Ulcerative Colitis Forced Her Out of Class 37 Times

Marisol had carried her tray halfway across the dining hall when the cramp stopped her. She set the tray on the nearest open table, left her backpack under the chair and walked fast, trying not to run.

The bathroom outside the dining hall was closed for cleaning. The next one was across the lobby. By the time she returned, a worker had cleared her food and another student was sitting at the table.

Back in the dorm, Marisol opened a notebook and wrote the month, the meal and what happened. She had bought it before moving to campus, after her specialist suggested keeping track of symptoms. At home it had spent weeks unopened. Now it lived in the front pocket of her backpack.

That entry was the first of 11 dining hall meals she left before finishing during her first semester.

Marisol had been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis 14 months earlier, while finishing high school. Her symptoms included urgent diarrhea, blood in her stool, cramping and fatigue. Treatment had helped, but her symptoms had not settled into anything she could predict.

At home, the bathroom was a few steps from her bedroom. Her mother cooked meals Marisol recognized and packed leftovers in plain containers. Campus replaced that small certainty with shared bathrooms, menu cards that did not answer her questions and classes where leaving could count against her.

No one in her family had attended a four-year college. Her parents knew how to help her compare financial aid offers and stretch the money set aside for books, but they did not know that a campus accessibility office might handle illness-related absences. Marisol did not know either.

The bathroom down the hall

The dorm bathroom had several stalls, yet availability changed without warning. Someone might be showering with music playing while other students stood at the sinks. A custodian could block the entrance for cleaning. On weekend nights, people gathered there to fix their hair and talk before going out.

Marisol learned to check the bathroom before getting into bed. She kept sandals beside the door and stopped wearing headphones in the hallway, because she wanted to hear whether someone had called out that the bathroom was closed.

None of this prevented urgency.

During one bad stretch in September, she woke repeatedly and walked down the hall holding the waistband of her pajama pants away from her abdomen. She began carrying a change of clothes to the bathroom. The clothes stayed folded in a tote, hidden beneath a towel.

A housing option with a private bathroom would have cost about $1,700 more for the semester. Marisol and her mother looked at the price on a laptop during a video call, then closed the page. Moving off campus would have meant rent, transportation and a lease neither of them understood well enough to sign from a distance.

She remained in the dorm.

The notebook became more specific. Marisol marked nights when sleep broke apart and drew a line beside each class she left urgently. She did not record every bathroom trip, which would have made the notebook another full-time obligation. She tracked the moments that changed what happened next.

Leaving class counted as absence

In a large lecture, Marisol sat near the aisle. She avoided the center of the row, even when the open seats had a better view. If her stomach tightened, she closed her laptop and slipped out with as little movement as possible.

One professor marked attendance through brief work completed during class. When Marisol missed an exercise because she was in the bathroom, the portal recorded a zero. She emailed an explanation. The response said students were expected to handle personal needs before class and that repeated exits showed poor planning.

She read that sentence twice.

Another instructor counted her absent after she left midway through a discussion and did not return. Marisol had made it back to the building, but the classroom door was shut and she could not bring herself to enter while everyone watched. The absence stayed in the gradebook.

At first, she tried to solve the problem by eating less before class. That left her lightheaded and thinking about food while the professor spoke, and it did not guarantee that her bowel would stay quiet. Ulcerative colitis did not follow the neat exchange she wanted, where an empty stomach bought a calm hour.

Her mother noticed the unopened dining hall charges accumulating on the campus account and asked whether Marisol was eating. Marisol said she was figuring it out. She did not mention the tray that had disappeared or the crackers she kept in her desk beside the notebook.

Six weeks into the semester, an academic adviser saw several attendance marks while reviewing Marisol’s grades. The adviser mentioned the accessibility office and explained that students with ongoing health conditions could request formal support.

The process took another month. Marisol submitted paperwork, learned that more documentation was needed and contacted her specialist’s office between classes. Her specialist filled out the additional material. The campus office then approved flexibility around urgent bathroom exits and illness-related attendance, with each professor expected to discuss how that would work in the course.

The approval changed one consequential thing. Marisol no longer had to ask permission before standing up.

It did not erase the zeros already in the portal, and it did not make every instructor understand urgency. One professor asked Marisol to send a message before any illness-related absence, a request that made sense on paper and failed whenever she woke already sick. Another accepted the accommodation but wanted to discuss each missed class afterward.

Marisol brought the notebook to those conversations. It was not medical documentation, and she did not present it as proof of what her colon was doing. It gave her dates, the class sessions affected and the difference between leaving for several minutes and missing the day because she could not leave the dorm.

The professor who had called her exits poor planning looked through a typed summary based on the notebook. The earlier attendance penalties remained, but future urgent exits no longer produced automatic zeros. Marisol stopped checking the grade portal after every class.

What the dining hall could not promise

Food stayed uncertain. Dining hall labels identified some ingredients, but they could not tell Marisol what her body would tolerate that afternoon. A meal that felt manageable during a quieter week could be hard to finish when symptoms picked up.

She began taking smaller portions so she could return for more rather than abandon a full plate. On difficult days, she carried food back to the dorm if the rules allowed it. She kept crackers in her desk for the stretches when getting to the dining hall felt too risky.

This made eating less public, which helped. It also made meals lonely.

The notebook recorded food without turning it into a verdict. Marisol had started the semester searching for a dependable connection between one meal and the next urgent trip, but the pages resisted that clean explanation, because stress, active symptoms and interrupted treatment routines appeared beside many of the same foods.

By November, the notebook held 37 lines for urgent class exits. Some took only part of a lecture. Others ended the school day. Five occurred during the same week, when Marisol also missed a call from her specialist’s office because she had fallen asleep between classes.

Her grades recovered unevenly. In the course with automatic attendance work, the later exits no longer lowered her score. She made up an exam missed during a flare after the accessibility office confirmed that the absence fell within her approved arrangement. In another class, participation remained low because too much of the semester had passed before the paperwork was complete.

Marisol finished the semester and went home for winter break. Before leaving the dorm, she emptied food from the desk and found cracker crumbs beneath the notebook. She counted the 37 class-exit marks once more, closed the cover and packed it beside her campus meal card.

Questions people ask

Can ulcerative colitis accommodations cover urgent bathroom exits?

In this composite story, formal accommodations allowed Marisol to leave class without asking and prevented future exits from becoming automatic attendance penalties. Campus policies and course requirements varied, and the approval did not erase earlier marks. The practical change came when instructors received written notice and discussed how urgent departures would be recorded.

What happens if a professor treats symptoms as poor planning?

Marisol’s explanations alone did not change the first professor’s response. Documentation from her specialist and the accessibility office shifted the conversation from personal discretion to an approved health-related need. Her notebook was not medical proof, but it helped her describe the dates, missed work and pattern without trying to reconstruct everything from memory.

How can shared dorm bathrooms affect a student with ulcerative colitis?

For Marisol, the problem was not cleanliness or embarrassment alone. It was whether a stall would be available during sudden urgency, including when the bathroom was closed for cleaning. She carried spare clothes and checked access before bed, while the higher cost of a private bathroom kept her in shared housing.

How did she handle uncertain dining hall food?

Marisol could not depend on menu labels to predict how she would feel after eating. She took smaller portions, sometimes carried food back to the dorm and recorded disrupted meals without treating one food as the sole cause. During harder stretches, the notebook stayed in her desk beside a sleeve of crackers.