Crohn's Disease
DJBombjack
Miami 1,665 Posts
Doctor thinks I might have it. Getting colonoscopy in 2 weeks.Googled it, read some stuff... anyone here have any knowledge on it?
Comments
I've known two people who had it -- a former roommate and the manager of a record store I worked at back in the 90s. I have IBS, so we had a lot of graphic convos about intestinal distress. IBS is much as Cam described it. To be frank, Crohn's did sound considerably worse -- but both, like the other poster indicated, are manageable by diet.
If it's anything like IBS, you'll want to minimize your sugar and dairy intake as much as possible and maximize soluble fibers (eating rice w/ as many meals as possible has helped me). But definitely check double-check all that w/ your doc.
oh, and take this for what its worth, but my dad claims that if he eats raw onions with a meal, it makes him immune from a crohn's attack.
seems pretty managable though.
Dairy doesn't seem to affect me too much, I think tomatoes are worse for me.
Beer seems to agree with me much better now, before I was a Jack Daniels drinker but I cut that.
I'm slowly starting to account for what I eat in relation to how I feel, but it will take some time to get it down.
Yes please. Send it to djbombjack at hotmail dot com
thanks
sent, should be in your hotmail inbox
carlos
I'm guessing the doctor will tell you to ease off alcohol and caffeine, but you may be able to just moderate your intake. My experience with my IBS diagnosis was frustrating, the doctors weren't as much help to me as my own trial and error was. Don't sleep on ginger and especially peppermint tea. Those have done more for my gut than any medicine ever did. It's shit like that that some doctors won't bother telling you.
Oh, I meant ginger tea and peppermint tea, but cooking with ginger can help, too.
Over the last few... shit I guess it's been about half my life now, I've been on a dozen or so different medications. Some of them had worked as temporary fixes, others really seemed to help symptons stay on the low for a long time. I've had more endoscopies and colonoscopies than I can count on both hands and had a small bowel resection surgery in 2002 (they removed about 12" of my small intestine and restitched the ends back together). After the surgery, I was feeling close to perfect for about two years before my symptoms started to show up again - sharp pain in my lower left abdomen which was constant throughout the day on a bad day and would just come about after eating certain things on other days.
Starting in January of last year, I went on a new medication called Remicade. I go in once every two months and chill out with an IV in my arm for two hours while they pump up the jam. For the first 6 - 8 months, I couldn't tell if it was doing anything at all. My symptoms were still around. But then all of a sudden I started feeling much better and have been ever since. It just takes certain patients longer for it to kick in. The main downside (there are some side effects like dizzyness, nausea, etc, but I've never felt any of them) is that it's dumb expensive. I'm very fortunate and grateful that I have health insurance and hope you do too.
Foodwise, I've cut popcorn and nuts out of my diet. Some dairy seemed to eff with me a little bit, but now not so much as long as I drink plenty of water.
Hope all goes well. Let me know if you need any more info!
Mike
good luck
I always had a stomach of steel.. I mean I could eat and drink ANYTHING... I never once threw-up from alcohol either. I think that changing my diet around is going to be the hardest thing for me.
I have been maintaining it well with a drug called Asacol, I was misdiagnosed with IBS years ago and kept taking drugs that didn't work, so I was very relieved to finally get a colonoscopy and figure shit out (literally! haha, NAGL, TMI, OMG)
The past few days I have been having a bad flare up and I'm going on oral steroids for a week, also NAGL, but whatever helps me feel better, ya know?
turns out that he either has IBS or Crohn's . The specialist hasn't come back with a compete diagnosis. But it does sound like a change is a coming in the diet. The whole thing has left me wondering if this is hereditary or environmental. anyone ??????
I have IBS, and honestly, based on how little the doctors seem to know about it and how borad the symptoms and treatments for it can be, I think it's not really one condition but a loose umbrella of symptoms which I believe to be brought about one or more periods of intense stress. This is different from Crohn's -- while Chrohn's has similar symptoms, they tend to be more accute, and do stem from a specific biological process.