About Me

I have Crohn's disease & have been fighting this for over 4 years now with no success. I recently chose to contact the University of Virginia, it is about 2 1/2 hours from me. I really don'thave any choice...I have tried everything my area has to offer. One year into my disease I had to have emergency surgery because I was so infected in my intestines and in my colon. I was hospitalized for 6 weeks at that time because there was so much infection in my body. I have done treatment after treatment that my body keeps rejecting. Humira caused my liver to swell and try to shut down and also gave me terrible ovarian cysts and other issues...Imuran gave me a very serious case of pancreantitis that hospitalized me for a week after only 6 days of taking it. The UVA doctor seems to think that there wa sother choices rather than the surgery I had that they removed 12 inches of my intestines and part of my colon and that the surgery is the reason my body is rejecting treatments. Well, he has come up with a new treatment plan but I am at a very big risk because the biologic drug (Remiciad) is similar to the other meds and it is actually an infusion of an entire IV bag that will be ran in me and I may have a bad reaction to this as well....if this is unsuccessful he is not sure what we will do next. All I know is, I can not continue to live my life in an emergency room, being admitted time after time...to just do it all over again. I almost constantly have on a nausea patch (scopalamine) and I have to take a tin of both oral and dissolvable nausea meds, I take 16 pills in the morning...2 pills 2 other times a day and 8 at night. Crohn's has caused me a pottassium defficiency... the prednisone that they are treating me with has caused my legs to swell and look deformed and they hurt to my bones. I also have hypothyroidism, high blood pressure, extreme anxiety disorder, folic acid defficiency, vitamin b12 defficiency, vitamin d difficiency, and I am now anemic. I NEED HELP!