Travel Symptoms for UC and Endo

I have mentioned in the past that the diet for endometriosis and the diet for Ulcerative Colitis are quite contradictory to one another. In the years that I only knew about my endometriosis I knew exactly how to avoid getting endobelly – the distended belly that results from inflammatory foods such as carbs. But once I was diagnosed with UC, I noticed that sometimes the distended belly is not from endo but in fact from some bodily confusion where my colon decides to just hold tight to my “food” for a while before releasing it. Here are my observations:

As my food moves down the descending colon I think it gets stuck there for a bit and is painful to say the least, due to the massive pressure it puts on my body. Then as the bulk finally moves into my sigmoid colon it is painful  – like actually painful – and very speedy. As I am often curious how healthy my bowel movement is (cus who doesnt look in the bowl after a good one?!?) the size of the bowel movement is much smaller than the size of my swollen belly before everything came out, which leads me to believe there is a lot of swelling and edema (water retention) happening as well.

Last week as I was preparing for my trip to Atlanta I had a bit of (what I thought was) endobelly. I thought, “maybe I should do one of those before and after pics to share with people”. But I also forgot that traveling also makes me bloated. After three days (below, left) my belly was quite the basketball. I waited and waited,… no relief until finally I landed back in Vancouver last night (5 days later) and my body felt at ease (below, right). Needless to say there are endless trips to the bathroom to go from the left image to the right image, but man does it feel good when its out.

I have NEVER shared these types of photos before so Im a little nervous at the criticism I might get, but knew in my heart it was time to share this. I hope this makes others feel less alone with these symptoms.