So unfortunately things aren’t going that well and it seems like I’m in the middle of another flare-up. But let’s proceed with order.
The trip to Morocco went quite well. I tried to stay away from spicy food, and things that I wasn’t sure how my stomach would react to, but evidently I didn’t do enough. Looking back now, I don’t think there was any specific occasion I can link to this new flare-up, sure every now and then tI had the occasional dish with a little too much pepper in it, but when that was the case I’d eat very very little.Anyway, the first day I came back from Morocco I had diarrhoea. I thought to myself “wait and be pragmatic, it could be something dodgy you ate”, so I didn’t pay too much attention to it, although I did notice some mucus in it. The second day, same thing again with the addition that the other usual extra-intestinal symptoms of the colitis appeared: feeling really tired, that uncomfortable feeling in my lower back on the left side and at the back of my eyes, warm joints, and the feeling that my legs had become extremely heavy. So what, you might think? Well, no, these are the exact symptoms that I seem to get when the colitis is active. So, I thought, I wouldn’t want to take no chances, and I took the executive decision to bring my maintenance dose of mesalazine, 2g per day, to 4g per day, that on 6th November.
The diarrhoea disappeared straightaway (which makes me think that the mesalazine had absolutely NO effect on it, it must have been caused by something dodgy I ate) and the symptoms got very slowly better, to the point that after a week I thought I’d go back to 2g. But, it couldn’t be that simple anyway, could it? The symptoms came back again (this time no diarrhoea just extra-intestinal symptoms, as discussed above), and therefore I kept the same dose of medication.
Seen that things didn’t improve, two weeks into 4g mesalazine (23 November), I saw the consultant. He was OK with my decision to go to double the dose, he said that based on my symptoms there was definitely something, an inflammation ongoing but that it wasn’t that bad, and said to keep doing that for another 2 weeks, just to see how things went as the symptoms might clear. If not we’d see the best course of action.
So I did that, and now 2 weeks after the consultation I have to say that the symptoms are a little better but they haven’t gone.
It is frustrating yes, but, unfortunately there isn’t much I can do. Will now see what the consultant wants to do.
As a side note, I’m still taking the probiotics, eating turmeric every now and then, and about a month ago I’ve introduced dates in my diet. Whether all this helps, I have no idea.
