medical follow up appointment/Crohn's Disease

Today was the follow up for all of my lab work, colonoscopy, scans, etc over the last few weeks. To say that I am overwhelmed, would be the truth.

The polyp that was removed during the colonoscopy, came back pre-cancerous. They removed all of it during the colonoscopy, but with my family history of GI cancers, I will have to have a colonoscopy at least every 2 years if not sooner. Cancer is a scary freaking word and it hit me to the core when he said it. Thankfully, it was caught before it turned into anything major and we will be able to monitor it closely.

Next!!! The tests came back postive for autoimmune disorder (which means that my body is attacking itself), positive for Crohn's disease, and positive the ilium stricture.

What this means is that I will continue the 3000 mg of Pentasa a day, 20mg of Prednisone a day, and will be closely monitoring my diet to see what affects foods/drinks have on me.

If I have another flare up, the dr is saying that I will more than likely be put on Humira (which means giving myself injections in the stomach several times a week). He would like to do everything possible to avoid this, as there are MANY risks to Humira and such drugs.

This is life changing for me and something I am not taking lightly at all. I am scared. I am nervous. I am in shock.

I will be doing several more blood tests, skin lab work (for TB, etc), and a bowel xray with barium over the next few weeks. More than likely I will also be reporting to the GI specialist every 2 weeks for a while.

Below is a link that helps explain Crohn's disease for those that are aware (just as I wasn't until a few weeks ago):

http://www.ccfa.org/info/about/crohns

We would like to ask that everyone continue to prayer for us during these times.

Also, I would like to hear opinions, thoughts, prayers, recommendations from anyone that wants to offer about Crohn's disease, etc.

Medical update/life update

Life has taken a definite spin for us this month.



Beginning the first weekend in May, I started having some pretty serious personal health issues. After seeing, my regular dr, a GI specialist, an ER visit, more GI specialist appointments, an ultrasound, and a colonoscopy later…..it is determined that I have Crohn’s disease. And a pretty serious case of it.



Right now, they have me taking 6 anti-inflammatory pills a day and 4 steroid pills a day to try to get everything under control and into remission.



I feel ok, but I am constantly tired and very worried/scared about the outcome of all of this and where this will take us on our journey that WE had planned. We should have known, this isn’t our journey, but it is His journey for us. I am putting all of my trust in our Lord and know that he has a plan for us.



If you guys (if anyone even still reads this blog) don’t mind, please just keep Ben and myself in your prayers. We would love to be covered in prayer during this time in our lives.



Does anyone have any experience with Crohn’s that could give me diet recommendations or any other advise. It would be greatly appreciated.