Socceric17's Story
(
Part 1)
Yah sure! My name is Eric, I am from Vermont. I developed Crohn's Disease the summer before my senior year of high school. I am currently age 19 and attending Clarkson University.
When I developed Crohn's Disease, I started having blood in my stools. I thought it was just a bad bug at first but my my symptoms just got worse. I gave it a week but going to the bathroom just became more and more painful. So I told my parents and they scheduled an appointment with a doctor. The appointment was about a month later and during that time, it became so painful to go to the bathroom that I would bite my t-shirt and go on the verge of tears. I stopped eating because it just meant more pain.
I then had my colonoscopy and my endoscopy and my doctor diagnosed me with Crohn's Disease. My doctor said that there was nothing I could do and that my best chances were on medication and I would likely have complications in my future. I was put on Prednizone and a couple other antibiotic drugs. Prednizone made me constantly hungry. I gained weight rapidly until I hit 169lbs. I developed a lot of acne, my face bloated, I developed stretch marks on my thighs, and I woke up at least 3 times every night drenched in sweat to go to the bathroom. Whenever I went back to my bed, it would be cold and wet from sweat and I was very miserable. Slowly they took me off prednizone and put me on a drug called Azathiaprine. I stayed on Azathiaprine the rest of the year, staying on the antibiotics for a little bit after going off of prednizone.
I took dosages of 50mg of azathiaprine but my reccommended dose was about 70-80mg but I felt fine. I was doing well on azathiaprine and made it through the rest of my senior year without incident. Summer came along and one day I started feeling really tired and cold. It started to hurt whenever I sat down. The pain gradually increased and it came to the point where I was wearing a sweatshirt and shivering in the middle of the summer and about to collapse. My mom rushed me to the emergency room and they ran some tests. They discovered that I had an abscess and that they would need to perform surgery (too big to treat with antibiotics).
They put me under and cut into my rear to drain the abscess. After draining it, they stuffed it full of gauze to let the inside heal. I slept through the night and the next day, they came over to remove the gauze. This must be the most painful experience in my entire life. You know how sometimes bandages stick to your skin after you get a nasty scrape? It was like that except a thousand times worse.
I was free to leave the hospital after that as long as I cleaned the hole to make sure it didn't become infected. After this incident, they decided a stronger drug would be better and put me on a drug called Remicade. It was an infusion which I was strongly opposed to because I didn't want to have to go to the hospital at all. They set me up on Remicade but the insurance company refused to pay for it and wanted me to go on Humira instead. So that's what I ended up doing.
My parents found a gastrointestinal doctor near my college so at the beginning of my freshman year in college, I started taking Humira. I started with the "booster pack" everyone has to do. I did very well on Humira and was happy with it but I was constantly fearful of developing a serious infection.
I went through the school year doing very well. I actually didn't get sick at all which I was very surprised of except of one instance where I got food poisoning. That was not fun at all. But even though I was doing well with Humira, I wasn't content. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life injected myself with this drug for a couple reasons. It is an experimental drug, it causes cancer which my grandpa just died of last year, it increases risk of serious complications, it wasn't 100% effective (still having blood usually around time I need to take next injection), and it was ridiculously expensive. So I began looking for alternative treatments.
At the end of the school year, I went home, and started researching alternative treatments for Crohn's Disease. I decided to try managing Crohn's be diet alone. I tried the "all-natural" diet of only meats and vegetables and was able to last about a week longer than normal without Humira but still couldn't do it. I tried alkaline diet to try and increase pH of my body but had little success with that. So I decided I would need something to help manage it better than food and started reading forums for what other people used. One of the forums a lady mentioned Cat's Claw had worked well for over a year for her.
I looked up more information about Cat's Claw and found that it is a natural anti-inflammatory that's been used for centuries to treat gastrointestinal problems. It looked promising so I went on amazon.com and bought the most reliable looking Cat's Claw with the best reviews. I got it in the mail and started out at 500mg/day. I didn't feel any effect so I upped my dosage to 1500mg/day. Still nothing. I went back online for what the lady used and found she used a dosage of 4000mg/day! So I slowly increased my dosage and sure enough, it worked!
I stopped Humira and my mom just said it was all in my head but I continued. I stopped having blood every other week and felt a lot better. My mom scheduled an appointment with my doctor and I told him about what I was doing. He said that he had never heard of Cat's Claw and to go back on Humira but I disagreed saying that it was working better than Humira. We kinda got in a fight but needless to say, I kept taking Cat's Claw. At around 3 months of Cat's Claw (missing 6 Humira injections), even though I was fine with Cat's Claw, I still had to watch my diet and really wanted to cure Crohn's Disease.
So I continued to search for other ideas of what causes Crohn's Disease and how to cure it. At this time, I strongly believed Crohn's Disease was caused by MAP bacteria which thrives in pasteurized milk. So one of the ideas to cure Crohn's was a raw milk diet. I was scared to try this because I have such terrible reactions from pasteurized milk but tried it anyways as there was a local farm down the road. I bought some and tried it, and not only was my body able to digest it, but it tasted delicious! I started my raw milk diet believing that the good bacteria in the milk would eradicate MAP bacteria in my system. I stopped Cat's Claw and only did raw milk. I went two days but then started having problems so I went back on Cat's Claw. I should have tried Cat's Claw and just raw milk which I'm planning on as soon as I go home.
