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What comes first: symptoms or abnormal scope?

Hi there

I have had 2 colonoscopies where everything was normal, and one colonscopy where they found ulcers and inflammtion. Yet each time I would have described myself as in a flare (chronic diarrhea/nausea/weight loss/fever).

Do you know if the symptoms start and then they have to be so bad to show up as an abnormal scope?

Or have you had an abnormal scope and yet you have felt absolutely fine?

It seems to be a bit of the chicken and egg scenario. Which comes first?
 
More often that not if you have symptoms they are a result of the inflammation, swelling, ulceration of active disease. You can have what looks to be a clean scope but then have inflammation at the cellular level as seen through biopsies. You can also have a clean scope but have inflammation/active disease further up than the scope can reach. Lastly, you can have inflammation and active disease and be completely asymptomatic.
 
When I was first diagnosed I had no symptoms and an abnormal scope. The finding was almost incidental. Now I'm symptomatic but my scopes were clean.
 
When I was diagnosed, I felt all the pain in the rump. After I saw how badly ulcerated my small intestine was... I then started feeling the pain.
 
I had symptoms first. I was 26 so there was no way I was going to get a scope with no symptoms. The drs even removed my gallbladder before they finally did any sort of scope.
 
Hi there

I have had 2 colonoscopies where everything was normal, and one colonscopy where they found ulcers and inflammtion. Yet each time I would have described myself as in a flare (chronic diarrhea/nausea/weight loss/fever).

Do you know if the symptoms start and then they have to be so bad to show up as an abnormal scope?

Or have you had an abnormal scope and yet you have felt absolutely fine?

It seems to be a bit of the chicken and egg scenario. Which comes first?
I had NO symptoms but after my first colonoscopy at age 51 my doctor said I had an irritated area of small intestine. He said he was surprised that I had no symptoms. He asked if I wanted to go on meds for it. But since I had no symptoms I said no. Four years later the pains started and now I have scar tissue that needs surgery to get rid of pain. I am in process of getting surgeon lined up.
 
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