How do you know if your Colitis is Severe?
When do you join the Severe Club?
How is any doctor to say you have mild colitis if you feel like hell all day? Are you thinking about finding another toilet constantly? How can a colonoscopy determine you have only medium colitis if you are not able to get out of bed in the morning? People usually label their colitis as mild, severe and other terms. I think that is a bunch of crap. To me, colitis sucks no matter who has it, and how severe it is. Whether you are taking 12 craps per day or only 5 bowel movements, that is pretty severe if you asked me. Yes, surely you can take a look at colonoscopy pictures and decide if the inflammation goes all the way up the big colon, or is localized to some particular point and decide if you are a doctor if someone is severe with their UC or not. But, I think you are either sick or not. To me, its more about how bad the disease is affecting your life. Are you able to do the things you want to do, or not. Are you worried about potentially needing to RUN to the toilet if you go to the grocery store or not. Are you never going to the movie theater since you will need 4 bathroom breaks or not. I’ve been on the bad side of this for a while, and all along I considered things pretty severe.
As much as living with colitis in the dark days when my symptoms were right in my face and everyone else’s was horrible, it’s great to know those days are currently over. Feeling and dealing with severe ulcerative colitis symptoms is such a strange mind-bender battle. For everyone who has colitis, we all have probably been wondering when is this ever going to get better? Or, maybe some of us have even started to prepare for dealing with the symptoms for the rest of our life. I definitely started to think the symptoms would never go away and it was something that was here to stay. These feelings are horrible, but real and true for many of us. When colitis starts causing this type of thinking in us, I think you have just joined the Severe Club. Not a bad club to be in either. We are the ones who will get better some day, and see such a huge improvement compared to the “moderate” or “mild” colitis people, it’s just amazing. So let us look on the bright side. We get to see massive improvements, not mild or moderate improvements, that’s the added bonus!
If you are a moderate, mild UC person, I am jealous, don’t let this post fool you.
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.
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