Whilst you have been given a colitis diagnosis, it is not the end of your world and you should never think like that. What it should be regarded as is the closing of part of your life and the beginning of another stage. A stage that is, at the beginning, filled with anxiety, doubts, fears, even foreboding about the possibilities that await you in the future.

You will wish all the queries answered, anxieties that linger soothed and a clear journey for you to travel revealed. It is not as easy as that, as sufferers experience different intensities of the disease, yet what separates us also brings us together as so many similarities overlap.

Your life will change but maybe not to the degree that you think it will. The colitis symptoms that you experience may only ever reach the mild form and can be managed successfully. It does not suggest that they can be ignored or not taken seriously in any way. You have to accept that even mild symptoms will have some effect on life's routines when colitis becomes active. Your lifestyle will have to adjust, what you do, what you eat, the medication that you have to take, all have to be taken into consideration. You do not want to undertake anything that might have the effect of exacerbating the problems. In effect, you must understand that you have in fact to respect the disease and the inherent power that it has to potentially inflict serious illness. And once this is appreciated, understood and accepted, you can commence a plan to create a defensive mechanism against it.

It is only natural to envisage that your own colitis experience will be one of endless severe pain and discomfort. Just to reassure you, very few people actually suffer continuous symptoms. For the vast majority, it is a disease whose symptoms appear then disappear though the timescale in between varies among sufferers. Some fortunate ones have an attack and can then go many, many years of enjoying full health again whilst others have to be on guard as to the possibility of a pending relapse. Just to complicate matters, symptoms may appear all of a sudden and raise alarm but that does not suggest that the sufferer is at the start of a relapse. Experience is the key to understanding this and learning from others is vital in this respect.

The degree of severity of colitis relapses can vary and from mild to full blown symptoms. At these times, it can be very hard to endure the prolonged symptoms An attack can take so much out of you both physically and mentally and can last for several months, though thankfully the worst of the attack can be over in a matter of weeks.

It is very important to prepare yourself mentally for such times, as this approach will assist you in your most difficult days and aid recovery. There will be periods during a relapse when you yearn to be well again, when you will feel very fed up and tired of the same routine that has been inflicted upon you. Pre preparing for this holds the key for a timely recovery. The knowledge and experience of others who have been through many relapses hold the answers to ensure your own colitis diagnosis and all it brings is managed as well as it can be.