Colitis is a disease that controls your entire life. In short, the body causes inflammation and ulcers on the inner lining of the large intestine.

Meet Janie. She’s living with inflammatory bowel disease, colitis. She started with mild stomach pains at 21, where she found out she was lactose intolerant. As time’s gone on, her symptoms got worse, and not very glamorous. In her first gastroscopy, they found mild ulcers in her colon. Now, many years later, it’s spread across more areas of her bowel, leading to stronger meds and a couple of (annoying) hospital visits. In recent years, Janie’s been diagnosed with psoriasis, and autoimmune hepatitis from the meds she’s been on.

Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), where more than 80,000 Australians live with either colitis or crohns. In short, the body causes inflammation and ulcers on the inner lining of the large intestine. The inflamed lining produces lots of intestinal lubricant or mucus, which can get pussy. The Inflammation makes it hard for the body to absorb nutrients, causing a real need to go to the bathroom and diarrhoea.

Symptoms include abdominal cramps and pain, frequent, watery diarrhoea (may be bloody), severe urgency to have a bowel movement, fever during active stages of the disease, loss of appetite and weight loss, tiredness and fatigue and anaemia.

I’ve seen Janie go through a lot of pain, drugs and hospital visits, but she is now comfortable talking about it (most of the time).

Ash x

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“The biggest challenge is not knowing what’s to come. I am constantly living in fear that I am going to have a flare up“

Links and resources:

More information on colitis

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