My gastrointestinal tract was not strong to begin with, and I often had diarrhea the day after consuming large amounts of alcohol. In addition, I may have eaten too much spicy food in Asia when I was in college, and I had diarrhea for about six months after returning to Japan. Perhaps I had already put too much strain on my stomach and intestines from then on. Being young is scary.
I think I developed ulcerative colitis in the fall and winter of 2006.
I was very stressed at that time during a period of major changes in my work and personal life.
By the way, some people believe that cigarette smoking inhibits the onset of ulcerative colitis, but I had been smoking for a year at the time when I quit.
Under such circumstances, I had diarrhea for about two months, and finally, at the end of 2006, I had severe lower blood (bloody stools). I have a friend who had ulcerative colitis in high school, and the symptoms were very similar to what I had heard from him, and I began to think that I myself might have ulcerative colitis.
I went to the hospital after New Year’s 2007 and immediately underwent an endoscopy. The doctor was furious with me, “Why didn’t you see a doctor earlier? I was furious.
The result of the examination was that I had ulcerative colitis. Since it was the rectal type, the symptoms were limited to a part of the colon close to the rectum, so it was probably not so bad. My friend, who had the total colitis type, collapsed from the pain, was hospitalized, and was treated with fasting and steroids for a month, and had a moon face (a side effect of steroids) when he was discharged from the hospital.
At any rate, I remember feeling relieved because I was able to receive a medical care recipient certificate for a specific disease, so the financial burden was likely to be negligible. Incidentally, in 2007, I only had to deal with medicine, but the insurance usage fee exceeded 400,000 yen, which must have been quite a hardship even if all of this was at my own expense or if I had to pay 30% of the cost.
This is where the long struggle against the disease begins.