My Ulcerative Colitis Story Part One

I wanted to write about my story to hopefully help someone out there who is going through the same thing. Or maybe to just help people understand this disease. Because this disease sucks. I know that I don't have the worst disease, and I'm lucky it's not deadly. But it still affects my daily life. And I'll be honest, it's really hard having this disease. I split this story into two parts because I didn't realize how much I had to say! Part one is about how I came to finding out that I had Ulcerative Colitis. Part two will be about how I dealt with having Ulcerative Colitis in my adulthood and how I struggled finding a solution.

So for people who have no idea what Ulcerative Colitis is I'll give some explanation before my story. This disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease. It's very similar to chron's disease but not as extreme. Usually ulcerative colitis only inflames the lower intestine while chron's affects the smaller intestine or sometimes both. I'm no doctor so I'm not sure how exact these definitions are, but that is the basics of those diseases. This disease keeps my lower intestine in pain and has a lot of other painful symptoms. Enough of how horrible this disease is, let's get to my story!

I started having symptoms when I was 17. It was in April of 2011 when I started to notice that I had blood in my stool (yes this story will be about poo, we all do it!). I remember it was in April because that was the month I turned 18. All of this started happening when I finally was turning into an adult, and was set to graduate that June. This was an inconvenience to say the least! When I saw blood in my stool I honestly didn't think much of it. I thought it was one of those weird body things where your body acts really weird for a second then it suddenly goes back to normal (am I alone on weird body habits?). Plus nobody ever talked to me how my bowel movements should be. Nobody wants to talk about poop. It's so taboo. Anyway after a couple weeks of this happening I started feeling dizzy at work. At that time I was pushing carts for my job and it was a lot of physical work. So I started feeling extremely weak at work in late April and had to go home early. I told my parents about the blood and we made a doctors appointment right away.

So I went and saw a doctor at a nearby walk in clinic and they couldn't tell me what exactly was wrong with me. They sent me to a gastroenterologist, a specialist in the digestive system. So a few weeks go by and I finally meet with this gastroenterologist, and we do all sorts of tests. I get x-rays, blood tests, stool tests, the works. And when all the tests come back and I meet with her another few weeks later, she tells me that she still has no idea what is wrong with me.

At this point I'm depressed, weak, and in pain. My stomach would have intense pains randomly, for a short period of time, and I would immediately have to use the restroom to not be in pain. Or I could hold it and wait for the pain to pass. I farted a lot which is extremely embarrassing when your in high school. I was always running to the bathroom and my stool wasn't all sunshines and rainbows. It hurt to go to the bathroom and I was doing it a lot. My boyfriend at the time had no idea what to do with this situation. We got together way before this disease appeared in my life. So I wasn't only depressed about not knowing what the hell was going on, I was also upset that my boyfriend was pulling away from me. We were in high school, and didn't know how to deal with this. It put a strain on my relationship, mostly because I had no idea how to handle it.
Even though this disease puts me in incredible pain, I think the worst thing about having ulcerative colitis is the embarrassment.

So I'm miserable, pooping like crazy and in intense pain throughout the day. I lost 20 pounds in a month and was incredibly pale. I also got so weak I had to sit down every 10 minutes or I felt like I was going to faint. My doctor finally tells me that to find out what is going on I had to have a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy is when they stick a camera up your butt and take pretty pictures of your intestines. I was not looking forward to this but I was so ready to find out what was wrong with me. The only bad part about this examination was that I wouldn't be able to schedule the test until after graduation.

Graduation was horrible, I'll be completely honest. It's supposed to be one of the best days of your life but I felt like I was dying. I'm not sure what dying feels like (I don't intend on finding out soon) but I was in so much pain. I felt so weak. I remember standing in my row, trying not to faint as they called my classmates' names. It sounds really pathetic, but I'm not all that heartbroken about it. I didn't have a great high school experience, and I was mostly looking forward to leaving. Regardless, it still sucked having to be that weak and miserable on graduation day. People couldn't even understand what I was going through because I had no idea what I was going through. I just knew how I was going through it; horribly.

A few short days after my colonoscopy my doctor told me that I had Ulcerative Colitis. She put me on steroids and anti-inflammatory pills and sent me on my way. They immediately turned my disease around. I started feeling normal again. I could run again! I started gaining my weight back and my depression started to fade. I remember how happy and relieved I felt when I started taking my medication. It was great, it really was. Until 1 year went by and my pills stopped working. I started getting my symptoms out of the blue again. The thing about this disease, is that it's different for every individual it seeks. There isn't a cure, and apparently my medicine can stop at any time if it pleases to do so. And thus began, my battle with my body.