In this video I share my story that lead to me being diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). This is alongside my current diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS).
HERE IS THE LINK: • NEW DIAGNOSIS? MEDICAT...
I am NOT a qualified health professional, I am just a patient sharing my experience of living with the disease in attempt to help others.
AS is an inflammatory auto-immune disease that primarily attacks the spine, but also some other parts of the body. I have been diagnosed with AS for about 2 and a half years now. During that time I think I have learnt to cope fairly well with my diagnosis and manage aspects of the disease that affect me on a daily basis.
So on the 3rd March 2020 I was diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in conjunction with my current diagnosis of AS. This sometimes happens to people who already have one auto-immune disease - it makes you more at risk of developing another due to the higher levels in inflammation in the body and the way the immune system is functioning.
So you’re probably wondering what symptoms / investigations I had and how I came to be diagnosed. I’ve definitely experienced symptoms of IBD for years - I remember having them before I even developed symptoms of AS. I remember it getting particularly bad during my first year of university when I was 19 - so 8 years ago! When I went to the doctor about these symptoms I was kind of dismissed and was just told that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and that was what was causing the symptoms. This went obviously went on for years as I have only just been diagnosed with IBD.
The main symptom I had were bouts of frequent diarrhoea and blood in my poo. Obviously, finding quite a lot of blood in your poo can be quite unnerving (and make you wonder if you’re dying lol) but after being dismissed by doctors numerous times and told it was probably just haemorrhoids, I kind of accepted this and thought it must be more normal than I thought. This all happened back in the UK, a long time before I went travelling. I also began to vomit quite easily, often I would eat and then get stomach ache and then be sick. I just assumed I had eaten something dodgy or had a bug as it didn’t happen too frequently. Often this would be around the same time I got diarrhoea and blood. This was probably about 6 or 7 years ago.
So about 4 or 5 years ago I also began experiencing pain in my lower right hand side of my back, in my sacroiliac joint on that side. I also began to have trouble sleeping due to my back getting really stiff and painful as I lay still at night. These symptoms led me to being diagnosed with AS. I will link below a video where I explain my full AS diagnosis story.
HERE IS THE LINK: • ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS...
Whilst traveling Asia and a lot of Australia, I wasn’t settled for long in any place. So it wasn’t until I arrived in Sydney and moved into a flat, that I really began to get to know a GP. During an appointment, I mentioned about the blood in my poo. She said she would write me a referral to the hospital to be seen by a gastroenterologist. I remember being surprised at this because no GP in the UK had seemed particularly concerned. So I saw a gastroenterologist under the public health system here. After my initial appointment where he took a case history and asked about my symptoms, he said that the best thing for me to do would be to get a colonoscopy.
So I was referred for the colonoscopy and went for the procedure. During the follow up, the Consultant basically told me that I had a bit of information in my bowel, but not enough to concern him or to say I had IBD at the time of the colonoscopy. He said that he wasn’t sure what was causing the blood and it could be haemorrhoids or inflammation, but neither were there at the time of the procedure. And he asked to review me in a years time.
So it wasn’t until I saw a rheumatologist recently, and he told me that based on the way my disease was presenting, specifically the asymmetric pattern, as well as all the symptoms and investigations I had had previously into IBD, he was certain that I did have co-morbid IBD and had experienced inflammation in my bowel, even if it wasn’t all there at the time of the colonoscopy. He told me that he had never seen a patient with asymmetric AS, who did not also have co-morbid IBD.
I will link a paper below which goes into a lot more detail of these different classifications of AS.
HERE IS THE LINK: www.ncbi.nlm.n...
If you would like to keep up do date with me on social media, then here’s my instagram!
My instagram: @thisizzthelife
Thanks you so much for watching / reading!
So much love!!
Izzy xxxxxxxxx
29 авг 2024
