Curiosity poll...At what age were you diagnosed with UC?

 

The reason I did 5 year spans between the ages of 20 and 30 is because that is when most people are diagnosed.

I was diagnosed this year (I think I'm 42...lol), but I had symptoms for about six years before that.

NBT

You know, an interesting poll would be at what age--in retrospect--did you start having sx's. I believe I started to have mild sx's as a teenager, but b/c noone talks about bathroom habits, what is "normal," I thought everyone went to the bathroom like me; I know I didn't want to talk about having excessive amounts of diarrhea at 15 y/o.

sx's = abbreviation for symptoms

diagnosed at 23...when I was diagnosed the doctors told me UC is often called a "disease of the young."

That would be an interesting poll Lucy because many of us has had symptoms prior to our official diagnoses. I went into see my GI once and he sort of shook his head and said, "Wow, can you believe you have had this for (at the time) 12 years??" I just looked at him and said, "Well actually I've had it longer and he agreed. So even though I was diagnosed at 22, I actually started showing symptoms after the birth of my son which would've put me at 21.

I think I was 16 almost 17

My 16 year old son was dx at age 10, but had sx for 4 or so years before that. My daughter was dx at 8 and first had blood in her stool at 5 months of age. She would have blood and mucus 2 or so times per year after that, but never lasted more than 2-3 days and never had loose stool until this past summer when she was dx.

It was actually kind of hard to get the doctors to take me seriously with my son. They'd say that it is almost never blood, more than likely something he ate or that there was a virus going around and one could have diarrhea from it for several weeks. That went on for a couple of years. Finally I took him in with a specimen and they're like, oh yeah, that's blood. With my daughter at 5 months, doctor was like it is likely a fissure (son had not been dx yet). Then later it was easier to get them to take me seriously with her since her brother had IBD.

43 years of age when diagnosed

47

Ha! I'm definitely in the 41+ years. Hee hee. I was dx'd when I was 46.

Mine was at 19. I think it would be interesting to see how often it's hereditary. No one in my family has ever had anything like UC, so I'm curious how many other people out there have no family history/a family history of UC.

I heard that the most common age "group" is 15-35.

I think a lot of the information out there is a bit out dated. They still say only 500,000 in the US dx'd. They said that in '03 when I was dx'd. There seem to be a lot of people dx'd since then. Also, a lot more people talking about it. I also heard that the 500k number was from those that were hospitalized. I know many that have never been hospitalized.

31 here