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newly? diagnosed crohns, bleeding

okay so a quick recap, so I use to be really into fitness/bodybuilding, i've taken steroids in the past, but i was trying to bulk up and got to around 225 pounds before i started pooping blood (tmi i know), food was running through me, i could eat 5000 calories a day and just crap it out at that point and it was frustrating, this was last year, i thought it was a hemoroid or something but went to the doctors, found out i had crohns, which pretty much ruined my life at the time being seeing as all i cared about was the gym, i'm 24 years old so i guess i got a somewhat late diagnosis, it took bulking up a lot to really trigger it i guess

needless to say i had a bad month from crohns, found out i had crohns, than started on medication which was like methotextrate, (after prednisone) and so on, my crp at one point was 10 and under 5 was normal , so i was a bit scared because i kept searching what high crp could mean and thought the worst, my doctor said he's seen crp over 100 so that made me feel a bit better

lately i started humira ( 5 months ago) and although my CRP is down, it's always been somewhat down regardless of meds.. even when i got put on a medication i stopped taking, the doctor kept saying my crp looked good enough though i wasn't on anything (he didn't know that at the time)

it's been a depressing last year, knowing i can't disgest food and all the time i've wasted in the gym not knowing i had this shit..

my main problem now is blood, i stopped taking humira last week because i feel it does nothing, my crp is under 2, but there's still BLOOD, no matter what, i go to the bathroom, either there's a bit in the stool, or after i wipe the toilet paper is just covered in blood, how do i stop bleeding?

are there any medications that can help specifically bleeding with crohns? my doctor said humira needs more time to work but it's been 5 months and this is depressing as hell, humira is also expensive as hell.

i don't understand how all my inflammation markers can be low, but i can STILL be bleeding? what the shit is going on in my intestines, this disease has already limited me getting anything done in the gym, and now i can't stop the blood, frustrating as hell.

it's bad enough that i think i have kidney problems now too, but all the blood tests literally point to me being anemic.. terribly low iron pointing to blood loss, which i'm guessing is from crohns bleeding
 
sorry for spilling everything out here, but this stuff is stressful since it's already ruined the gym for me, i also have a bump right on the outside which i think is a hemmoroid, is there anyway i can remove that? it's been there for YEARS as well, and it's annoying as hell even when i'm wiping and is sometimes painful, my doctors is like closed so that's why im just asking for curiousity on here, im sure lots of people have dealed with things like this

also when you search blood and ibd it's usually pointed towards colitis now crohns which makes me wonder
 

Scipio

Well-known member
Location
San Diego
Hi Jeremy,

First, by no means are what you are going through rare or hopeless. Almost all of us have have also had to deal with the same. or similar issues as you. It's no fun at all, and Crohn's has no cure, but there is very likely a combination of therapies, diet, and healthy living that can get your Crohn's into remission and get you back to something closer to a normal life.

To begin with, I assume you have had a colonoscopy. If so what did it show? Based on your symptoms I'm guessing it showed Crohn's ulcers in your colon, in which case it's called Crohn's colitis. You may also have ulcers in the small intestine but those are hard to see very much beyond the last few inches of the small bowel (the ileum) before it empties into the large bowel. About 70% of all Crohn's cases have at least some lesions in the small bowel.

Next: CRP. A CRP of 10 is barely elevated if elevated at all. It's very common for CRP to be in the hundreds for someone suffering a severe inflammation. But more importantly for your case is the fact that your CRP has dropped to below 5 doesn't mean that your Crohn's is in remission (hence, it could easily still be inflamed and bleeding). The trouble with CRP is that it is not specific for Crohn's. It can be due to any number of inflammatory conditions. And it's is not always elevated in active Crohn's. About 20% of Crohn's cases never have an elevated CRP, and yours might just be one of them. I was too. Even in my worst Crohn's attacks my CRP never rose above 3. So I'm thinking that your bleeding is a better indication of what is going on with your Crohn's rather than a drop in CRP from 10 to 5.

As for 5 months on Humira and still bleeding, that seems kind of long to me. I'm on Stelara, not Humira, so I don't have personal experience with it, but I would have expected remission or near remission by now. Perhaps Humira doesn't work very well for you. Every case of Crohn's is different. what worked great for one might fail miserably for another, and vice versa. Has your doc done a follow-up colonoscopy after a few months of Humira therapy to see if the gut looks improved? Or are the only factors we have to go on are the CRP and the bleeding?

If there is not significant improvement, between now and your next Dr. visit I would push the doc to think about trying a different biologic, say Remicade or Stelara, or something.
 
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