Hi All,
Been reading this thread with interest. I have had bowel issues all my life. I use to roll around on the floor after dinner as a teenager. I did have a colonoscopy but nothing found. Throughout my years I was diagnosed with IBS. I had constant bloody diarrhoea throughout my 30s. I expected to never have a normal bowel movement again. Dr said it was haemorrhoids and IBS so I just went with that. Eventually, at about age of 42 (4 years ago) I was in the back of an ambulance getting rushed to hospital 40 minutes away with my heart going crazy. I had H.G of 8 no iron, mishappen small, clear red blood cells etc. No cardiac issues found, was put in hosi for a week ... they gave the option of iron infusion or blood transfusion. I went with the infusion (worked well). Colonoscopy was done during that week and found chronic active inflammation in large bowel and biopsy in one section confirmed changes the showed IBD as proctitis .. non specific other areas.
I went onto salazopyrin and within a short time I had normal bowel movements ! I stayed on that for a couple of years and bowel was good, but my iron crashed again (but no bleeding ?) and another infusion ordered ... this time I had an allergic reaction as soon as the flush went through and iron started, that was scary but I walked out of the hosi that day with no iron .. told never to have another iron infusion. Managed to get iron up to 50 with daily liquid iron drink over 6 months. HG was ok.
I was getting weird symptoms, like muscle aches and tight chest, sometimes shortness of breath like at 3am. Went through all the cardiac tests again, asthma test etc. Nothing showed up. I stopped the sulfa and the symptoms all disappeared within days. It was the side effects of the sulfa causing the symptoms. I stayed off all drugs for a while then UC symptoms started again so tried Mesalazine. Immediately I had the same side effects as with the sulfa so I stopped. Tried colozade but was not effective. So after reading around about MM and having the opportunity to have a supply of it, I thought I would try. I was a bit worried as I had smoked it in my 20s and new that it caused rapid heart rate .. my low iron issues caused rapid heart rate so I did everything to avoid it ...... it was a feeling that made me nervous. And the first time I smoked my heart rate was at 140bpm ! Scary ... the next day though it wasn't so bad and after a few days smoking once after work my heart rate actually went down to around 80s (it was normally around 100 before I started smoking).
Anyway the cannabis worked very well .. normal stools, no diarrhoea or bleeding after 9 months (of smoking) another scope showed disease was in quinessence (I get scoped every 2 years due to nasty polyp found). But I could not get a good supply of MM and hated buying it so stopped when I was really well. After a few months symptoms returned .. with bleeding. I was very worried about my iron levels and part of the bleeding was from my hems from years of diarrhoea. So I was booked in for what they call HAL/RAR hem surgery. I didn't smoke as I thought it might interfere with the surgery. The recovery was bad (6 months ago) and since then I am still seeing some bleeding plus now I have new symptoms in my stomach, nausea, sometimes vomiting (bile / highly digested food) and strange pains between my bellow button and sternum immediately after eating and iron back to nothing again. Really bad back ache in my spine and migraines too now. Dr says maybe it ulcer from NSAIDs from the operation. So now in 2 weeks time I have another colonoscopy and endoscopy.
My uncle had Crohns and Dr (specialist) says perhaps I do also and not just UC / proctitis. I'm not sure but its never ending and a central theme in my life although I know there are worse of than me for sure. It's embarrassing having to tell work clients that I am not well often too.
Anyway bottom line is the MM really helps me and after these scopes in 2 weeks I might consider going back to it if the stomach stuff is IBD related. I feel that if I had not stopped I might not be in this position now.
Cheers.