Intro

I'm a 33 years old guy based in London, UK and on 23rd April 2015 I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. I'll never know how I got it, it’s probably too expensive to find an exact answer. I'll spare you all the details about the problems I had with the NHS and that I had to go private etc etc, will leave that for another post maybe, and I'll get straight to the point.

Why this blog? Simple. Because when I looked around for information about Ulcerative Colitis, I did find lots of useful and informative sites, but not many blog-like sites, so somewhere I could read the experience of one person, see how the illness evolves. So after a bit of a mental debate with myself, I decided that it was a good idea to put everything on the net, who knows, somebody might benefit from this information. I'll try to post an update every week.

I'm not a physician, and therefore I'm not here to offer advices to anybody: this is merely a sequence of events and a description of the symptoms and the course of my illness, that's all, it's not gospel.

Find out more information about me and my symptoms here.

Sunday 12 July 2015

Setback

So, on Thursday 9th July I saw the gastroenterologist for a check up.

He was happy that I was feeling better and he said that it would be good to try to reduce the dosage of pentasa, from 4g a day to 2 and see what happens. He also performed a sigmoidoscopy (it was one of the most uncomfortable things ever I have to say, but hey) and he said that my colon looks better and that I will get the results in about a week time.

I told him I was taking VSL#3 and he had no objections to it, but when he asked me whether it was helping, I told him that I have absolutely no evidence of that.

So, today is my second day at half dose of mesalazine, and guess what? I've begun to feel bad again. My legs feel again warm and really tired and heavy, (very bad sign as this is exactly how I've been feeling during the flare-up) but most worryingly, the mucus is back (and quite a bit) . My stools are also a bit loose and very very sticky. So, it looks like my remission didn't last that long after all!

I've decided that tomorrow I'll book an appointment with the GP and I'll give this half dose a try anyway for about a week - which is probably the time it will take me to see my GP - and take it from there, rather than starting to take 4g again straightaway (just in case). It's funny how long it takes you to go into remission and how quickly you destroy all the progress you've made. Incredible.

Also, the consultant said (again) that I may need to consider enema - I know I mentioned this before - as this is the best way to deal with UC: so I'll mention this to the GP and see what he thinks. The consultant also said that it might be a good idea to check my liver and kidney functions as I've been taking the maximum dose of mesalazine for about 12 weeks.

So, back to square one then. Great.

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