I was formally diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC) in October 2003 - I was 25 years old. My symptoms began in September 2003 - I was about 20 weeks pregnant with my 2nd baby! As anyone with UC knows, the symptoms all pretty much start out the same. Frequent diarrhea, bloody stools, stomach cramping, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, and that’s the short list! Well - being 4 months pregnant and experiencing all of this - landed me in the emergency room! After 10 long hours in there - I was admitted. During my 11 day stay - I had preterm labor twice, too many meds to remember, morphine 3 times, and ended up with a PICC (permanent IV) line for nutrition for me and the baby!
I was not given a diagnosis in these 11 days. No colonoscopy was ordered. The initial thought the crazy doctors approached me with was AIDS! They asked me if it was ok to run an HIV test! I had no problem authorizing that because i knew it was not what was wrong. The infectious disease doctor was reaching for anything. When that came back negative (DUH) the plan became get me stable enough to send home!
I was sent home with a list of medicines, a list of doctors to schedule appointments with, an appointment for a home nurse to come to my house that night to teach me how to care for my PICC line and hook up to the nutrition I needed.
After about 2 weeks home the GI doctor the emergency room assigned me finally ordered a colonoscopy. Being pregnant, I could not be given the good medicine they normally do - so I was awake for the entire thing! Fun huh? Ulcerative Colitis was the final diagnoses. Steroids, Colozal and what ever other magic stuff they put in my TPN (bag of nutrition) was the plan for the next 4 months!
Skip ahead to delivering a happy, healthy, 8 lbs 10 oz baby boy - and that was 3 1/2 weeks early! Brady Patrick Harris was the best thing I could have gotten out of those 5 months of agony!
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