I am new to the forum. I was diagnosed with Crohn's in September of 2012. I was originally started on Pentasa, Prednisone, Flagyl and Librax. After being on these drugs for a few months without any improvement my gallbladder stopped working so I had that removed in October of 2012. I felt better for about 2 months. I got sick again and had more testing which revealed active Crohn's. I started on Humira and Entocort. In April of 2013 I developed a stricture and ended up in surgery. There were adhesions on the outside of the bowel so they did a take down of those and did not go ahead with a resection. The Crohn's persisted and in October of 2013 I had my first resection of the terminal ileum. The surgery went great and I was feeling good. About three weeks post surgery I developed a post surgical abscess. I ended up in the hospital for 7 days and in November had another surgery to clean out the abscess and remove the right ovary which had been eaten by the infection. With all of the infection the Crohn's went untreated that entire time. When I was finally able to start Crohn's meds again it was back and active. Since the Humira never worked for me we started Remicade. I have been on Remicade since March of 2014. I take it every six weeks and they doubled the dose after the first four infusions. I have been getting sicker and my blood tests came back showing severe anemia as well as other issues and a positive FIT test for blood. I ended up with a blood transfusion of two units and another colonoscopy and endoscopy. Neither showed anything. I just had a small bowel follow-through which shows about 14cm of intestine in the ileum with active crohn's and a moderate narrowing. This is where the bleeding is coming from. The options now are to continue Remicade and start Imuran, Prednisone and Flagyl or have another resection. I am concerned about side effects of the meds as I do not do well on Prednisone and am sensitive to most things. I am also wondering what the chances are of this working since the Remicade has done nothing and in fact I have gotten worse while taking it. If I am going to end up with surgery anyways I would rather forego all the nasty side effects and just do it. I know surgery has it's down sides too. Any thoughts or experience with this?
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You certainly have a tough decision ahead.