QUESTIONS PLEASE ANSWER

Sheldon and everyone,

Thanks for all of the directions. I will try your diet when I get settled into my new apartment. It will be hard to follow your diet, but I will try. Can I eat meat? If so, what kinds are best? What about whole grain bread, and stuff like that?

I don't believe that this illness cannot be cured. My colitis suddenly exploded on me in August of 2002. In fact, this may sound funny, but I can remember the last time I sat down on the toilet and had naturally formed stool. It was amazing, over the next week the stool got looser and looser, until finally it was diarrhea, and that was all folks. From there on out I had diarreha. When I went back to school, I dealt with diarrhea everyday for four months until I finally drew the line and went and saw a gastroenterologist. He put me on sulfasalazine, and I take eight pills a day now. The sulfasalizine works pretty well for me, and it helps me have 2-3 formed stools a day. So far, I haven't any weird side effects that other people have reported. This is the only medication that I am on; No steroids yet (and I hope never). Maybe this means that I have a mild case?

One interesting thing I noticed was that before I started medication my inflammation and diarrhea was pretty constant. I never had any "remission" periods. Do some of you people have periods where you go back to normal for awhile? I don't understand this because, my situation was pretty constant and uniform before I went on medication.

Anyway, I am a Biochemistry major, and my background in biology and chemistry helps me understand the doctor's reasoning a little bit. But it just doesn't seem reasonable to me, from a scientific standpoint, that there is no cure for this disease. I mean, one week I'm normal, and the next week I have a lifelong disease? Bullshit. I was doing nothing different in my lifestyle over the period when I acquired the disease. There must be a way to "switch it off" as quickly as it was switched on. It must have something to do with some kind of bad bacterial growth, perhaps a mutant strain of bacteria, or some kind of invading species. I don't believe that my immune system suddenly went crazy in the confined region of my colon, without good reason. There must be a way to flush out the colon, clean it out, and get rid of the bad bacteria. Or perhaps a way to "beat back" my immune system response to the point where it stays normal. Any information, thoughts, or advice is much appreciated.

Write back everyone,
Steve Tweet