Features

The Bottom Line
Woman’s Own, 24th March 2003
By Jean Williams

We’re happy to discuss the state of our sex lives and giggle about the size of our boobs, but when Stephanie Zinser suspected she had a bowel condition, she was too embarrassed to tell a soul.

Even now, Stephanie Zinser squirms at the memory of discovering she had a bowel disorder 14 years ago. “I was only 25 and I had to really pluck up my courage to go to the doctor. Although I’d recently had my first baby, with all the indignity that involves, I was terribly, terribly embarrassed by the type of examinations I needed. When I was finally diagnosed with a bowel disorder I felt awful. I had a big hang-up about it for a long time,” she recalls.
After years of living with the debilitating bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Stephanie has recently been cured and now she’s a woman on a mission.

“I want other women to know that help is available. Bowel problems are so common, but we’re still too ashamed to go to the doctor. It’s the same attitude people had with breast lumps not so long ago,” she says.
So Stephanie has written a book. It’s a guide to the most common gut disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome and food allergies, and of course, her own bugbear for all those years, ulcerative colitis.
Stephanie first noticed bleeding when she was expecting her eldest daughter, Emily, now 14. She also found she needed to open her bowels three or four times a day.

“After the first big scare, when I thought I was miscarrying, I didn’t take much notice. I put it down to pregnancy and piles.”

It was only when things didn’t improve after Emily’s birth that she reluctantly went to her GP. She had a rectal examination and was told she had a mild form of ulcerative colitis, called proctitis. This is an inflammation of the very last part of the bowel, the rectum, and doesn’t normally become a serious problem.
Stephanie took medication to calm things down, but not for long, as it made her feel nauseous. She wasn’t keen on taking drugs in any case because she and her husband, Steve, wanted more children. Stephanie had given up her investment-banking career to be a full-time mum.

Three years after Emily was born, Jenny came along, and a year later, Katie arrived. Stephanie was happy but frantically busy – Steve was away a great deal with his work as a fund manager. But despite many trips to the hospital, increasingly complicated tests and trials of various drugs, her bowel problem became slowly but surely worse.

“By the time Emily started school, it was pretty awful. Mornings were always my worst time. I’d rush back and forth to the loo as many as 14 times before I left the house with the kids. It was utterly exhausting.”
Ulcerative colitis is unpredictable. Sufferers may have weeks, or even months, with no trouble before it flares up again. “The unpredictability is hard to cope with,” says Stephanie. “I was lucky because I never had any pain and often I’d feel OK again by 11am. Friends would see me in the supermarket looking fine and I’d feel an utter fraud. It was so difficult to explain what was wrong with me.”

Shopping required military-style planning. “I knew where all the shops with toilets were,” says Stephanie, “and I’d make sure I was never far from one.But it was more difficult if I was in a pub or restaurant, and needed the loo. If there was a queue it was a disaster.

“Many people with this illness give up going out altogether, and I can see why. But I tried to keep my life as normal as possible, both for my own sanity and for my family.

“The worst time was on a flight one summer, when the stewardess wouldn’t let me use the loo because the seat-belt signs were on. I had to barge past her because I was so afraid of not making it in time.”

Betweem 1994 and 1997, Stephanie was hospitalised six times for treatment with strong steroids. The inflammation had travelled the entire length of her colon by now, and eventually even the most powerful drugs weren’t enough to keep it under control.

“When my surgeon suggested an operation to remove my entire colon, I was horrified. But once he’d explained that I wouldn’t need a permanent colostomy bag, and I’d still be able to swim and wear normal clothes, I calmed down. It was obvious that I couldn’t go on as I was – I was exhausted the whole time and often so tired I would cry. Steve had always been incredibly supportive, but I’m sure I wasn’t much fun to be around. I knew I had no choice.”

Stephanie had surgery to remove her colon and remake part of her small intestine to serve as a bowel, thus avoiding the need for a colostomy. “I did have a bag for eight weeks, but then it was removed.”

Happily, the surgery has been a complete success. “I can swim, and have even been scuba-diving, I wear what I like, eat what I like, and my energy levels have shot up. I still need to go to the loo quite frequently, but the dreadful urgency has gone. Life’s so much better now. Ulcerative colitis is an awful illness. But it can be managed with the right help.”

"A splendidly detailed book... it will be a life saver for a great many people" Claire Rayner

"An invaluable book for anyone with a bowel or digestive problem" Prof. R. John Nicholls, FRCS

Click here to buy