Am I in remission? What does remission feel like?

Digestive health
1

Hi guys, I'm recently diagnosed with UC and I've had my first flare and it was awful. However, as bad as things were - it doesnt seem as bad as what some people describe.

At the worst of it i had - 

pain when eating/drinking - on the very worst day i even had pain from laughing or bending down/sitting up

I was going 4/5 times a day - all loose/liquid and regular bleeding. 

It got to the point where i expected to see blood every time and that i forgot the last time i had a solid stool

I was put on prednisolone and 4 weeks into it, I finally started getting solid poos!!! hooray!

At first, the stools were solid but there was still a bit of blood for the first few days, but it was different, blood was attatched to bits of the stool rather than coming out in a horrible dark wet clump (gross, sorry)

A few days later and that disappeared too. I went from 3 poos a day, to slowly 2 poos a day and for the last 2 weeks i've been on 1 poo a day.

I'm finally off the steroids as of Tuesday, i'm now on 3 mesalamine pills a day. 

I have one stool a day that tends to be mostly type 4 - starts as smooth snakes, but normally goes into little small bits with clear cut edges at the end (type 5?) - sometimes the water goes a tiny bit cloudy at the end of a bowel movement which concerns me but I don't know if im overthinking the cloudyness?

My  doctor said that I should only be concerned about two things -

FREQUENCY 

BLEEDING

well, i'm going once a day and haven't seen bloody in 2 weeks, so i imagine thats a good sign? Should I just stop worrying about stool shape/size and the cloudiness of the water and get on with my life? 

2

Hi there - yes that’s remission. When I was first diagnosed 15 years ago, I had a few flares and they went exactly as yours, I never even needed mesalazine as pres was enough. I never fully returned to ‘normal’ always had cloudiness and even a minor bit of bleeding, not a problem.

My latest flare has gone on for 18 months with severe ups and downs and I cannot shake it off.

I wish back then I had done more preventative including lowering stress through yoga and meditation as well as more careful eating habits all of which combine.

Good luck staying in remission 😊

3

Yep, my advice to you is to stop worrying and to get on with life! We respond differently to medications, sometime good sometimes not so good. Just listen to what your doctor says and get on with living! Good luck for the future! Let us know if you continue to do well!