Thursday, May 20, 2010

Before I get into more details about what happened last year......

I want to tell you what Ulcerative Colitis is and how it came about that I had it. It's Ulcerative colitis is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that affects the large intestine (colon) and rectum. There is no cure, no way to prevent it, and no way to tell how it starts. They think that someone in my family has had it and that's how I got it, in my genes somewhere. It all started before I graduated high school. I remember going to see my first dr. about it the day I had community college orientation. They referred me to Dr. Bailey in Amory, MS. I went to see him, and he blew me off. I didn't like him very much for that. He just gave me Mirlax and said it was stress. Well, it wasn't. I went to see him again and then he believed me when I said I had a problem. I referred me to another dr. in Tupelo. I went to see Dr. Earnest Williams, and he wanted to schedule my first colonoscopy get this I was only 18 years old. I have never had so many people who wanted to look at my butt. I know your wondering, what symptoms did I have that I needed to have a colonoscopy. I had blood that would drip everytime I went to the bathroom and more diarrhea. Blood also covered my stool, and I also had some abdominal pain on my left side. After Dr. Williams finished my colonoscopy, he came in the the little recover room and told me that he thought right. I looked at him kind of funny and I asked him to repeat himself. He thought before he went in to look that it was Ulerative Colitis. The colonoscopy was just a way he could prove his thought process. So, he immediately put me on predizone and colozal. Now you should know why I hate steroids. I've been on them off and on for 4 years!! He asked me to come to his office in two months to see how I was doing. I was going on with the rest of my life as if nothing had happened. I would have the frequent spells that I thought I would die if I didn't make it to the bathroom in time, but nothing like I experienced over the last year and a half. When I went to my follow up appointment, Dr. Williams told me that after age 30, I would have a routine colonoscopy every two years after that to check for cancer. CANCER to an 18 year old was every scary!! Well, CANCER at any age is SCARY!! Dr. Williams could tell that I was about to cry after hearing those words, and he told me that colon cancer was the easliest to detect and to get remove of. That did make me feel better, but the every thought of me one day having cancer just caused me to shut down in a way. I never wanted to have cancer!!
While all of this was going on, my dad was talking to his buddies at work about what was going on, and he found out that one of the guys that he worked with had a son that had the same thing. They instantly started to compare stories. His son's name is Brandon. I'll tell you more about him later.
I wanted to post pictures of UC on here, but I think they are a little too graphic. You can always google the term and find pictures for you to look at.

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