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Just about had enough

hi, i am 35 year old female, been diagnosed with colitis in may this year. bleeding is my major enemy, but lately urgency and pain is getting worse. i don't know what type of colitis i have even though i had 2 colonoscopies the doctors still not too sure what it is. i've been offered steroids which i avoided so far, i am on SCD, l glutamine, slippery elm, tumeric, probiotics and salofalk suppositories and it worked so far until today. today for unknown reason i had pretty bad pain in the upper abdomen, nausea, bile taste and a lot of blood, actually record amount of blood for me. i am very scared and can't figure out what caused it and how to stop it. any input would be appreciated
 
I think an urgent call to the doctors and take your medication is the answer.bland your diet out for few days see if it helps but get to the doctors.goodvluck
 

valleysangel92

Moderator
Staff member
I agree with axel.. Especially since you are loosing a lot of blood, it is advisable to get seen as soon as you can. If your symptoms get worse, you vomit blood, get a fever or the pain is unmanageable don't feel afraid of going to A+E to get checked out.

Make sure you rest, take your medications and eat simple foods like rice or broth. Heat is good for pain and ginger and peppermint can help a lot with nausea.
 

Honey

Moderator
Staff member
Hi there,
Yes it is scary when all that stuff is happening to you. You may need to consider taking steroids, short term, until symptoms are under control. They will make you feel stronger and better. You taper down from them as you come off them. Speak to your doctor about how you feel and ask questions. I did, a lot!! I hope you get some relief soon and feel better. Let me know how you are. Best wishes.
 
i am not too sure about steroids, but i have antibiotics prescribed a month ago to calm things down before my FT, but reading side effects makes me a little hesitant. did anyone take antibiotics Flagyl and Rifampicin to get out of a flare? did it work? did you take probiotics with them? i truly thought that i was doing so well on a diet and supplements, just can't work this colitis out
 
Don,t lose any sleep about side effects the leaflet in the box is cover your backside thing is the unlikely chance os side effects out weighing the effects of the illness, I think not take them and most importantly get to the doctor. All the best
 

Jennifer

Adminstrator
Staff member
Location
SLO
Hi della33 and welcome to the forum! :D

Colitis simply means inflammation in the colon. Inflammation itself can cause bleeding. Steroids are made to reduce inflammation quickly. With large amounts of blood loss you may start dealing with a lot of other issues like anemia etc. Mesalamine is a fairly mild treatment for Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis. At the moment you don't have a concrete diagnosis but what you do have is inflammation that needs to be treated to help stop the bleeding (assuming that's what's causing the bleeding, even Mesalamine has a possible side effect of causing blood in stool yet with confirmed bleeding before treatment my money is on untreated inflammation being the cause of your current blood loss). Its important for you to at least make your GI aware of your current symptoms. Help them help you by keeping them informed. Even though its the weekend there should be someone on call that you can contact and if things get worse then please don't hesitate to go to the hospital.

I'm assuming your GI wanted you on Prednisone. Did they give you an option of trying a short course of steroids (generally a high dose for 10 days or less which wont require a taper, if taken for more than 10 days you need to taper), or did they want to start you on a medium to high dose (~30-60mg) and stay that course until the bleeding stops then slowly taper you off?

You can continue with your diet change and treat with medication while you continue to get a concrete diagnosis through further testing.

Some people on the forum have been treated with antibiotics but usually in combination with another antibiotic such as Flagyl and Cipro but as far as I've learned on the forum, this treatment is becoming less and less common (I've actually never been treated with either for Crohn's over the past 22 years of being diagnosed with it). Also keep in mind that antibiotics may be related to the onset of Crohn's disease. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7721242

Antibiotics
Antibiotics can reduce the amount of drainage and sometimes heal fistulas and abscesses in people with Crohn's disease. Researchers also believe antibiotics help reduce harmful intestinal bacteria and suppress the intestine's immune system, which can trigger symptoms. However, there's no strong evidence that antibiotics are effective for Crohn's disease. Frequently prescribed antibiotics include:

Metronidazole (Flagyl). Once the most commonly used antibiotic for Crohn's disease, metronidazole can cause serious side effects, including numbness and tingling in your hands and feet and, occasionally, muscle pain or weakness. If these effects occur, stop the medication and call your doctor.
Ciprofloxacin (Cipro). This drug, which improves symptoms in some people with Crohn's disease, is now generally preferred to metronidazole. A rare side effect of this medication is tendon rupture.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/crohns-disease/DS00104/DSECTION=treatments-and-drugs


ULCERATIVE COLITIS — Controlled trials of narrow spectrum antibiotics in ulcerative colitis have not demonstrated a consistent benefit. Thus, they have little, if any, role in the treatment of active disease except in patients with septic complications related to fulminant colitis in whom they may help to avert a life-threatening infection. However, limited studies raise the possibility of an effect of broad spectrum antibiotic therapy.
http://www.uptodate.com/contents/antibiotics-for-treatment-of-inflammatory-bowel-diseases
 
thank you for the info Jennifer, it's very useful and right to the point, the thing with antibiotics is that i take them for 2 months and then go for the fecal transplant, my GI wants to kill everything in me before he puts that good bacteria back, anyway that's his plan. as for steroids i was offered prednisone suppositories because i was initially dx with proctitis, according to the second colonoscopy my colitis progressed to the entire right part of the colon and only scattered inflammation was found in the rectum. i just don't know which direction to go, i should trust my GI he is world known doctor who pioneered FT but this antibiotic thing is really bothering me. anyway i'll try to call him on monday even though it's super hard and see what he thinks about my situation.
 
hi, i am 35 year old female, been diagnosed with colitis in may this year. bleeding is my major enemy, but lately urgency and pain is getting worse. i don't know what type of colitis i have even though i had 2 colonoscopies the doctors still not too sure what it is. i've been offered steroids which i avoided so far, i am on SCD, l glutamine, slippery elm, tumeric, probiotics and salofalk suppositories and it worked so far until today. today for unknown reason i had pretty bad pain in the upper abdomen, nausea, bile taste and a lot of blood, actually record amount of blood for me. i am very scared and can't figure out what caused it and how to stop it. any input would be appreciated

Taurine has stopped my rectal inflamation, proctitis, so give it a try......I found that it was the Taurine by accident and now I am here to pass my experience along to you so google "taurine IBD". It neutralizes an acid that is released by neutrophils which is causing the inflammation as found by some researchers, and I definitely know that it has caused me to be normal after 8-10 years of daily diahrea to the point of Leaking constantly and messing underwear up. I go once a day now and am normal with no TERRIBLE PAIN and spagheti stool or diahrea.

NOTE:
take at most 3 grms per day on an empty stomach or before going to bed. Best to take it in 3 divided dosages. After 3 weeks on Taurine, take a week off just to make sure that it does not build in your body since they found that giving 6 grms of Taurine daily to Kidney failure patients causes it to build in their bodies. After this week, reduce dose to 2 grms and keep repeating as INFLAMATION subsides-it will. So try it to prove me wrong.
 
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