Hey dolls! So if any of you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I’ve been admitted to hospital. For those of you that don’t know I suffer with Ulcerative Colitis which is an iritable bowl disease and I’ve struggled with it since my late teens.
For anyone who suffers with an IBD life can get pretty tough when you’re having a flare up. It can be physically and mentally debilitating and can leave you pretty much bed ridden. The worst part about having an IBD is that because it’s not a visible disability people assume there’s nothing wrong with you and that’s just not the case. Some days just being able to do day to day tasks is impossible.
Anyway I’ve been having a pretty serious flare up for the last 4 weeks and was on a two week course of steroids (which I demanded from my GP) as my consultant at the hospital didn’t want to prescribe anything until certain test results came back. Well at the beginning of the week I called the hospital and was told that my results came back normal… Which I knew couldn’t possibly be the case as I was still suffering really badly with it, so this news annoyed me but I continued to take my prescription in the hopes it would ease off however on the 18th I made an emergency appointment with my GP as I’d started having sharp chest pains and I wasn’t sure if this was due to the meds and wanted to be safe and get checked. Anyway that aftenoon I had a phone all from the IBD nurse at the hospital saying the last of my results came back and it was definitely a severe flare up so my consultant had booked me in for an appointment the following week. However after explaining that the steroids my GP had given me had had little effect she told me she would speak to my consultant. So I was relieved now knowing it was definitely a colitis flare up and nothing else (the big C word had started to creep into the back of my mind) now all I needed was medication that would work seeing as the almost finished course of steroids had done little to affect it.
I had another call off the IBD nurse and she told me that she’d organised a bed for me at the hospital as they wanted to admit me that evening so I ended up leaving work half an hour early to go home pack a bag and head to hospital. I’ve never been admitted into hospital before so this had been a completely new experience. I’m on intravenous steroids plus I’m having to take other pills for different things and I’ve even been given injection in my stomach to prevent thrombosis… Today I had to go and have two X-rays one on my abdomen (the left side is extremely tender to touch) and one on my chest (because of complaining about chest pains) and I’m waiting to have a flexible sigmoidoscopy which for those of you lucky enough to have never experienced this it’s like a colonoscopy but it doesn’t look all the way around your bowel. The only memory I have of this is that they didn’t sedate me last time so it was a pretty painful experience.
Anyway dolls I realise that’s probably extremely TMI but I wanted to catch up with you as I haven’t written a post yet this week. I hope you’re all well and if you suffer with an IBD too I’d love to hear from you, how do you manage it on a day to day basis? What works best for you during a relapse?
Much love
Paige x
She be chic 