Hi all - so last week, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt the urge to go to the bathroom. Okay, well, nothing new there. But it was just straight blood when I went. I've had some bleeding with BMs before (Crohn's Disease, diagnosed a little over 20 years ago in 1998/99). But this was just blood - and it kept coming. And coming. And coming. I drove myself to the ER at about 3 a.m. I was admitted, and had two more bleeding incidents. The second of which sent me crashing - I almost fainted, and needed a blood transfusion. Hemoglobin dropped from 12 to 9, very rapidly, so they transfused immediately. Thankfully, the bleeding stopped.
The next day, I had an upper endoscopy performed after I tested negative on a routine check for COVID-19 (I had a chest X-ray the previous night). The endoscopy didn't show anything significant. Still no BMs at all at this point since the previous night, which is good. The following day, I took an enema in the morning to clear for a sigmoidoscopy - went nothing but blood again, but obviously triggered by the enema so it was a mess. I was on cortisone IV drip at this point. Sigmoidoscopy also showed nothing - no diverticulitis, etc. C Diff test came back the following morning, also negative. My hemoglobin levels remained stable at around 10, and they put me on oral prednisone (40 mg day) and upped my Pentasa dosage for maintenance. They released me from the hospital. I've had no bleeding since then, thankfully, and am following up with my doctor later this week in his office.
But they never found the cause of it. It was a pretty severe, sudden, onset GI bleed. I've never in 20 years had anything like that happen. Has anyone else had this experience? I'm very concerned about it happening again, especially because they don't know why. I had JUST had a routine colonoscopy about five months ago, and everything looked good then. My doctor - who is great - doesn't seem overly concerned, or maybe it's more accurate to say, he doesn't know what else we should be doing at this point except to keep up the current medication regimen and continue to self-monitor.
Did this happen to anyone else? And if so, what happened after? Thanks!
The next day, I had an upper endoscopy performed after I tested negative on a routine check for COVID-19 (I had a chest X-ray the previous night). The endoscopy didn't show anything significant. Still no BMs at all at this point since the previous night, which is good. The following day, I took an enema in the morning to clear for a sigmoidoscopy - went nothing but blood again, but obviously triggered by the enema so it was a mess. I was on cortisone IV drip at this point. Sigmoidoscopy also showed nothing - no diverticulitis, etc. C Diff test came back the following morning, also negative. My hemoglobin levels remained stable at around 10, and they put me on oral prednisone (40 mg day) and upped my Pentasa dosage for maintenance. They released me from the hospital. I've had no bleeding since then, thankfully, and am following up with my doctor later this week in his office.
But they never found the cause of it. It was a pretty severe, sudden, onset GI bleed. I've never in 20 years had anything like that happen. Has anyone else had this experience? I'm very concerned about it happening again, especially because they don't know why. I had JUST had a routine colonoscopy about five months ago, and everything looked good then. My doctor - who is great - doesn't seem overly concerned, or maybe it's more accurate to say, he doesn't know what else we should be doing at this point except to keep up the current medication regimen and continue to self-monitor.
Did this happen to anyone else? And if so, what happened after? Thanks!
