Could this be Ulcerative Colitis?

[Chocol8]

Sorry this is gross, but i am worried and looked online (prob not the best of ideas) and found that most of my symptoms seem to fit UC: different coloured stools which frequently changes but is mostly very loose.
Blood in stools (a lot), if i pass wind, i can pass pure blood but usually mess myself (very unpleasant), stomach churns constantly.
Being sent (eventually) for a colonoscopy to have a look see. Does anyone know what else this could be please? x

Is ur appt for a Dr review or colonoscopy?

I think Chocol8 has an appointment on the 28th to see a consultant, who will decide if she needs a colonoscopy

Thanks Katy, yes i have an appt to see a consultant a week on Monday.
Cardio, i am taking this seriously - however, as you said yourself, i am not worryingly sick at the moment, but i understand that you are saying that if left much longer, this could change - and you are the expert as a doctor and a sufferer yourself.
I am not saying i can't go in to hospital because of being a single parent, but i feel i can't go to A&E legitimately if i am not in pain. I only have pain intermittently.
I am happy that i have changed hospitals and i am getting seen much sooner and hoping that if i need a colonoscopy, the new hospital can fit me in a lot sooner than my local hospital.
I have also taken a look at what Pigglesworth has said as i would be v interested in helping relieve the some of my symptoms using diet. I am a vegetarian and have taken soya milk and decaf tea for many years.
I recently made a curry (not hot) but packed with vegetables and it did give me mild stomach pain, but it wasn't bad, so i do not suffer like other people who have been diagnosed with UC.
So far, i feel i can wait to be seen in just over a week, but if i do have the symptoms you mentioned earlier, believe me, i will call an ambulance or get myself to A&E immediately.
Katy, i'm really glad you're getting things sorted before your holiday.

chocol8.. It's true I was a bit reassured by your ESR being normal, but as I said it could still be IBD with a normal or moderately raised ESR.
However we don't know your CRP yet... ESR can take a longer time to rise and is a marker of chronic inflammation while CRP rises more acutely . This has only been 9 weeks so maybe the ESR hasn't had time to go up much yet.
I was a little confused by your GP saying it may be the bleeding piles... I don't think that would account for either any stomach pains, tenderness or diarrhoea so I don't think that is the main problem if I have understood your symptoms correctly.
Also feeling sick, tired and unwell with ongoing diarrhoea slime and blood is a cause for concern.
I am a Dr but don't have UC just to clarify.
If you are feeling ok lets see what happens in the opd. If you become ill don't be afraid to go to a&e though,it would be justified.

bleeding from piles usually causes bright red blood on the paper btw.

Thanks, Pigglesworth for the diet info - I'll look into it too as though I don't have active UC most of the time, my energy levels are certainly v low.

i'm still a bit confused how someone in the middle of an acute attack could cope with loads of veg etc - in my case it would just go straight through me without touching the sides! - but then I haven't read the book, so will look up the diet in more detail and see how it works. Certainly agree with the no dairy part of it.

Hope everyone is feeling not too bad today...

Cardio, sorry, i thought you were UC as i thought you put it on 7th November - does UC stand for something else? I was sure that is what you meant.
Is it worth popping by the docs and requestng another blood test from the docs or will they do this at the hospital as a matter of course? It's only another week to wait and i have waited this long now anyway.
Possibly my internal pile is causing the bleeding - it is usually bright red but i have noticed some darker blood mixed with my stools more recently.
I had pain last night on the inner hip when i pressed it, which is usually there, but this morning there was none.
Thanks Bread - i hope so too. How are you today?

Oh I thought she meant she was the poster "UnhappyChanger"

Gosh writing is so easily misunderstood - it could be either

How you all doing?

I'm with B&B no veg stays in me more than an hour or so at most & comes out looking pretty much the same as it went in (when I'm bad)

Ahh, ok Katy, thanks, i hadn't thought of that.

Poor you and Bread. I seem to have problems 3-4hours after i've eaten (though immediately the stomach churning noises start) as the meal seems to push out what has been 'prepared earlier' so to speak. I have had two accidents today, the second just now was bad and would have been awful had it happened when i was out.

Does anyone else suffer from an exploding bottom - or am i own with this one?

Umm, no comment

I made some very bad food choices this weekend while away

Hi chocol8 no problem .
It would be nice for the Dr reviewing you to have a full set of recent bloods there on the system for you.. would they be taken at the hospital where you are being seen?
Full blood count again, CRP,Liver function tests and ESR and routine urea and electrolytes.

musicmalady - I had real problems with my joints I had blood tests:

ESR which is 55 & CRP of 60

Which sent me off to a rheumatologist, is it possible that we were looking for the inflammation in the wrong place. I got a diagnosis of FM out of it (to match my one of CFS)

well they are definitely raised at those values.. did they find a cause for that or some sort of infection, or did they then settle down?
I guess they did the usual rheumatology auto antibody type screening.
If you have bleeding from the bowel and diarrhoea then yes the inflammation could be there but without knowing the whole story and sequence of events it would be difficult for me to know.

Sorry Chocol8 for the hijack

After diagnosing the FM they said the raised bloods were "a cold or a sore throat or something"

musicmalady - I generally suffer from feeling 'crap' defined in my world by: tired (CFS), mouth ulcers, IBS, pain (bones & joints) - it's quite boring

Well whoopie dee my NHS appointment (for a consultation not the colonoscopy) has come through for 11th January only 10.5 weeks after I saw my GP

No worries Katy! Poor you, you sound like you feel a lot worse generally than me but hopefully your colonoscopy can answer some - if not all - of your problems fingers x'd.

Was just thinking - i feel pretty sure that the lump in my bum is indeed a pile as the doc said, but what if it isn't? Could there be a polyp around that area that bleeds regularly? I am prone to getting uterine polyps which do expel blood and nasty stuff a couple of times a year....could there be a link? Booked in for an ablation and histeroscopy. (Tee hee, my insides will be more photographed than my outside!!).

Regardless of the blood - which i am sure is fine as it is mostly fresh and frequent upon passing a 'motion' (lol, i use this term 'loosely' as they are very loose!), what else does diarrhea indicate is wrong?

Katie, my first appt came through for Friday 13th Jan! It's madness isn't it?

ATM everytime I eat I hurt within about 30 minutes

I feel really down

I'm sorry you're hurting and down Katy, i wish there were something i could do to make you feel better. (((HUGS))) x

Just feeling sorry for myself (& on your thread too )

Sorry!

Chocol8 - re the exploding bottom - yes, I certainly know what you mean, sadly... I think it could also be caused by a bug though too - do you have any other symptoms like eggy burps, say? Well, the colonoscopy should give you a clearer idea, hopefully.

Thinking about the diet mentioned above, there may well be something to it - when I had my first (and worst) attack of UC, it spontaneously healed at Passover (I'm Jewish) when I eat a very restricted diet for religious reasons, containing, funnily enough, no grains (except a small amount of matzah = crackers) plus lots of meat, fish, and ground nuts, and fruit/veg. Everything is home made and unprocessed, more or less. Normally passover food would contain dairy, but because of the colitis that year I was avoiding dairy. So I probably did eat pretty close to the diet described (though with limited fruit/veg initially, and added matzahs which contain wheat flour). Maybe it's the fact that everything is unprocessed but I have found in the past that the Passover diet does leave me feeling feel of energy and vim, and quite happy too. :)

So, esp if you're up to the veg element, give it a go, Chocol8?

The only thing i would say is it does get v dull :( - Passover lasts 8 days which is about as long as I can keep it up...). You do long for some bread or rice or pizza or whatever.

Maybe I should try it - my breathing is a bit better but I feel astonishingly knackered, which is not good as I have loads to do...

Hope you're feeling a bit better today, KatyMac.

Not really bread&butterfly; but thanks for asking

choco.. The reason i mentioned diarrhoea being important is that just small amts of red blood alone could be a bleeding pile, although it is important to visualise this as the cause of the bleeding.
But the pile couldn't be the cause of the loose motions... that could be infective [ but unlikely to go on for 9 weeks], inflammation [ UC and Crohns], malabsorption [coeliac etc can be tested for by blood tests] and malignancy [unlikely but ruled out with colonoscopy]

musicmalady, what do you know about 'microcolitis' I can't find much on google

hi katymac,

Sorry to hear you're feeling down. At least you don't have too long to wait for your colonoscopy. Are you still having bleeding and other symptoms?

I've never heard of microcolitis before, did your consultant explain anything about it to you?

I hope you feel better soon.

Tracey