Hey guys. I'm Kurt and I'm 20.
I was recently diagnosed with Crohn's, back in June 2010 to be precise.
It was a long battle to actually get anywhere though. It started back in October 2009, I was suffering bad pains in my abdomen, and went to the doctors and was told it was stress related. I kind of accepted this as I had lost my job recently.
Anyway, these pains went on and on till and around March 2010 I went back to my doctors (was now working again at this point) and was told I had indigestion and was given some tabs. These didn't work and gave me my first bout of diarrhea. After about two months of trial and error on different tablets, he concluded that I had food poisoning. At this point I gave up and just worked through it and stopped seeing him.
From this time I started to lose weight (I was a big boy, around 16 stone) and come the beginning of June I was suffering from fatigue. I would literally get home from work at about 5pm and go straight to bed and sleep till 7am. I wasn't hungry so was barely eating, and obviously the diarrhrea started to creep in.
Eventually I decided to go back to the doctors, and was told I would have to wait several months to see a specialist. Luckily my Nan used to work in the hospital knew one of the IBD consultants personally, so I was able to push in. I was fastracked for barium meal and was diagnosed with Crohn's straight away.
I was put on Prednisilone (sp?) for 6 weeks and they seemed to work. Halfway through I was also put on Azathioprine, but as I was coming of the steroids I became ill once again, even worse than I was before.
I was put back on the steroids, an 8 week course (of which I have been on for 5 weeks) and I'm feeling great. Unfortunately my last blood tests showed that my Crohn's is starting to flare again, so my consultant has advised me that infliximab is my next best bet for treatment.
Apparantly surgery isn't viable for me at the moment because normally people at my age have Chron's just around the terminal ilium. Unfortunately, I have mine in four different sections, and it would practically mean removing the entire small intestine to get rid of it.
So I'm having a colonoscopy on Monday to check the 'full extent' and will hopefully be starting the infliximab treatment within the next month.
In total I've lost around 6 stone, I'm 10 and a half stone now and was 16st back in March.
Thanks for reading.
I was recently diagnosed with Crohn's, back in June 2010 to be precise.
It was a long battle to actually get anywhere though. It started back in October 2009, I was suffering bad pains in my abdomen, and went to the doctors and was told it was stress related. I kind of accepted this as I had lost my job recently.
Anyway, these pains went on and on till and around March 2010 I went back to my doctors (was now working again at this point) and was told I had indigestion and was given some tabs. These didn't work and gave me my first bout of diarrhea. After about two months of trial and error on different tablets, he concluded that I had food poisoning. At this point I gave up and just worked through it and stopped seeing him.
From this time I started to lose weight (I was a big boy, around 16 stone) and come the beginning of June I was suffering from fatigue. I would literally get home from work at about 5pm and go straight to bed and sleep till 7am. I wasn't hungry so was barely eating, and obviously the diarrhrea started to creep in.
Eventually I decided to go back to the doctors, and was told I would have to wait several months to see a specialist. Luckily my Nan used to work in the hospital knew one of the IBD consultants personally, so I was able to push in. I was fastracked for barium meal and was diagnosed with Crohn's straight away.
I was put on Prednisilone (sp?) for 6 weeks and they seemed to work. Halfway through I was also put on Azathioprine, but as I was coming of the steroids I became ill once again, even worse than I was before.
I was put back on the steroids, an 8 week course (of which I have been on for 5 weeks) and I'm feeling great. Unfortunately my last blood tests showed that my Crohn's is starting to flare again, so my consultant has advised me that infliximab is my next best bet for treatment.
Apparantly surgery isn't viable for me at the moment because normally people at my age have Chron's just around the terminal ilium. Unfortunately, I have mine in four different sections, and it would practically mean removing the entire small intestine to get rid of it.
So I'm having a colonoscopy on Monday to check the 'full extent' and will hopefully be starting the infliximab treatment within the next month.
In total I've lost around 6 stone, I'm 10 and a half stone now and was 16st back in March.
Thanks for reading.
