Hi everyone,
Fairly new to the forum & to Crohn's, just thought I'd make a post about my experience of it. This is going to be long, the title is the TLDR.
A couple of years ago I started to notice some problems with my digestive system, after never really having any past problems in that regard, like most in their early twenties. I seemed to have infrequent bloating, mild digestive cramps, and little spots of bright red blood on toilet paper. The latter symptom did not worry me too much, as I had noticed this isolated symptom occasionally since my teens, and put it down to haemorrhoids. Still, after a few months of the occasional cramps (which tended to last only a few seconds) and the more regular bloating, I knew something wasn’t quite right, and suspected lactose intolerance, as cheese seemed to cause the onset of symptoms. However, time went on, and dietary changes did not seem to be making much observable difference. Further yet, the symptoms were steadily increasing, and I had acquired one that still persists rather stubbornly – the almost irrepressible need for a bowel movement whenever I feel the slightest level of stress or apprehension. I’d be interested to know if anyone else experiences this last one, as it is currently my least favourite.
Needless to say, I was starting to think that allergies were not my problem, after all, I’d never had any, and none of my half-baked dietary changes had made a substantial difference. At that point I began to think I had IBS. Pretty much all the symptoms were there – the bloating, the excess gas, the strange stomach rumblings, (infrequent) diarrhoea, the feeling that a bowel movement wasn’t really ‘done’. At this point you may be wondering whether I was visiting any doctors. Unfortunately, I was not, as I had tended to be one of those people who doesn’t visit a doctor unless they notice something drastically wrong, like a stab wound or some other unbearable pain. Sometime later, however, my ‘leave it to its own devices’ method, or non-method, eventually led to such pain. Upon bowel movements, I had noticed increasing pain, and increasing blood. Most worryingly, the blood was a little darker, and there seemed to be a little of a mucus-like substance in it. I was finally right about to go to the doc, as a forum post about a fellow 23 year-old having bowel cancer was more than enough to jolt me into action, when the pain kicked in.
I first noticed an unusual sensation slightly to the right of my rear-end, like I was sitting on a small pebble. Over a period of days it became worse, to the point where a bowel movement would cause some pain afterwards, though it would then gradually dissipate once sitting comfortably. Sitting comfortably became very hard however, and google produced a worrying diagnosis: perianal abscess. I noticed that this could be a problem for people with Crohn’s. I had earlier dismissed Crohn’s as the source of my problems, because I didn’t have some/most of the risk factors (no smoking, no family members with the disease) or the symptoms (vomiting, weight loss, fatigue). I was now a little more worried about things, and went to the doc (GP), listing off my IBD symptoms, haemorrhoids suspicions, and the pains that I felt related to a little lump, which I noted ‘could be an abscess’. Despite a first-time ‘digital examination’ (oh why me – I thought I wouldn’t be having these until my 40’s for prostate!?!) which was…memorable, the doc noticed no abscess, but took note of my stressed state and the fact that I had been straining at bowel movements and probably had haemorrhoids. He reassured me, and gave me some laxatives. Those loosened things up, but the pain continued after a few days, and I was surer than ever that there was an abscess. It was Sunday, so I had to see a different doc, but he reached the same conclusion – no abscess (although he suspected some sort of parasitic infection for the IBD symptoms, which would later come back negative).
With two medical opinions and ostensibly zero abscesses, I was feeling a little silly, but the pain only worsened. One day I woke up with a bit of pain and made the mistake of going to the toilet. The pain after that was some of the worst I’d ever experienced – a continual and extremely uncomfortable throbbing sensation from the abscess area, I could barely walk properly. After yelling my way through a shower for pain-relief, I got dressed and decided to go back to the first doctor. I could feel the lump near the hole and it was pretty noticeable, as if a large grape was lodged under the skin. If the doc couldn’t see it this time I’d put my damn finger on it to point it out. Naturally, the doc noticed it this time – ‘oh, you must be in a bit of pain’. ‘You’re not wrong’, I thought. So he lanced it (read: sliced into it) right there. Thought that may be the end of the pain in the interim, although I was immediately informed that ‘there was no pus, only a lot of blood, which means it’s not an abscess or I sliced into it wrong’. Great, I thought. Off to the emergency department, which was worrying, although by this point, as you might imagine, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the GP’s, and figured that the hospital would at least sort it all out. They confirmed it was an abscess, cut all the way in and removed the pus, and informed me that I also now had a fistula, for which I had a Seton. By this point (Feb of this year) a gastroenterologist was onto things, and I was onto some pills and readied for a MRI, bloodwork and colonoscopy/endoscopy, which confirmed Crohn’s with moderate inflammation.
I then went on and off a couple of drugs, and am now taking budesonide (which I had gone off, but things flared up) and 100mg of Azathioprine. Still have a number of symptoms (bloody mucus, pain at bowel movements although that may be fissures, and the stomach cramps) which aren’t going away after a few months on the Aza, and I expect that at my next appointment I will end up on the infusions. Things are better though, and I'm lucky enough to have access to experts who are managing things. Anyway, that’s my overly long Crohn’s story, which includes an obvious lesson on procrastination and self-diagnosis.
Rohmer
Fairly new to the forum & to Crohn's, just thought I'd make a post about my experience of it. This is going to be long, the title is the TLDR.
A couple of years ago I started to notice some problems with my digestive system, after never really having any past problems in that regard, like most in their early twenties. I seemed to have infrequent bloating, mild digestive cramps, and little spots of bright red blood on toilet paper. The latter symptom did not worry me too much, as I had noticed this isolated symptom occasionally since my teens, and put it down to haemorrhoids. Still, after a few months of the occasional cramps (which tended to last only a few seconds) and the more regular bloating, I knew something wasn’t quite right, and suspected lactose intolerance, as cheese seemed to cause the onset of symptoms. However, time went on, and dietary changes did not seem to be making much observable difference. Further yet, the symptoms were steadily increasing, and I had acquired one that still persists rather stubbornly – the almost irrepressible need for a bowel movement whenever I feel the slightest level of stress or apprehension. I’d be interested to know if anyone else experiences this last one, as it is currently my least favourite.
Needless to say, I was starting to think that allergies were not my problem, after all, I’d never had any, and none of my half-baked dietary changes had made a substantial difference. At that point I began to think I had IBS. Pretty much all the symptoms were there – the bloating, the excess gas, the strange stomach rumblings, (infrequent) diarrhoea, the feeling that a bowel movement wasn’t really ‘done’. At this point you may be wondering whether I was visiting any doctors. Unfortunately, I was not, as I had tended to be one of those people who doesn’t visit a doctor unless they notice something drastically wrong, like a stab wound or some other unbearable pain. Sometime later, however, my ‘leave it to its own devices’ method, or non-method, eventually led to such pain. Upon bowel movements, I had noticed increasing pain, and increasing blood. Most worryingly, the blood was a little darker, and there seemed to be a little of a mucus-like substance in it. I was finally right about to go to the doc, as a forum post about a fellow 23 year-old having bowel cancer was more than enough to jolt me into action, when the pain kicked in.
I first noticed an unusual sensation slightly to the right of my rear-end, like I was sitting on a small pebble. Over a period of days it became worse, to the point where a bowel movement would cause some pain afterwards, though it would then gradually dissipate once sitting comfortably. Sitting comfortably became very hard however, and google produced a worrying diagnosis: perianal abscess. I noticed that this could be a problem for people with Crohn’s. I had earlier dismissed Crohn’s as the source of my problems, because I didn’t have some/most of the risk factors (no smoking, no family members with the disease) or the symptoms (vomiting, weight loss, fatigue). I was now a little more worried about things, and went to the doc (GP), listing off my IBD symptoms, haemorrhoids suspicions, and the pains that I felt related to a little lump, which I noted ‘could be an abscess’. Despite a first-time ‘digital examination’ (oh why me – I thought I wouldn’t be having these until my 40’s for prostate!?!) which was…memorable, the doc noticed no abscess, but took note of my stressed state and the fact that I had been straining at bowel movements and probably had haemorrhoids. He reassured me, and gave me some laxatives. Those loosened things up, but the pain continued after a few days, and I was surer than ever that there was an abscess. It was Sunday, so I had to see a different doc, but he reached the same conclusion – no abscess (although he suspected some sort of parasitic infection for the IBD symptoms, which would later come back negative).
With two medical opinions and ostensibly zero abscesses, I was feeling a little silly, but the pain only worsened. One day I woke up with a bit of pain and made the mistake of going to the toilet. The pain after that was some of the worst I’d ever experienced – a continual and extremely uncomfortable throbbing sensation from the abscess area, I could barely walk properly. After yelling my way through a shower for pain-relief, I got dressed and decided to go back to the first doctor. I could feel the lump near the hole and it was pretty noticeable, as if a large grape was lodged under the skin. If the doc couldn’t see it this time I’d put my damn finger on it to point it out. Naturally, the doc noticed it this time – ‘oh, you must be in a bit of pain’. ‘You’re not wrong’, I thought. So he lanced it (read: sliced into it) right there. Thought that may be the end of the pain in the interim, although I was immediately informed that ‘there was no pus, only a lot of blood, which means it’s not an abscess or I sliced into it wrong’. Great, I thought. Off to the emergency department, which was worrying, although by this point, as you might imagine, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the GP’s, and figured that the hospital would at least sort it all out. They confirmed it was an abscess, cut all the way in and removed the pus, and informed me that I also now had a fistula, for which I had a Seton. By this point (Feb of this year) a gastroenterologist was onto things, and I was onto some pills and readied for a MRI, bloodwork and colonoscopy/endoscopy, which confirmed Crohn’s with moderate inflammation.
I then went on and off a couple of drugs, and am now taking budesonide (which I had gone off, but things flared up) and 100mg of Azathioprine. Still have a number of symptoms (bloody mucus, pain at bowel movements although that may be fissures, and the stomach cramps) which aren’t going away after a few months on the Aza, and I expect that at my next appointment I will end up on the infusions. Things are better though, and I'm lucky enough to have access to experts who are managing things. Anyway, that’s my overly long Crohn’s story, which includes an obvious lesson on procrastination and self-diagnosis.
Rohmer
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