- Joined
- Apr 28, 2011
- Messages
- 203
Well I never would of thought I would become a member on a forum for a chronic condition. Interesting how life throws you a curve ball from time to time. Anyway, I've been dealing with IBS-D/Crohn's symptoms since Aug 2010 without an official diagnosis. Seems like out of 6 Dr's including 2 gastro's that I've gotten 6 different answeres as to what I might have; frustrating to say the least. At least now my primary and my gastro seem to be on the same page and not just jumping to conclusions anymore. Well, for me this started when I had to get a communication lanced and from that day it has been almost a non stop permanent vacation in the bathroom. 5 to 10 trips everyday including diarrhea, mucus, blood, nastiness, and some of the worst pain I think I've ever experienced. I think I've almost set a complete set of new lyrics to Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. My gastro recommended I do this, but I still am holding out thinking this is either bacterial or parasitic in nature. Just wish I could get back to being able to enjoy the outdoors and life like I used too.
Med history during this 8 months so far,
Doxicycline: took this before seeing the gastro, worked wonders at stopping the diarrhea, but symptoms returned.
Got Blood, Urine, and Stool tests to see what was going on. Nothing showed up. All in normal range, or negative.
Colonoscopy: Dr said I had crohns from the inflimmation present in the large intestine and put me on prednisone, azulfidine, and lortab for the pain.
Prednisone: did the normal regimen starting at 40mg, dont know if it did anything
Azulfidine: Was at 4 gr at one time down to 2 gr for almost 4 months. This had no effect on me at all
Lortab: The 10mg ones he put me on barely did anything but take the edge off. Made me feel like I was in a fish bowl all day, so broke in half and got the same effect minus the fish bowl feeling. Okay could deal at this point but still not great.
The results for the biopsey taking during the colonoscopy came back as negative. So he had me take another blood test.
Flagyl: Did a 10 day round of this and finally got 3 weeks of relief back at 99% then symptoms returned.
Flagyl Round 2: Did another 10 day round and only got a week of relief. Dr does another blood test.
Prometheus Serology 7: again came back negative, my gastro is getting frustrated at this point and so am I. All these negative results are whats fuelling my Bacterial/Parasitic self diagnosis.
Dr is going to do another colonoscopy in about 2 weeks to see how I'm doing inside. I also told him that I wanted a lower GI CT afterwards reguardless of the results. Just want to make sure nothing else is going on that could effect the GI tract and mimic IBS symptoms.
In the meantime I started my own little medical cocktail to see if any improvements are made.
Cocktail Cycle:
Rifaximin 400mg bid for two weeks on 1 week off and repeat
Wormwood Combination 2 tablets tid every day
Probiotics 1cap bid during the off antibiotic week
Thinking of adding Cipro 500mg bid to this because the rifaximin in not systemic. Just want to cover all basis.
The first cycle of this I didn't notice to much except what I can only describe as a lot of die-off, tons of mucus, just absolute nastiness. I currently am on the second cycle and am noticing that my good and bad days are going more and more toward 50/50 instead of what they used to be at 10/90. (90 being the bad days) Hopefully whatever this unknown problem is seems to be getting better, but time will tell.
At this point I dont know, but thanks to everyone who got to this point.
Med history during this 8 months so far,
Doxicycline: took this before seeing the gastro, worked wonders at stopping the diarrhea, but symptoms returned.
Got Blood, Urine, and Stool tests to see what was going on. Nothing showed up. All in normal range, or negative.
Colonoscopy: Dr said I had crohns from the inflimmation present in the large intestine and put me on prednisone, azulfidine, and lortab for the pain.
Prednisone: did the normal regimen starting at 40mg, dont know if it did anything
Azulfidine: Was at 4 gr at one time down to 2 gr for almost 4 months. This had no effect on me at all
Lortab: The 10mg ones he put me on barely did anything but take the edge off. Made me feel like I was in a fish bowl all day, so broke in half and got the same effect minus the fish bowl feeling. Okay could deal at this point but still not great.
The results for the biopsey taking during the colonoscopy came back as negative. So he had me take another blood test.
Flagyl: Did a 10 day round of this and finally got 3 weeks of relief back at 99% then symptoms returned.
Flagyl Round 2: Did another 10 day round and only got a week of relief. Dr does another blood test.
Prometheus Serology 7: again came back negative, my gastro is getting frustrated at this point and so am I. All these negative results are whats fuelling my Bacterial/Parasitic self diagnosis.
Dr is going to do another colonoscopy in about 2 weeks to see how I'm doing inside. I also told him that I wanted a lower GI CT afterwards reguardless of the results. Just want to make sure nothing else is going on that could effect the GI tract and mimic IBS symptoms.
In the meantime I started my own little medical cocktail to see if any improvements are made.
Cocktail Cycle:
Rifaximin 400mg bid for two weeks on 1 week off and repeat
Wormwood Combination 2 tablets tid every day
Probiotics 1cap bid during the off antibiotic week
Thinking of adding Cipro 500mg bid to this because the rifaximin in not systemic. Just want to cover all basis.
The first cycle of this I didn't notice to much except what I can only describe as a lot of die-off, tons of mucus, just absolute nastiness. I currently am on the second cycle and am noticing that my good and bad days are going more and more toward 50/50 instead of what they used to be at 10/90. (90 being the bad days) Hopefully whatever this unknown problem is seems to be getting better, but time will tell.
At this point I dont know, but thanks to everyone who got to this point.
