The curse of the 'should have'

It's a lot easier to look back on the mistakes you have already made and decide how you would avoid making them again than it is to look forward in your life and figure out how to avoid making them in the first place.

Of course, I should have paid more attention to what was going on with my IBD, I should have continued taking the Pentasa, I should have gotten another referral from my Doctor to see the GI when I was feeling the symptoms but I didn't. So how do I avoid doing all this again?

It's so hard to say because I don't know what's going to happen in my life in the next six months.

Probably the best thing to do would be to go home to England, where I don't have to worry about not being able to afford to see a Doctor but...I like living in the US. I just worry about what it's going to cost (not in money, in life) to stay here. I know that UC is a 'do not insure this one' pre-condition, which they're not supposed to be able to do anymore (but they can still jack up your rates).

And it occurs to me that a life lived in regret is no life at all.

It's just so hard to try to stay positive when I have this hanging over my head, like a guillotine ready to drop at any moment.

introduction

Hi... I'm Sophie.

This morning I had a follow-up appointment with my GI Doctor to go over the results of a colonoscopy I had two weeks ago. The results were in: moderately severe ulcerative colitis in my entire colon. He prescribed me Asacol HD (some kind of fancy Asacol) and told me to follow-up with him again in four weeks time.

I barely held it together until I got out of the office where I proceeded to break down into a mucusy teary mess. How could this happen?

See, this isn't the first time I've been given this diagnosis. The first time was in May of 2003 when I was nineteen years old but I really didn't take it seriously at all. I took my medications until they made me feel better, then stopped, telling myself I was 'in remission' without any kind of medical proof.

So really today I feel supremely angry with myself for thinking that I wouldn't need to take these medications for the rest of my life. That's a bitter pill to swallow when you're 19 but it doesn't really get any easier when you're 26, it just becomes more 'real' somehow. More 'real' because you're thinking of starting a family and you realise that you can't just get pregnant, you need to meticulously plan everything and have to be in remission of the disease.

It doesn't help that I'm living in the United States right now (I'm a UK citizen) where health is treated as a for-profit business that hopefully benefits patients health as a side-effect, rather than the main event.

Luckily, my GI has given me enough samples of the Asacol to get by for 22 days, after that I have a discount card that should make the rest of my prescription only $100.

Of course, it doesn't help that stress and anxiety are my triggers for UC so the fact that I'm freaking out about not having medical insurance when I graduate in four months time is really not helping me.