Hi Brianna,
I'm sorry that you needed to seek out this board, but welcome to our internet family. We consider ourselves a family, because no one truly understands this disease, and how severely it affects our lives, unless they actually have it. I hope that you can find the solutions you need, here, so that you can get your life back.
MC is a much more complex disease than most doctors realize, and symptoms among the members here vary significantly. Probably only about a third of us have a significant problem with nausea, but for me it was a somewhat regular, and very troublesome symptom, often leading to vomiting. The reason why nausea occurs with MC, appears to be because the disease tends to cause temporary/transient gastroparesis for many of us. IOW, our stomach refuses to empty normally,
sometimes, (but most of the time it works normally).
How long have you been taking the Lialda? It usually takes at least several seeks for the class of medications that includes Lialda, (known as 5-ASA drugs), to begin showing any significant benefits. The 5-ASA medications do better as maintenance meds, than they do as initial therapeuric treatments.
Unfortunately, Ant is quite correct - the proton pump inhibitors are known to cause MC, so the big question is, were you taking Aciphex before your MC symptoms began? If so, it is almost surely the cause of your problem, and if that's the case, discontinuing the drug might bring remission of all your symptoms without any need for further intervention. If it was not the initial trigger for your disease, though, then it may or may not be a problem for you now.
Strangely, most GI specialists incorrectly believe that diet has nothing to do with digestive system diseases. That's about as weird as claiming that the pollution in the air we breathe has nothing to do with respiratory system diseases.
Most of the members here, (who have been here for a while), have discovered that in fact, diet is very important in the treatment of digestive system diseases, and many of us here have been in remission for many years, by diet alone - either we have never taken any meds to treat the disease, or we took them early on, until our diet changes were able to allow our gut to heal, and after that, the diet is sufficient. Some members, however, who have very severe cases, find it necessary to use both medications, and careful diet restrictions, in order to maintain remission.
The main reason why there aren't very many diagnosed cases of MC in young people, is because for decades, doctors insisted that this was a disease of "older women", and so they almost never looked for the disease in anyone else. You can't find the disease, if you don't look for it, (by taking biopsies of the lining of the colon), so that was a self-fulfilling prophesy. Fortunately, GI docs are slowly beginning to realize that MC can develop at any age, so it is now being diagnosed at an escalating rate, in all age classes.
As Naty mentioned, our youngest member, (actually, her mom joined on her behalf), was two and half years old, when she was diagnosed. By changing her diet, her mom was able to bring her to remission within a matter of a couple of months, and she has been in remission ever since. I believe that she will celebrate her 5th birthday in less than a week, (with a gluten-free cake, of course).
Again, welcome aboard, and please feel free to ask anything. You have found the largest database of valid information about MC in the world. No one knows more about the disease than those who have to live with it every day, so we learn from each other here. Trust me, if you are willing to do what is necessary to control your symptoms, you will get your life back.
Tex (Wayne)
P. S. I like your tag line. The bad news is that MC is real. The good news is that anything is permitted, in order to control the disease, regardless of whether or not the medical community endorses it as an "official" treatment.
Visit the Microscopic Colitis Foundation Website
Brianna, I'm so happy you found us.
