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A "Woe is Me" Sort of Day

I've mostly been taking my health problems in stride recently, but lord, I'm down in the dumps today. My husband is out of town and the brief minutes we've been able to talk this week, he's obviously been stressed and down too. I've been doing my best to keep distracted, but I've found myself in tears so many times today. Egh. I'm generally a pretty happy person, but I've been struggling with depression some ever since I started on the road to my arthritis diagnosis back in July. I was diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis/Undifferentiated Spondyloarthropothy finally in November. It's a very painful chronic incurable condition (Hey, like IBD!), personally affects me in quite literally every joint, and thus far no treatment has been effective at all. I take about 12 meds daily, yet am getting no relief from my GI stuff or my arthritis. It sucks.

Now I'm in the middle of a whole new round of GI diagnostic tests, and I have the stress of being in limbo about what I have all over again. It's not like my symptoms are any worse than they've been for the last 4 years (which still = pretty damn bad, but it's my *normal* so that alone doesn't freak me out too much), but I've "known" it was "just" IBS for most of that time. Now I'm freaking out about possibilities like Crohn's and Colitis all over again. Egh.

It's funny that my health problems get me down so much more when I'm actually being proactive and advocating well for myself. I guess it's just that I optimistically expect good results with each new thing we try, and each failure drags me down even more.

I joke that my healthcare is my other part time job, but it totally could be. I work part-time (24-36 hours) as a graphic designer, run my own small but growing photography business, take 6 hours of night classes, and have had at least 2 dr appointments or procedures every week for the last month. I've talked on the phone with someone from a doctor's office, hospital/testing facility or insurance just about everyday. I've been to the pharmacy more times than I can count. We have a $4000 deductible at the beginning of the year (the company reimburses us, thank god) and I've definitely already hit at least 1/3 of that in the first 2 weeks of the month. Crazy.

I never though I'd be in this kind of shape at age 21. Ugh.

Well, I need to go draft some letters to my professors explaining while I'll be walking in and out of their lectures regularly to visit the bathroom, and standing up sometimes in class - my hips, SIJ, and low spine are my worst affected joints, and I have 2 back-to-back 3 hour classes. I physically cannot sit that long.

/rant
 
No, no biologics yet. We're most likely going to try Enbrel in about 4 months. I'm supposed to give my DMARDs a good run for 6 months before we starft an anti-TNF drug.
 
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