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Question?

Hi guys,
I have a question I was hoping I could ask. I'm not asking for a diagnosis just for some friendly advice. I'm 25 years old and since mid August I have been suffering from horrible abdominal pain, gas, occasional bouts of diarrhea which seem to come in periods of 4 day blocks every couple of weeks, mouth soars (Which I've never had before) exhaustion, nausea, chills and a couple of hot sweats. The pain originally started around my upper abdomen but has seemed to settle in the middle now. I went to the doctor and they did blood test and stool sample and checked for giardia, infection, ciliac etc but found nothing. I saw two gi specialists and at first they thought it was an ulcer so they put me on ulcer meds but after 2 weeks I still had all the symptoms. At that point they still thought it was an ulcer so they did an upper endoscopy which they found nothing with the scope but did find mild inflammation in the biopsy they took. Unfortunately I had to leave the country for work and won't be back for a year so the only thing the doc could do was to say take antacids for two months. After talking to a friend they suggested the possibility of crohns and suggested that I should try to get a ct scan or a colonoscopy. I'm currently living in Europe and med care is expensive.
So my question is does this sound like possible crohns in which I need to keep pursuing medical advice/attention or does this sound like it could be something else completely and I'd only be wasting money to seek further tests??
 

Tony H

Well-known member
Hi Sherlock , sorry that you are so unwell , what part of europe are you in? , private medicine is expensive in Europe but public systems are normally open to everyone esp in emergency situations , if I was in your situation I would try and get answers no matter the cost ,
you have come to the right place for help and support which when you are not feeling good helps a lot ,
Tony
 
Did you have a fecal calprotectin test done? I ask because its super easy and has a good negative predictive power for IBD. Other than that, it seems that you should definitely push for a CT or MRI enterography. I would do that before the colonoscopy because *if* you have Crohns, you might have disease only in your small bowel and the colonoscopy might be pointless. It was the case with me. I had an MRI that showed inflammation in the mid ileum. I went to 2 GI. One said I *had* to do the colonoscopy because it was standard for Crohns and the other one said that a colonoscopy wouldn´t reach the site of inflammation (mid ileum) since the colonoscopy scope can see at best some 10-20 cm past your ilealcecal valve. The doctor that said the colonoscopy would not work told me to do a capsule endoscopy instead. In the end, to please both doctors, I did both the colonoscopy and the capsule endoscopy and the colonoscopy was in fact useless. The capsule showed inflammation throughout the upper ileum though, just as the MRI suggested. To sum up, I would do the tests in order of "invasiveness" if I were you: first the calprotectin, then an MRI or CT and finally a colonoscopy or capsule endoscopy depending on what, if anything, showed up in your scans.
Good luck!
 
I'm actually living in Dublin, Ireland right now and unfortunately my international health insurance doesn't cover preexisting conditions. I didn't have a calprotectin test done all they checked in the stool sample was for giardia and parasites etc.
 
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