Thank you. How is his life going to be affected by it? What things should I expect to happen. In 2 years we were planning to move to the USA from England but does that mean we can"t go because of his health problems?
Of course he can move. I was diagnosed when I was 18 and since then I lived in Austria, Switzerland, the UK, the US and Germany. Crohn's doesn't restrict your life as long as you manage it well. But that's also the tricky part, many people (me included) take a long time to really get a hang of it.
Basically, managing Crohn's is a bit of a puzzles with several components. A big one is of course medication. Long-term treatment is done either via immunosuppressives (azathioprine, known under the brand name imuran or 6mp) or biologics (remicade, humira etc.). Immunosuppresives are taken daily in pill form and basically suppress a person's immune system so that it is less likely that your intestine gets inflamed - most notably your white blood cell count goes down. They can have side effects, especially on the liver (although rarely), so you do regular blood checks. Biologics on the other hand have in the past been used just for severe Crohn's cases, but today are also used for moderate cases, as biologics are just more effects. They are either taken via iv or self-injection every few weeks. They have a higher risk of side effects compared to immunosuppresives (but still marginally compared to e.g. smoking...).
Medication is one puzzle piece, the others are a good diet (e.g. things like onions or spicy or salty food and basically most junk food, hard liquor etc. are bad for Crohn's patients), stress management (you can have stress, but it should be 'good' stress), and - at least for me and for several others - endurance sport and vitamin therapy (vit B6, B12, D3, magnesium, zinc, potassium, folic acid etc.).
Anyway, it's pretty cool you want to inform yourself about Crohn's. I know it sounds scary and probably the most scary thing is that well there just ain't no cure. But many, many patients can manage it quite well and I personally don't actually think much about it personally. I have been in good remission basically without symptoms for over a year now. Crohn's is a disease which comes in "flares" (basically your small intestine gets inflamed leading to diarrhea, pain, tiredness, gasing etc.) - although it's a bit of a misnomer, if your Crohn's is untreated the inflammation also can just stay constant over months and years - something that evidently isn't good.
Lastly, what's important is that your boyfriend informs himself well about Crohn's (and I mean really informs himself by knowing really well what the standard treatment is, what people do to manage Crohn's etc.) and a good GI is also quite important. I have had so many different GIs in the past 14 years due to moving around, I have to say a LOT of them were not good even if they are specialized on IBD (inflammatory bowel disease which is the category that Crohn's, UC etc. falls into).
