At 23, Chloe Melas was embracing life in Manhattan and enjoying everything it had to offer. One day, she noticed bright red blood in her stool. While she felt worried, she thought little of it.
“I can’t explain to you why I ignored it,” the 37-year-old NBC News entertainment correspondent recalls to TODAY.com. “Eventually I went to a gastroenterologist, and I was diagnosed with something called proctitis, which is basically an inflammation of the rectum.”
Her doctor gave her medication, but she didn’t improve. Then she started feeling an urgency to defecate but couldn’t, causing her to frequently rush to the bathroom. She returned to the doctor, underwent a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a type of inflammatory bowel disease.
“I want to speak about the things that are tough to talk about because I know there are people suffering in silence,” she says.
Disruptive gastrointestinal symptoms lead to a life-changing diagnosis
When Melas arrived in New York City after college, she worked long days and late nights.
“I was burning the candle at both ends like you do in your 20s when you’re working and making friends and enjoying all that the Big Apple has to offer,” she recalls. “Working out and eating healthy really was not a priority of mine.”
Melas was rarely getting eight hours of sleep or eating balanced meals. About two months after she first spotted blood in her stool, she saw a doctor, who diagnosed her with proctitis, “basically an inflammation of the rectum.” She felt stunned.
“They could not tell me what it was from. (I was wondering) is this something in my diet? Is it due to stress? Is it genetic?” she recalls. “No one in my family had any (gastrointestinal) issues.”
The doctor prescribed suppositories, a type of medication inserted into the rectum, to treat the…
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