What my consultant wanted monitored

I want to say clearly that nothing in this circle replaces the specialist who knows your history. We are company, not a second opinion.

Mine required one pause and one restart in eighteen months and both were planned rather than emergencies. That is a good outcome for a complicated gut.

Marking that I am here, in case that counts for anything today.

I had my existing condition reviewed before starting rather than after, and my gastro team were much more involved than I expected them to be.

What helped was keeping a log that recorded both, separately, so that my two teams were not each hearing a summary of everything.

Something that surprised me: my long-standing symptoms improved rather than worsened. That is not everybody's experience and I did not expect it to be mine.

I would say get the two sets of clinicians talking to each other if you possibly can. Mine were not, for a year, and I was the messenger and I got it wrong twice.

The hardest part was working out which symptoms belonged to which thing. After twenty years I knew my usual pattern, and this was a new pattern layered on it.

That is a kinder way of putting it than I have managed about myself.

What Bryher described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

The most useful question I asked was what would make them want to stop, so that I knew what I was watching for rather than watching for everything.

The flare I had at month three turned out to be my usual condition doing its usual thing at its usual time of year, and I had blamed the medication for a fortnight.

I take other things for my gut and the timing of them relative to everything else needed working out properly with a pharmacist. Worth an appointment of its own.