Hello, my name is Dillon. I am 22 years old and was diagnosed with Crohn's disease January 2014 when I went to the hospital to check out a worsening pain near my appendix. A ct scan revealed severe inflammation around my appendix and the following colonoscopy and biopsy confirmed Crohn's. I have been prescribed Entocort for roughly a month, moved to prednisone, now azathioprine with a tapering of the prednisone. The only relief of the constant lesser painful inflammation has been from a bag of steroids taken via IV because I went to the ER seeking aid instead of the blood lab for some tests to monitor the affects of the azathioprine. This relief lasted the remainder of that day and into the afternoon of the following day, my friend said he hadn't seen me walk that fast in months, no constant inflammation and no sharp crippling inflammation. The steroids wore off and the prednisone is not a substitute and so ended my first break from my 4 month flare up. Considring giving up on medications, going on disability as I keep missing days from work and asking my GI and physician to discuss cannabinol substitutes because these chemicals are having too many side effects: extreme fatigue with 0-4 hours sleep a night ( normally falling asleep between 8-11 and awake between 12-4 every night trying to get comfortable enough to ignore the pain(no progress other than laying on my side induces the worst part of my flare up and laying on my back as well but less intense and slightly relieving of back pain, laying on my stomache is basically the closest thing to feeling relief as I can get, but not enough to sleep), worsening of neausia, vommiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, muscle pain developing and worsening in lower back, red dots on my arms have begun appearing, a tennis ball sized bruise is remaining from my IV of steroids and saline (combination of azathioprine slowing down my bloods clotting ability and the alcohol injected through the IV to sterilize it acting as a local blood thinner left the bruise gaining in size for 4 days from an IV pin hole to the tennis ball sized bruise). I am finishing my second week of azathioprine with my second set of blood tests coming up Tuesday if I can manage to keep myself hydrated enough to keep it from another ER visit. It seems I've lost just over 10 lbs in the two weeks I've been on azathioprine and this is where I am now. Thanks for giving me a place to share.:ghug: