H
HVS
Guest
Hi Everyone,
This is my first post to this site so I thought that I would introduce myself and give a little background. Like most of us with this disease, my story is kind of long and winding with a few false starts, so I'll try to keep it brief.
In the fall of 2002 I came down with, what I thought at the time, was a stomach flu. However, after being serious ill (bathroom visits 10x's/day) for about a week and unable to go to work, I finally went to my doctor. He said it was probably just some bad gastroenteritis and would clear up shortly. After about another week, I was starting to feel better, but not great. Eventually, I was back at work but was only firing on about two cylinders. I had trouble eating anything more than the blandest food. So, my doctor then sent me to a GI specialist, who, after an upper endoscopy (negative) determined that I had IBS and told me to watch what I eat. At this point, I was fine most of the time unless I ate red meat, raw vegetables, etc. This went on until January of 2004.
In January 2004, my eyes became very painful and red, so after a visit to the opthamologist, they determined that it was iritis (an inflammation of the iris) and that it is usually associated with other inflammatory conditions. They gave me steroid drops for my eyes and told me to check in with my doctor again. Fast forward to March, and my iritis didn't seem to want to clear up and now my feet were swelling to the point where I could barely wear my shoes. Plus, I was feeling constantly ill and could barely eat. I was getting increasingly frustrated with my doctors as I knew there is something wrong, but they seemed to be baffled. Finally, in one of my numerous office visits I almost passed out and I was admitted to the hospital. After a colonoscopy, it is determined that I had inflammation throughout my lower intestine and that I have Crohn's disease. At this point, I'm just happy to know what I've been suffering from for the past year and a half. My GI doctor came home early from his vacation to check me out, which was surprising, considering the lack of care I had received from every other doctor up to that point.
The rest of the story is pretty standard treatment stuff. I'm on a fairly high dosage of Imuran and a low (5mg) dose of prednisone still because my disease seems to be fairly aggressive, if manageable. We are working to get me off the pred as soon as possible. Overall, however, I have felt great ever since getting out of the hospital. The disease was contained to the colon, so I haven't had any nutritional problems, and I put the weight (and then some) back on from before I got sick in 2002.
Needless to say, this can be one of the most frustrating diseases to get diagnosed, and they really need to train doctors better at diagnosing it.
Finally, I have spent the better part of the past 2.5 years studying Crohn's disease and have a pretty good understanding of where they are with it (I even waded through the massive Inflammatory Bowel Diseases by Kirsner). If anyone is interested, I have started a small blog recently to track the latest news regarding IBD available here:
http://ibdblog.blogspot.com
I used to do this as a Yahoo! Group for about a year, but felt that this was a better method to manage all of the news that comes out.
Regards,
UPDATE: "January 2004" not "January 2003"
This is my first post to this site so I thought that I would introduce myself and give a little background. Like most of us with this disease, my story is kind of long and winding with a few false starts, so I'll try to keep it brief.
In the fall of 2002 I came down with, what I thought at the time, was a stomach flu. However, after being serious ill (bathroom visits 10x's/day) for about a week and unable to go to work, I finally went to my doctor. He said it was probably just some bad gastroenteritis and would clear up shortly. After about another week, I was starting to feel better, but not great. Eventually, I was back at work but was only firing on about two cylinders. I had trouble eating anything more than the blandest food. So, my doctor then sent me to a GI specialist, who, after an upper endoscopy (negative) determined that I had IBS and told me to watch what I eat. At this point, I was fine most of the time unless I ate red meat, raw vegetables, etc. This went on until January of 2004.
In January 2004, my eyes became very painful and red, so after a visit to the opthamologist, they determined that it was iritis (an inflammation of the iris) and that it is usually associated with other inflammatory conditions. They gave me steroid drops for my eyes and told me to check in with my doctor again. Fast forward to March, and my iritis didn't seem to want to clear up and now my feet were swelling to the point where I could barely wear my shoes. Plus, I was feeling constantly ill and could barely eat. I was getting increasingly frustrated with my doctors as I knew there is something wrong, but they seemed to be baffled. Finally, in one of my numerous office visits I almost passed out and I was admitted to the hospital. After a colonoscopy, it is determined that I had inflammation throughout my lower intestine and that I have Crohn's disease. At this point, I'm just happy to know what I've been suffering from for the past year and a half. My GI doctor came home early from his vacation to check me out, which was surprising, considering the lack of care I had received from every other doctor up to that point.
The rest of the story is pretty standard treatment stuff. I'm on a fairly high dosage of Imuran and a low (5mg) dose of prednisone still because my disease seems to be fairly aggressive, if manageable. We are working to get me off the pred as soon as possible. Overall, however, I have felt great ever since getting out of the hospital. The disease was contained to the colon, so I haven't had any nutritional problems, and I put the weight (and then some) back on from before I got sick in 2002.
Needless to say, this can be one of the most frustrating diseases to get diagnosed, and they really need to train doctors better at diagnosing it.
Finally, I have spent the better part of the past 2.5 years studying Crohn's disease and have a pretty good understanding of where they are with it (I even waded through the massive Inflammatory Bowel Diseases by Kirsner). If anyone is interested, I have started a small blog recently to track the latest news regarding IBD available here:
http://ibdblog.blogspot.com
I used to do this as a Yahoo! Group for about a year, but felt that this was a better method to manage all of the news that comes out.
Regards,
UPDATE: "January 2004" not "January 2003"
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