Doc Update

I just got home from the doc, and it was a great time!

Unbelievable!

It's almost like he's reading my blog... hmm...

Anyway, he was kind and welcoming. He was even encouraging. He scared me a little bit, but not too badly. I hope that I presented my symptoms correctly, because he wasn't overly dire about it.

I told him that I'm having diarrhea, gas (tho not this week), and lots and lots of anxiety. I said that there have been lots of things going on in my life, including the ongoing anxiety, that might be affecting my Crohn's, or it could be a Crohn's flare, unrelated to all that. I didn't know. He said firstly that Entocort is not a long term solution, which he's said before, so if these symptoms that I'm having don't go away, we'll have to talk about other medications or possibly surgery. He said (and I was surprised to hear this) that in that case, of non-improvement, he'd like to try Remicade again, or possibly Humira, which is a newer biological drug that does the same things in the same way that Remicade does, only using human cells instead of mouse cells, which greatly lessens the chances of resistance and allergy to it.

I have taken Remicade in the past, but was taken off it because one of my lymph nodes swelled up and my primary care doc thought it might be because of the Remicade. I wasn't sure that was the case, but I ended up agreeing with the hemotologist I was sent to, who concluded that I didn't have lymphoma and my lymph node was probably swollen because it was busy trying to calm down my Crohn's. ;) Part of the evidence of this is that my lymph node does that every now and then (it's swollen right now, in fact).

So, the doc today was very encouraging. He recognized that Remicade didn't do much for me in the past, but that I can try it again and see if it'll work better this time. And if Remicade doesn't work, I can try Humira. He also encouraged me to research new studies that have come out, showing from trials that Remicade's bad side effects might not be as bad as originally suspected. They were done at the University of Chicago, some of them done by an old doc of mine. However, the trials I found online don't say that, they say that the risk is what I always heard it was: greater chance of cancers, including lymphoma. Anyway...

So, very exciting. Praise the Lord!

But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,
for he has been good to me.