Microscopic Colitis ???

[Epson]

I was wondering if anyone has microscopic colitis?  Feel free to illuminate your personal experience, great dinner time topic.

[Joe S.]

I had to look up what you were talking about from Wikipedia:

Microscopic colitis refers to two medical conditions which cause diarrhoea: collagenous colitis and lymphocytic colitis. Both conditions are characterised by the following triad of clinicopathological features:

   1. Chronic watery diarrhoea;
   2. Normal colonoscopy;
   3. Characteristic histopathology.

It sounds like an another autoimmue to me.

[irish]

Sure is good to have you posting some lately. Miss you buddy!!!My hubby has had this for 32 years or so. At one period of time he was quite sick with it and it was diagnosed as unclerative colitis but then they developed better testing and it came back microscopic colitis.

He also had Celiac sprue and this colitis is a tag along autoimmune disease with the sprue. If it wasn't for bad health we would have not health at all at our house.

Anyway, bad cramps and sometimes beyond bad cramps making trips to the store dependent on a restrooms easy access. There were a few years that he could hardly leave the house some days because of the cramps and diarrhea. It is much better, but the problem with the colitis is it will hit at the strangest times. Sometimes we will sit and try to figure out what I fed him that could have caused it. He is on the gluten free diet for the past 32 years so we will know that it wasn't a hidden gluten that is causing it.

Much of the time we have decided that it just is what it is. Can't rhyme or reason it out. However, we do know that tomatoes can set it off and orange juice, etc will make him sick almost immediately. Pop bothers him enough that he seldom drinks it. If you have it you will have by now discovered what foods kick up your gut!

When you go out to eat always play it safe in what you order.  He has Asacol to take for his colitis. If he takes this a couple of time a day for about 2 days his gut seems to settle down. It doesn't kill you but can make life miserable at times.

It is not as serious as ulcerative colitis because the inflammatory process takes place down in lower level of the tissues.It can cause bleeding at times but not so much the bright red blood. With ulcerative colitis the top layers of the tissue of colon are affected and they can slough off and can have bad bright red bleeding. Very life threatening at times.

Hubby never took prednisone for his---because his stomach was so bad at that time we thought he would have a gastric ulcer bleed. Tell me more Epson!!!Irish

[Epson]

Irish,

Thanks for the info, of course I read what I could on line, but I always find it useful when you get feed back from people who have the disorder your researching.  I have had problems with my GI tract for at least 40 years and have never been able pin point what causes the problem.  It seems logical that having Sjogren's would predispose one to Celiac and Micro Colitis and I have all of the symptoms.

This would also coinsides with Murphy's Law, a cysto next week and a colonoscopy the following week, horrible pain in my right kidney and a bladder that wont empty, oh, I almost forgot about the shoulder surgery that I'm still recovering from.  Got the result from my xray of thumbs and wrist, which says there is nothing wrong eventhough they are extremely painful an pop all the time, what next?

[irish]

Epson, I am so sorry you have so many owies. Life isn't fair is it-----and then we die as the saying goes.

As I said earlier---if it wasn't for bad health we'd have no health at all. Best of luck to you. Irisih

[Gerty]

like Joe I thought I would look it up as well this is what I found in my own words but true to what I seen written..
found out that the cause is unknown they seem
to have 2 theory's on this one theory is that the use of NSAIDs may contribute
the 2nd cause by an autoimmune response

and like Joe said yet another one 

[Epson]

Gerty, You can rule out NSAIDs in my case, can't use them with poor kidney function, but if it turns out that I have MC it would not be uncommon for it to hang out with Sjogren's.  As soon as the word Sjogren's shows up the first thing out of the PAs mouth was MC and Celiac. 

I was checked for markers in my blood for Celiac, but a biopsy would be more conclusive, so since they will be in there snipping bits they might as well be checking for that too.