I'm in the process of being diagnosed with Crohn's. My adventure started about 18 months ago with stomach pain, diarrhea, shortness of breath, skin rashes and Raynaud's. The doctors thought I had some unknown autoimmue issue due to an usual ANA lab results. Never was able to pin anything down though. I was then diagnosed with gluten, egg, dairy and soy allergies and proceeded to remove them from my diet. Over the next year I'd have periods of times where I felt almost normal, and periods where I was pretty sick. The periods of not feeling well became worse and longer and it appeared that I had something going on besides food allergies. After several weeks of increasing upper right quadrant pain I had a CCK Hida scan to discover a ejection fraction of 13% with my gallbladder. Had my gallbladder removed. About two weeks after surgery my upper right quadrant pain returned with a vengeance, only it seemed to be slightly lower and farther to my right side. There are no GI in my town, so at this point I started seeing a GI Dr 360 miles away from home. A MRCP showed a blocked bile duct. My GI said that he would un-block the bile duct, but he did not think that was the cause of my extreme URQ pain. I had an ERCP to open the bile duct and a stent put in. The stent made me very very sick and had it removed 10 days later with an endoscopy which also showed inflammation of the esophagus, stomach in addition to the bile ducts. The extreme pain from the stent went away, but still was having bad URQ pain along with constant upset stomach and diarrhea. I had another MRCP to check on the bile duct and a CT. Bile duct was just dandy, but the CT showed inflammation in the intestines which lead to a colonoscopy that showed inflammation and ulcers in multiple places including the terminal ileum. The GI told me it was most likely Crohn's. Biopsies came back which did not clearly confirm, but my GI said that he still very certain it is Crohn's. I've been on Entocort for 5 weeks and Asacol 3 weeks with no improvements yet. I'm waiting for blood results to start azathioprine next week. Since May I have missed a very large amount of work for surgery recovery, traveling 360 miles to see the GI and just from days/weeks of not being able to function. And things have been going downhill quite a bit the past 2 weeks. I now have bad nausea every morning along with abdominal cramping when going to the bathroom for about the first four hours of the day.
I'm starting to get pretty burnt out on this whole thing and hope to start to see some results from these medications soon!
I'm starting to get pretty burnt out on this whole thing and hope to start to see some results from these medications soon!
