If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I’ve had Ulcerative Colitis for about 16 years. It’s a fun little autoimmune illness that decides to attack your colon. Good times. To combat this, I take a handful of meds every day and have to limit my fiber intake (narrow colon + ulcers = a lousy place for roughage.)
Because of this diagnosis, I have to get a colonoscopy every 2 years. You may have read one of my blogs on the adventure. Thanks to the pandemic, my routine procedure was pushed, leaving a 4-year gap. Not to fear. I was doing great. I was having normal (for me) trips to the bathroom, no cramping, and short-lived flare-ups. When they had me do a stool test to check for active disease, I was like “I’m gonna pass with flying colors.”
I did NOT pass. My stool sample showed I had active disease going on. What? Really? But I felt great. How can that be? A colonoscopy was pushed up the schedule, which I had recently, and yep, the colonoscopy said the same: Active disease.
Well, shit. Literally.
The good news, the biopsies they took show that the illness hasn’t progressed any further up my colon. No polyps needed to be removed. All good things. Today, I went in for bloodwork to see if the meds I’m on are still working. If they are, great. But we’re gonna bump up my dose. If they aren’t? Well, it will be time to try out new meds.
In the meantime, I’m on my flare-up meds (even though I don’t feel like I’m flaring) another stool sample had been ordered for a month from now, and I’m upping the dose of one of the two meds I take to control this, and I have to take fiber gummies. Since I can’t eat fiber the normal way without hurting my plumbing, the gummies are going to help make it so there are, er, no clogs in an already fragile system. I hate the texture of gummies, so this will be fun.
In a month or so, I’ll have a better grasp on what’s going on, but my new GI doc seemed confident he could get me back into remission easily enough, so I’m holding onto that. Perhaps my ‘normal’ doesn’t need to be quite so annoying? Wouldn’t that be lovely?
Until next time, friends!
Danielle Bannister, Author 
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