The Background - The First Issues

In October of 1991, I began bleeding signficantly when moving my bowels. My movements were becoming much more urgent, almost uncontrollable. There wasn't a bathroom within 5 miles that I didn't know about, nor how to get there, nor when it was open. At the worst of days, I was using the bathroom over 20 times a day (22 was the worst.) There were nights that in lieu of lying back down and getting back up, I just took my pillow and slept in the bathroom on the john. My legs didn't recommend it, but I knew I'd be able to make to the toilet in time.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the bleeding began to subside, but the urgency and movements were still there. Many people have asked about smoking (which I did at the time) and how it affected, and to be honest, I can't remember back then.

Thankfully, I wasn't attending many classes back then anyway, and spent much of my time in bed, just trying to recover from evenings of no sleep. When I did attend class, they were surely interrupted with a urgency to get to the bathrooms. Unfortunately, we didn't have the most updated of facilities, so there was not many at our disposal. As a result, I've often had to steal quickly into the ladies room out of necesity for fear of not making it up to the end of the hall, note it was occupied and make it back. (Thankfully, they didn't have cameras either, as I'm sure that would have drawn some issues as well!)

[Future point: I am making a list of all the 'unique places' that I had to use while dealing with UC and this is defintely one of them.]