by Inna at www.journey-with-crohns-disease.com
(Brooklyn, NY, USA)
My name is Inna. I am a pharmacist from New York and I’m also a Crohns disease patient. In 2000 I was given a misdiagnosis of Ulcerative colitis (UC) right after having my first child.
Then, three years later, during my second pregnancy, my symptoms got worse.
After a lot of discussions, medical doctors finally comforted themselves with pneumonia as my diagnosis. I don’t think that anyone of them noticed that I got severe diarrhea even before starting antibiotics.
My gastroenterologist reviewed my case and was now convinced that this was in fact Crohns disease. It’s very easy to confuse Crohns disease (CD) with UC especially when the symptoms are still mild.
After being misdiagnosed once, I decided to start questioning everything.
I started reading a lot of medical literature on inflammatory bowel conditions and realized that this diagnosis was probably the correct one according to all the current diagnostic parameters.
Then I tried most medications available like Rowasa enema, Pentasa, Asacol, 6-MP or mercaptopurine, Entocort, Xifaxan, antibiotics like Cipro without much improvement.
I actually got worse and ended up in the hospital a few times with horrible flare ups.
I was given intravenous corticosteroids that made my mind very unclear. Then I was getting Remicade IV infusions. Then, I received Mercaptopurine (6-MP) and stayed on it for a while.
I started improving slowly but now my immune system was down from the medications and the aftermath of Crohns exacerbations. I was catching viral and bacterial infection so fast. Working in the pharmacy in the cold season did not