It is true that there are a small percentage of people (maybe as high as 10%) who will have a fairly mild silent course of their disease. Dr.'s at this point can really tell for sure who these individuals are so they tend to make the assumption that the disease will get worse, as in 90% of the cases it does. Crohn's can get slowly worse over decades causing a damage slowly but once you get to the point the damage is done, it cannot be reversed. And once your bowel needs to be partially removed your life can change.
My son only showed symptoms for years because it was effecting his growth, it is a little easier to spot in kids. Otherwise he thought he felt fine. Now that he is on meds and in remission he realizes that he didn't feel great, he just sort of got use to feeling ok.
My son has zero side effects from his medication. He takes one pill a day and it is very easy. My advice to you would be to discuss your options with your GI. If there is agreement that your disease has been mild for years I would at the very least want to have monitoring done every 6 months or so to make sure things aren't getting worse. A fecal calprotectin test is very good for this. It is a simply stool test that will measure the inflammation. I personally would try the meds. If you don't feel the benefit outweighs the risk you can always decide to go off of them or try something else. The biggest fear with a med like 6mp is that it slightly increases your risk of cancer (from 2 in 10,000 to 4 in 10,000) and the people who experienced that side effect were on it usually several years before there were any issues, so you would have some time to see if it worked for you. My son did experience nausea when he first started 6mp but once they got the dose right and his body was use to the drug it went completely away. And it can take up to 6 months to start working, so it does take time.
Statistically you are much more likely to suffer because of your disease than because of any meds you take for your disease. Many of the people on this forum are suffering with symptoms from their disease despite being on meds. The earlier in your disease course and the milder the symptoms the better chance the meds will work. If you wait till things are bad you won't be on milder meds and they may not work as well.
There aren't really any easy decisions with this disease. I hated the day I had to give my 11 year old medication but it has made such a difference for him I wouldn't change our decision.
Good luck and let us know how you are getting along (((Hugs)))
