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Confused and Learning

Hello All.

I am trying to convience myself that I have the stomach flu or food poisoning! For sometime I have felt like I have a rock in my stomach, I was taking some new meds and blamed it on those. Then last monday the pain in my stomach got really bad and then moved on to major cramping in my stomach and diarrhea. I figured I had food poisoning so I bared through the cramping and diarrhea all day Tues and when I woke up on Weds it just felt worse. I felt light headed, probably from being dehydrated, cramps continued and diarrhea. I felt so sick! My doctor sent me right over for a CT scan. Long story short, they told me I had liquid outside my intestines and sent me back to my doctor who told me I had free air outside my intestines and needed to get to the ER right away. I got to the hospital and they gave me a strong pain killer which stopped the cramps right away, lower right abdomen still very tender to push on. They have me do another CT scan but after drinking a bunch of fluid and IV dye. This CT scan indicated I had Crohns, thickening of the intestines. Then my GI doctor comes in and tells me I have Crohns disease or one of two things that if he told me I'd worry. I told him lets stick with Crohns and I didn't want to know what the other two things were. I was admitted into the hospital, hooked up to IV's and was give all kinds of meds and he started treating me for Crohns right away. Two days later I had a colonoscopy in the hospital and results look normal. Now he want's to do a capsule endoscopy.
It's been one week now from when the cramps started, I'm home and my stomach is still making all kinds of noise and I feel a bit light headed at times but I feel soooo much better!! Oh, I forgot, my WBC in my stool was moderate and my blood count WBC's were 8 at one time but then someone said another test read 4. I'm still betting on the flu/virus!

Those of you who have Crohns, what are you thoughts?? Does this sound like Crohns to you? Could it be the flu??? My symptoms are easing up after a week and it sounds like it takes at least 4 weeks normally.

I don't know anyone personallly with this disease and I have questions. I will be meeting with my GI doctor on Weds to discuss the capsule endoscopy.

I'm thankful you are here to share with us that are lost.
Sabrina
 
Hi Sabrina and welcome. Sounds like your GI is being thorough. It's not normal for your small intestine to be inflamed and thickened, and that's one of the thing's crohn's does. If you go to the books section of the forum there are some very good books available for hardly any $$$ that thoroughly explain the disease and what happens with it.

It's good that your GI is being thorough in attempting to diagnose you. That doesn't appear to always be the case from people's stories on here.
 
hiya, your symptoms of being ill and lightheaded etc were similar to mine when I had a perforated bowel, I too had not been sick beforehand and a CT scan revealed thickening / inflamed small intestines and I was diagnosed with Crohn's. I have also been treated with drugs and feel much much better, I am however about to go for surgery to remove the thickened part of intestine as apparently the risk of re perforation is high and the docs don't want to take the chance. As TMos said it's unlikely that your intestine would be thickened with just food poisoning. Hope you get some answers soon and at least they're being thorough with the investigations.
 

DustyKat

Super Moderator
Hi Sabrina and :welcome:

I would tend to agree, Flu wouldn't normally cause the changes that were seen on your CT scan. A normal colonscopy won't tell you much if the Crohns is located above the reach of the scope. It sounds like your doctor is thorough in continuing with the testing to find answers. Good luck with the pill cam and keep us posted!

All the best, :)
Dusty
 
Thank you for your comments. I have my appt tomorrow with the GI, we will see. Even though I really wanted to believe it was a virus or food poisoning I'm feeling less and less that it is. 5 days of feeling really horrible and 3 days of feeling pretty crummy. From the top of my gut to the bottom I feel like I have a rock sitting in there thats rumbling. Thank God the cramps are gone. I'm exhausted. If this is Crohns..geez, how do people live with this???
 
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