I was scared of the meds too and kept fighting the GI on starting 6MP because while my son had some bad days, he was mostly good. Sound familiar? Fast forward about 15 months to his first ER visit.
Turns out he had simmering inflammation going on for a long time. During that time a stricture formed in his small intestine from built up scar tissue. Now he was having some good days, but mostly bad days. He had to have 10 inches of his small intestine removed at the ripe old age of 12.
In retrospect, I see now that his Crohn's' had been silently active and our delay in getting him on meds obviously made things worse. I completely regret not starting him sooner. As it turned out, 6MP wasn't strong enough for him anyway and he had to jump to Remicade to achieve remission. I wish we'd gone with Remicade from the beginning. He never seemed THAT sick. Turned out he was even sicker than we thought.
My point is, do your research to answer your questions, but also know that doctors don't tend to put kids on these drugs lightly. If the GI is suggesting it, please really consider it. Don't wait like we did until DS got to the point of being completely miserable. It's such a hard disease, sometimes invisible, and sometimes being as close to our kids as we are, we don't always see how they're deteriorating. I didn't see that one bad day a week had turned to two, then later to three... know what I mean? I'm not saying that you're doing that, but if I can help any kid from going through what DS did...
I hope you find answers soon and are able to move forward.
