The Beginning

It was Feb 2014 when I first heard of a disease that was going to change my life. I was 26.

Looking back, I had seen symptoms of ulcerative colitis 3 years earlier. The summer and fall of 2011 was a very exciting and stressful time period in my life. I visited my company's London UK office during a business trip and was offered a full time job. I finished a few months of stressful biweekly on-call rotations with my senior manager. I was dealing with the constant fighting with my dad who was living with me at the time. I was meeting new people and reuniting with old friends.

Maybe it was the routine coffee trips, maybe it was the birthday cakes and sweets at work, maybe it was the lack of sleep from being on-call, maybe it was the constant eating out with friends. Healthy eating was not at the top of my priority list at the time. One afternoon I was browsing the drinks section at Shopper's and decided to buy a drink called FUZE that was labelled to contain lots of vitamins and nutrients. A few hours after drinking FUZE, I was running to the toilet with diarrhea.
From that point onwards my digestive system was noticeably faster, as I was going to the washroom much more frequently. After a week, I saw blood in my stools. I was scared, but did not think much of it because I was not in pain. After a few more weeks of the occasional bloody stool I felt noticeably weaker and decided to see a doctor. The doctor I saw at the walk-in clinic did not examine me thoroughly and suggested I go see a family doctor. He suspected it was probably hemorrhoids and prescribed some medication for it. Perhaps it was me who down played my symptoms because deep down I didn't want it to be anything serious as I was about to move to another country.

I became more conscious of my eating habits from then onwards and had long stretches of normal bowel. I was able to travel and enjoy life and thought I had cured whatever it was that I had on my own. 

In late 2013 my parents separated and this affected me immensely. I would cry myself to sleep and my stomach was acting up again. Difference being my symptoms were more intense this time. It wasn't the occasional drops of blood anymore, but a toilet bowl filled with bloody explosion. I was devastated. My holidays that year was spent with my mom and sister and I could no longer hide the fact I was leaving bloody stains on the toilet. After the new years I went to see a doctor at the walk-in clinic who quickly referred me to a specialist. With the surprisingly quick turn around, I was hopeful that I would quickly be cured and be on my way again. With high spirits I followed the medication and suggestions (Suppositories, Cooling Rod, Enema) and felt like I was beginning to feel better. The gastroenterologists didn't explain to me I had colitis and what it meant. I was told to try and stick to my ethnic diet. And that smoking was apparently beneficial for people with colitis. 

As weeks passed I was feeling weaker and worse. The medication I was given weren't effective and I began to lose faith in my doctors. During a skiing trip I fell much more than I had before. I struggled to stay on me feet all day and realize now it was my body telling me I was very tired. A month later, not knowing the exact state of my own body, I went on a training course in San Francisco. I preceded to exert myself physically much more than I should have. Walking for 2+ hours for two days, doing an all day biking tour and hiking. I could feel my body reacting and struggling with massive foot cramps while pedaling in the lowest gear on flat terrain. Within the first 10mins of a hike, I was breathing heavily and trailing the group by a lot. At one point I felt my stomach churning itself inside out as if trying to regulate oxygen intake. Looking back now, I was very anemic and iron deficient.

I was exhausted after the San Francisco trip and my body could not recover. I was struggling to walk to work. Struggling to stand up in the shower. Struggling to sleep through the night. Struggling to find food appetizing. I experimented with juicing for a week, started an elimination diet, lived off a low fiber bland diet hoping to feel better. I even went to a Chinese doctor who did acupuncture and prescribed some bitter medicine. In hindsight, I probably should not have drank the medicine, because it may have tried to detoxify my body prompting for more trips to the toilet. By this time I was on iron supplements and avoiding food so I did not have to go to the bathroom so frequently. There were so many close calls where I would eat dinner and forget to use their washroom only to struggle with finding the next closest available bathroom. I was at an all time low, trying so hard to feel better and failing miserably. 

Soon after, I decided to quit my Job and head home to stay with mom. I was physically and emotionally in pain. I felt like a failure that my body was giving up on me. People who don't know about ulcerative colitis can't empathize with you. They assume that you were eating poorly. They tell you that you look fine and wonder how you lose weight. It was incredibly lonely being sick by myself. The thought of mom looking after my meals when I went home was more than enough. And boy was I glad I made the decision when I did as you can see from my hospital visit.