You take it once a week and there are lots of rules for taking it, you have to have it first thing, before eating or drinking, you cannot lie down after taking it, you have to drink a full glass of water with it, then not eat or drink anything else for at least half an hour. It's a pain but others here take it and say it's not that bad when you get into a routine.
This sounds like the treatment I was talked to about, but didn't take due to the reflux and heartburn issues. But my reflux is so severe that it causes my stomach and oesophagus to become inflamed and bleed, and it's one of the reasons why I find it so difficult to eat enough to maintain weight.
I have osteoporosis that's apparently very severe for my age, but it's really the lesser of two evils for me to go without treating it. I've never had any type of fracture, so it seems I'm making the right call, at least so far.
My osteopenia was never treated and now I wonder if my doctor was negligent and could have prevented or delayed the onset of Osteoperosis.
They might have thought you didn't need treatment due to being young and male. There may have been other factors such as why my doctors didn't offer me all the treatments - they might have thought that with Crohn's they didn't want to aggravate your digestive problems. Were they not expecting you to need so much prednisone earlier in the course of your illness? Bone density loss is dose-dependent I believe (i.e. the length of time you're on pred and the strength of the dose affect the severity of bone loss).
It doesn't sound right though, if you were officially diagnosed with osteopenia, they should at least have talked to you about your treatment options. Did they even discuss lifestyle changes with you? I was talked to a lot about avoiding contact sports (not that I'd ever have played contact sport no matter the state of my bones!), including calcium in my diet and in supplements, monitoring bone density with DEXA scans every two years, etc. etc.
Maybe you could ask to see a rheumatologist? They'd be the experts to advise you on this. Bone density can be reversed in some cases, I believe even once it's got to the osteoporosis stage, it can be improved, especially if you're young. You can certainly slow down any further deterioration, so don't be too discouraged, it might not be too late to improve your bones and minimise future fracture risk.
