40 years ago, being diagnosed was even harder than it is now.

I made several trips to the GP until, after several months, I was referred to a local hospital. I know I had pain and rectal bleeding but don't remember a huge amount else.

I was booked in for a colonoscopy but, back then, I had to have an enema first, which is not pleasant. Colonoscopies were not so easy then as they are now.

I then had to go to a larger hospital and go through it all again before I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis and put on sulfasalazine.

I had the occasional flare but nothing serious for the next 25 years.

Then my symptoms became worse and flares more frequent. I felt really poorly and sometimes spent weeks in bed because of the pain and I would be sick a fair bit. I’d get up about 50 times a day to trot to the toilet, when it was at its worst. I was losing a lot of blood and it made me feel pretty weak. The symptoms were helped by steroids, I am not a fan of due to the side effects, but they were needed at the time. It took me about 4 months to get back on track, so I had to take a considerable amount of time off work.

My condition still hasn’t gone back to how it was for so long when I was younger.

Right now, I’m hopefully getting towards the end of the worst flare I’ve ever had. It has gone on for over a year and has been very trying. I have been on steroids as well as mesalazine and need to use suppositories and rectal foam. I am very slowly trying to reduce these, but my condition keeps getting worse again and I have to up everything all over again.

I can call my IBD team any weekday and they are friendly, understanding, and so knowledgeable. They can also arrange prescriptions, tests and pretty much anything else that is needed. This sort of service is so different to 40 years ago and has made a huge difference to me and my life.

What helps me most is that I try my best to say positive and find others with Crohn’s or Colitis. We need to support each other to the best of our ability.

I find that today I am able to speak much more freely about my condition than I could back then too. I’ve only felt confident to open up about it in the last few years and it still surprises me how many people there are that have never heard of Crohn’s or Colitis.