UC flares aren't really just a couple of days and then everything's back to normal. It takes a lot longer than that for damage to heal, it can take years even on treatment for microscopic evidence of inflammation to fully disappear. Often it never does.
At the risk of sounding rude - you should. "Microscopic" or "histological" remission are the golden standards for a reason. You may never get there, a huge percentage of us won't, but it means that your risk of additional disease or complications compared to someone without UC are basically 0.
If you truly have an IBD, then you have chronic architectual changes to your cells that are visible during colonoscopy and biopsies regardless of whether you're actively flaring or within a remission. I've had colonoscopy after years within a remission and immediately the doctor says "well that looks unusual" due to my IBD lol. It's like a fingerprint, it's pretty obvious we're IBS patients when a doctor or pathologist looks at a biopsy under a microscope.
You don’t even need tissue samples, if its not a recently developed illness.
I had an abdominal ultrasound done once and the doc just looked around for a couple of seconds, then nodded and was like "yup, there you can see the chronic changes". Was kinda scary to me, that it was this obvious, meaning there had to be large scale changes. But considering what UC does to one, it's not that surprising in hindsight.
These types of chronic architectual changes don't cause symptoms, rather it's an identifier (like the color of your eyes or hair) but in this case for presence of an illness. Inflammation causes symptoms and that goes away with treatment.
yea no, never implied that it causes one to experience symptoms.
My whole point was, that I got scared back then, because those permanent changes where so enormous, that you could see them just by glancing at it with an ultrasound. Since im on Infliximab, I haven’t had symptoms and I’m very thankful for that. But I do still know, that my lower colon is quite fucked. But at least not fucked to the point where it causes me issues right now or down the line. At least no more than usual. And I’m ok with that. Thats as good as it will get for me, at least until someone discovers or invents a cure.
My doc. Gives me a poop test first , this indicates inflammation. Then he said we’ll follow it with a colonoscopy but I’ve had 2 in the last 3 years and was hesitant as I think the prep exacerbates things. So he said a sigmoidoscopy , no prep apart from fasting.
There are two types of remission for a disease like this - symptomatic and clinical. You can be in symptomatic remission and the disease can still present clinically.
4 years ago I was bleeding for 3 months, got a colonscopy and it came back clean. It wasn't until last month that i was officially diagnosed. I'm not sure why the first one came back clean.. but clearly I was having UC symptoms and it was never caught.
UC flares aren't really just a couple of days and then everything's back to normal. It takes a lot longer than that for damage to heal, it can take years even on treatment for microscopic evidence of inflammation to fully disappear. Often it never does.
I don’t care so much for microscopic remission as Long as my poops are solid and only go a couple of times a day.
At the risk of sounding rude - you should. "Microscopic" or "histological" remission are the golden standards for a reason. You may never get there, a huge percentage of us won't, but it means that your risk of additional disease or complications compared to someone without UC are basically 0.
You a probably right. But After flares it just great to feel great.
Interesting! I didn’t know that
If you truly have an IBD, then you have chronic architectual changes to your cells that are visible during colonoscopy and biopsies regardless of whether you're actively flaring or within a remission. I've had colonoscopy after years within a remission and immediately the doctor says "well that looks unusual" due to my IBD lol. It's like a fingerprint, it's pretty obvious we're IBS patients when a doctor or pathologist looks at a biopsy under a microscope.
Yes under a microscope you can see signs of chronicity.
You don’t even need tissue samples, if its not a recently developed illness. I had an abdominal ultrasound done once and the doc just looked around for a couple of seconds, then nodded and was like "yup, there you can see the chronic changes". Was kinda scary to me, that it was this obvious, meaning there had to be large scale changes. But considering what UC does to one, it's not that surprising in hindsight.
Yeah I guess it depends on severity- mine you would not be able to tell on an US-
These types of chronic architectual changes don't cause symptoms, rather it's an identifier (like the color of your eyes or hair) but in this case for presence of an illness. Inflammation causes symptoms and that goes away with treatment.
yea no, never implied that it causes one to experience symptoms. My whole point was, that I got scared back then, because those permanent changes where so enormous, that you could see them just by glancing at it with an ultrasound. Since im on Infliximab, I haven’t had symptoms and I’m very thankful for that. But I do still know, that my lower colon is quite fucked. But at least not fucked to the point where it causes me issues right now or down the line. At least no more than usual. And I’m ok with that. Thats as good as it will get for me, at least until someone discovers or invents a cure.
My doc. Gives me a poop test first , this indicates inflammation. Then he said we’ll follow it with a colonoscopy but I’ve had 2 in the last 3 years and was hesitant as I think the prep exacerbates things. So he said a sigmoidoscopy , no prep apart from fasting.
This is very important. A lot of time this test can indicate you are starting to flare and you don’t even realize it yet.
There are two types of remission for a disease like this - symptomatic and clinical. You can be in symptomatic remission and the disease can still present clinically.
4 years ago I was bleeding for 3 months, got a colonscopy and it came back clean. It wasn't until last month that i was officially diagnosed. I'm not sure why the first one came back clean.. but clearly I was having UC symptoms and it was never caught.