New to Crohn's. Still undiagnosed though..

Hey everyone. I am from India, but I've spent a majority of my time out of India (In Dubai and America). Well basically my story goes like this:

Ever since I can remember, I've had to deal with stomach aches. And boy were they unpleasant and painful. They also seemed to come at the worst times ever like during my birthday parties, exams or some event. But I've learned to live with it.

Fast forward to now. Im 24, we moved back to india, and i'm studying computer science engineering and living away from home. Hence my eating habits got a lot worse than normal. I never knew anything about crohn's disease. I just thought I had a bad stomach and gas problems.All that changed two months back when i suffered a small bowel obstruction. I got to experience the pleasures of having an NG tube stuck up my nose (I'm being sarcastic ofcourse) and getting admitted to the hospital for four days. All this during my final exams. Thats when I did some research and got to know about this disease.. To be honest getting all that medicication pumped through my veins may have helped me get rid of the pain from the obstruction but I havent felt the same ever since... Also i got a ct scan and barium ct scan done a few days back and it showed a little big of wall thickening in my small intestine. And the report said something about "comb sign" and "crohns disease"

I might get and endoscopy and/or a colonoscopy today or tommorow and go from there. Im very scared and feel helpless. I'm so tired all the time these days, and I always feel stressed and depressed thinking about this. I'm so lost and don't know how to deal with all this.


I'm very sorry for writing so much. Thank you if you took time to read it. Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated..

Hi and welcome,

I am sorry for your health issues. Not knowing what is going on is pretty stressful, a diagnosis... stressful too. Having a good doctor who fully evaluate you is precious and reassuring (seems like your case) and if a clear diagnosis is given, medication that fallow can help a lot. With my experience, I feel any health issue is always very stressful and depressing at the beginning, but with time, I have learned to adapt to each of them and live happy. wishing you well.

Thanks for replying
I actually went to a homeopathic doctor. He said he had treated people with crohns before, and that they have gotten better. So Im gonna be giving homeopathy a try.

He also said i don't have to rush to get my endoscopy and colonoscopy since my ct scans clearly showed i had crohn's.. and that i could get the endoscopy and colonoscopy in a while to see the extent of the inflammation..

I'm still pretty anxious and depressed thinking about this sometimes. Oh yea i forgot to mention, i get panic attacks sometimes thinking about this.. I wonder if its related to crohn's.

Hello,

Sorry you had to join this forum. My husband and I are from India too, currently in USA. He is the one with Crohn's and is currently on Remicade. So they did a CT scan before doing a scope? I thought scope is usually the first step to diagnosis. Try cutting down on your diet. It helps many people. There are so many threads on here about diet for Crohnies. From an Indian point of view, I would say you should avoid spice, oily food, junk, leafy vegetables. Eat a lot of dal and rice which will help increase protein content. Thats what the GI advised for my husband. I hope you feel better.

I know the alternative doctor can often say they help people with disease, it can be true, however, be cautious with that. always keep a close and honest relationship with your medical doctor, because at the end, they are the only ones who can rescue us in case of an emergency. Discuss with them on your next exams but this is typical practice for doctors to evaluate fully a patient when newly diagnosed. Dr wants to know where exactly the disease is, which intensity, what type, etc. So many details that are beyond the comprehension of alternative doctors who do not specialized in crohns disease.
panick attacks is quite a common anxiety disorder. talk about it to your doctors. If you have access to a psychologist they can help a lot with that. panick attacks can be triggered by stressful events. I'd encourgare you to do some activities to change your mind so your focus is not too much on your new disease. Social activities, sports, yoga, meditation, etc... things to relax you and change your mind, breathing exercise, etc.

@aarthi
Hi, it says you're from new jersey? I lived there as well before moving here. In Woolwich to be exact. Sorry to hear that your husband is also having to go through this. And like you said i've changed my eating habits a lot now. I mostly eat rice and dal, sambhar, curd, food that isn't too hard on the intestines. And yea, the Gi told me to get a Ct scan after he saw the xrays i had taken when i was hospitalised earlier for small bowel obstruction. He said he would do endoscopy as well after i got my report. However, I havn't done the endoscopy yet. I'm currently just trying to control my diet and see if the homeopathic route works. I've always had stomache ache problems. So i figure if I control my diet things shouldn't get too bad? I don't know.. I just really hope things don't get any worse.

@Lady Organic
Thanks for the advice. The thing is, me and my mom have gone to many doctors with the ct scan report to see what they had to say. We haven't really just stuck with one. One doctor in my family said to go see this homeopathic doctor to see if he could treat it because the standard medicine that i would be treated with by a normal GI doctor is long term and would have side effects... which makes me very nervous.

unfortunately crohns is a long term/chronic illness. nobody can claim to cure it at this point. Its hard to accept but thats the reality. Some patients yes do clearly improve on diet or alternative medecine, some even go symptoms free (in remission). however the key is to keep in touch which medical doctor for ultimate supervision. Only a GI will be able to tell you if your disease is active or not. because sometimes even if you feel you have no more symptoms, the disease may still be active without you being aware of it, and that can also possibly lead to complications. hopefully you can find a GI who will supervise you and be open to the alternative route you want to explore. but if your case is too severe as from the medical exam results and also considering the obstruction you had, chances are pretty good he/she will want you to be on some kind of medication to prevent further damage or complications. wishing you well.

ZeeMee said:

@aarthi
Hi, it says you're from new jersey? I lived there as well before moving here. In Woolwich to be exact. Sorry to hear that your husband is also having to go through this. And like you said i've changed my eating habits a lot now. I mostly eat rice and dal, sambhar, curd, food that isn't too hard on the intestines. And yea, the Gi told me to get a Ct scan after he saw the xrays i had taken when i was hospitalised earlier for small bowel obstruction. He said he would do endoscopy as well after i got my report. However, I havn't done the endoscopy yet. I'm currently just trying to control my diet and see if the homeopathic route works. I've always had stomache ache problems. So i figure if I control my diet things shouldn't get too bad? I don't know.. I just really hope things don't get any worse.

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Oh good. Actually I would avoid sambhar (Tamarind actually). Doctors here dont know what tamarind is, but my family told us it irritates the inflammation inside. So I made rasam or sambhar without tamarind for like 3 months. He hated it but had no choice Now that he feels better, we explained to the GI what tamarind is and he told us to try a little bit of it and see if it hurts him. We did and it didnt do anything to his stomach, so back to using tamarind Diet is a major part in treating this disease but it is only a part. Unless the body gets the right medicine, it just wouldnt budge. Like LadyOrganic said, homeopathic route may be fine. But also consult with allopathy often coz like she said, incase of emergency that is where we rush.

@LadyOrganic
I agree with what you said. I'm hopefully going to get an endoscopy done soon to see how bad my inflammation is. That way I can see if my condition improves over time and also to figure out how to best heal this. Even though I've been dealing with digestive problems for as long as I can remember, I've only been recently 'diagnosed', so I'm still scared about how to deal with this. So I'm glad I found this forum and all you lovely people who are kind enough to reply and share your thoughts on here. Thanks for replying

@aarthi
Glad to hear your husband is feeling better now Thanks for the tip about avoiding tamarind. I will definetly remember that one. By the way, I'd really like some help on what indian dishes are safe for me to eat in my current condition. I'm sure you have a good idea about that. Any help would be much appreciated. At the moment I mostly eat egg and white bread for breakfast. Boiled rice and dal for lunch and pretty much the same for dinner. Sometimes chapathi. What else could I eat that wouldn;t upset my stomach? Any advice?

you might be interested in taking a look at IBD-AID diet in my signature (go to my first post on this page to see it). This is a experimental diet which seems like a promising approach to help crohns and ulcerative colitis (IBD). Its a scientific article, and all food guidelines/chart are described in table 2. Gluten grains are excluded, so for instance white bread would be excluded. Asafoatida a common spice in indian cuisine very often is mixed with wheat /(gluten) powder inside, so that is to watch if you choose to try this diet. lentils chapatis would be good and lentil dals too. Im excluding legumes from my diet right at this moment, but IBD-AID allows it.

@LadyOrganic
I had a look at that site. Very informative. That table was especially helpful! Thanks! I'll be sure to show it to my mom as well, I'm sure it would help her make 'safe' food for me and not worry about it affecting me in a bad way.

hopefully it will be helping as it seem to do for the people in the study. good luck and let us know how you go.

Thanks, and yes I will keep updates on how it goes

ZeeMee said:

@aarthi
Glad to hear your husband is feeling better now Thanks for the tip about avoiding tamarind. I will definetly remember that one. By the way, I'd really like some help on what indian dishes are safe for me to eat in my current condition. I'm sure you have a good idea about that. Any help would be much appreciated. At the moment I mostly eat egg and white bread for breakfast. Boiled rice and dal for lunch and pretty much the same for dinner. Sometimes chapathi. What else could I eat that wouldn;t upset my stomach? Any advice?

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Sure. My husband's diet was pretty much this -

1. Absolutely no coffee. Because I read somewhere that coffee hurts Crohn's. Now he takes it once or twice a week though. During a flare, he used to have Boost or Bournvita in the morning. We didn't stop dairy for him since it didn't make him worse.

2. Breakfast - Corn flakes/Quinoa/Moong dal porridge. Quinoa is an excellent source of protein. I boiled it completely, mixed it with cooked carrot and beans and served like upma. Moong dal porridge is just like payasam. If you like to have sweet stuff in the morning, you can. Boil moong dal in pressure cooker,mix jaggery with it and eat. We don't usually have it for breakfast but it helped him swallow easily at that time.

3. Lunch - Boiled rice, boiled veggies, rasam/sambhar without tamarind and curd is a must. Gave him veggies like pumpkin, chow chow, carrot, beans, tindora. Avoided potatoes since he was gassy. You can look up recipes for rasam and sambhar without tamarind. You can also ask your mom to cook some dal for you (toor dal and moong dal are the best sources of protein). You can mix some of the dal with plain rice to get direct protein content.

4. Dinner - Chapathi, idly mostly. He had a real tough time eating dosa or pongal. So we stuck to chapathi and idly.

When he had diarrhea, I gave him sago porridge mixed with milk. It helped a bit. I hope this helps you.

Did you have the endoscopy yet? Let us know what the result says