Wednesday 16 January 2013

Hurdles

Today has been very exhausting, the morning was spent in the hospital at my appointment to see Dr Kahn my gastroenterologist and the rest of the day was spent shopping, spending time with my cousin and packing for cologne. To make things easier I will split these up into separate posts!

The meeting with Dr Kahn was overall quite positive, he started by asking if there was anything I was confused about and I told him I still wasn't completely clear about where my crohns was. He explained that the large and the small bowel are the most commonly affected, the small bowel is named that because it is very thin. This is the part that confused me as it is much longer than the large bowel! He told me my inflammation is all the way round the large bowel and then a small part into the small bowel - normal for someone with crohns. This was reassuring and didn't feel patronising at all which is what I like about him! He also said that despite the shingles, which caused a break in my taking of azathioprine, my blood tests were showing an improvement on inflammation! This means the steroids were still working (I love the way doctors say steroids, like stiroids). However he has upped the dosage again to 4 tablets a day for the next two weeks. Ideally I would like to come off steroids soon but hopefully this big hit of them will mean that I can.

He also explained about surgery in the future and that he would do everything he could to prevent me from having it and explained the next options if the steroids don't work. These come in the form of injections which I have heard some negative things about from other crohns patients so I'm hoping I can stay away from those! The next hurdle is going back to university and fitting in appointments at home with my work. I already face this in the next two weeks where I start university but have a hospital appointment an hour and a half away the next day! These are things to work out as I go along but I hope that it will settle down eventually.

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