Hi all. My wife was diagnosed with Crohn's two weeks ago. Her onset/flareup came on suddenly and devastated her system. She was hospitalized for two weeks and we only just brought her home. I'm very grateful to find this forum and I'll have many many questions soon enough but for now I'm curious if anyone has had this severe a flare-up and how long they took them to recover? Is it common for an initial flare-up to be this bad or come on so fast?
My wife has never had digestive problems (aside from traveler's diarrhea; we travel a lot). She complained of gas the week before Christmas. By Christmas Day she had diarrhea but nothing crazy. Two days after Christmas she had a small fever and our GP put her on antibiotics. Next day her fever was gone but she still felt tired and her appetite was steadily disappearing. Come New Year's Eve and she was unable to keep anything down and by evening couldn't even keep down sips of water and her temp spiked to 102. We took her to the emergency room and she was admitted.
They stabilized her and did a colonoscopy later in the week: her entire colon was inflamed, raw, bleeding, etc. I've had a colonoscopy before so I have a good idea what a colon should look like: hers was horrific. GI said he'd never seen a case so bad (and apparently he treats a lot of Crohn's patients). They began treatment (steroids) immediately. A week went by with further complications: nausea & bloating from the meds, swelling in the small intestine, a staff infection, enough blood in each bedpan to give me panic attacks and result in her receiving 2 units of blood to get her count back up. After a week of this she began to recover. No more blood in her stool and she was able to eat solid food in small amounts.
She was discharged and we continued her treatment at home. She lost 10kg since Jan 1 (she was only 60kg to start with - so this is quite a shock to her system) so now our priority is getting her weight up and we haven’t had much time to digest what just happened. She's only able to eat maybe a 1/2 cup of solid food a day and while the hospital's dietician says this is normal, it's maddening to figure if her random bouts of nausea, chills, sweats, etc. are being caused by the drugs, the disease, new complications, malnutrition, or maybe - and, I now know, the most likely reason - because that one peach-slice she ate with her oatmeal was enough to send her blood-sugar level off the charts. It took a few calls to our GI and the dietician for me to believe that although she looks like she's starving, she is getting enough nutrition and eventually the body will allow her to eat more. And unless she has blood in her stool or spikes a fever then we should assume she's recovering.
Ironically, I've been under observation for some kind of colitis for 2 years now (they suspected and ruled out Crohn's early on - I'll post my case elsewhere later) so I'd already read up on Crohn's. But of course reading about the disease and then actually experiencing it are two different things.
So that's about where we're at. This might all be too much detail but again, this has been three weeks straight dealing with this and we're just now coming to terms with it. I didn't advertise to the local boards but we're from the Northwest USA but currently living in South Africa (like I said, we travel a lot). We have 6 months of medications to work through and, on top of it all, I have to learn how to make steamed beets palatable...
My wife has never had digestive problems (aside from traveler's diarrhea; we travel a lot). She complained of gas the week before Christmas. By Christmas Day she had diarrhea but nothing crazy. Two days after Christmas she had a small fever and our GP put her on antibiotics. Next day her fever was gone but she still felt tired and her appetite was steadily disappearing. Come New Year's Eve and she was unable to keep anything down and by evening couldn't even keep down sips of water and her temp spiked to 102. We took her to the emergency room and she was admitted.
They stabilized her and did a colonoscopy later in the week: her entire colon was inflamed, raw, bleeding, etc. I've had a colonoscopy before so I have a good idea what a colon should look like: hers was horrific. GI said he'd never seen a case so bad (and apparently he treats a lot of Crohn's patients). They began treatment (steroids) immediately. A week went by with further complications: nausea & bloating from the meds, swelling in the small intestine, a staff infection, enough blood in each bedpan to give me panic attacks and result in her receiving 2 units of blood to get her count back up. After a week of this she began to recover. No more blood in her stool and she was able to eat solid food in small amounts.
She was discharged and we continued her treatment at home. She lost 10kg since Jan 1 (she was only 60kg to start with - so this is quite a shock to her system) so now our priority is getting her weight up and we haven’t had much time to digest what just happened. She's only able to eat maybe a 1/2 cup of solid food a day and while the hospital's dietician says this is normal, it's maddening to figure if her random bouts of nausea, chills, sweats, etc. are being caused by the drugs, the disease, new complications, malnutrition, or maybe - and, I now know, the most likely reason - because that one peach-slice she ate with her oatmeal was enough to send her blood-sugar level off the charts. It took a few calls to our GI and the dietician for me to believe that although she looks like she's starving, she is getting enough nutrition and eventually the body will allow her to eat more. And unless she has blood in her stool or spikes a fever then we should assume she's recovering.
Ironically, I've been under observation for some kind of colitis for 2 years now (they suspected and ruled out Crohn's early on - I'll post my case elsewhere later) so I'd already read up on Crohn's. But of course reading about the disease and then actually experiencing it are two different things.
So that's about where we're at. This might all be too much detail but again, this has been three weeks straight dealing with this and we're just now coming to terms with it. I didn't advertise to the local boards but we're from the Northwest USA but currently living in South Africa (like I said, we travel a lot). We have 6 months of medications to work through and, on top of it all, I have to learn how to make steamed beets palatable...
