill), aloe-vera organic juice and some anti-colitis tea. I drink vodka on weekends (not too much, haha); I eat fast food on weekends. I eat nachos. I have fun, I dance. No sodas, popcorn, chocolate or foods rich in sugar and no beer of course. On weekdays though, I stick to SCD 100%; no alcohol or any other thing that may be harmful. And against all odds, I feel GREAT. In September I’ll have a colonoscopy to see how the tissue is doing though.
“The kind of remission I adore” may sound silly to some. I can say that this is full remission, the one only Remicade was able to provide for me. Since then, whenever I was in a so called-remission, it was never 100%. I always had small amounts of blood and diarrhea every now and then. Nothing significant, but they were there. And now they aren’t.

All in all, I’m super-happy that I can go backpacking with my friends, go to the seaside and travel around Europe without too many worries.

Where I’d Like to be in 1 year:

Exactly where I am now.

Medications that Worked for my Colitis:

Three things worked for me: Remicade, Salofalk enemas and SCD (in a very strange way).

written by Marko

submitted in the Colitis venting area
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Marko

I’m Marko, 22 yo male from Romania (Eastern Europe, hihi). Have colitis since October 2009 and am currently on the SCD and feel great, almost symptom free.