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Diagnosed in 09

S

SidS

Hi, I was diagnosed in 09 with Crohn's disease in my rectum. Since then I haven't been treating it to optimal. I was on Lialda and took it when ever I had flare ups and would go off it. I would say my Crohns is mild, never had weight loss, fever or excruciating abdominal pain some diarrhea here and there but only lasted several weeks after I took my meds. I had a blood test done last year to check for any B12 or vitamin deficiency and everything came up up negative I guess I have been lucky and I eat whatever I to without any flares up.

Anyways I feel flare up coming up and having sharp pains in by rectum, nothing to serious and have scheduled to see a GI next week and plan to endoscopy and colonoscopy done very soon. I will be going to a new GI doctor since that last one I went I felt like he didn't communicated well. Anyways I want to start taking care of my crohns and hopefully its still mild and want to keep it that way. So I was wondering if you have any advise on questions I should ask my GI doctor. I have a few lined up such as wanting to be on Meds so I can keep it mild, I didn't know that mild crohns can become severe if not treated. I am going ask him to do all sort of blood test to check for any vitamin deficiency and so forth. What other test should I ask him to do, or any other questions?

This time I around I want to be in control, since I haven't taken it seriously and lacked knowledge of complications that can occur if untreated which I want to avoid.

Thank you for your help.
 
Jennifer

Jennifer

Adminstrator
Staff member
Location
SLO
Ask if there are any other tests besides the scopes that the doctor can run like barium x-rays, pill cam or an MRI, things like that cause sometimes the scopes don't show everything (certainly don't show the small intestine and you want to be sure that that's still unaffected). Also ask about all sorts of treatment options (say if they just randomly throw out a med to try, ask why that drug and not any other, what will it do etc) and then ask if they want to do regular blood work to check for inflammation etc and when they want to see you again to have a follow up.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head as you've got a good list so far. Keep us posted on how it goes and welcome to the forum! :D
 
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