flare but with "normal" lab work and CT results

Have any of you ever flared and been in a LOT of pain and have gone in only to find out there is NO COLITIS found in the CT and that your test results were normal?

I wound up in the ER on Wed and went to another one yesterday and was treated like a drug seeker when all I wanted was to see a GI to see if they could do anything to help me.

I had a mini flare around 3 weeks ago and started a pred taper of 40mg x 7 30 mg x 7 etc when the pain got so bad on Wed that I could not think straight (i was at day 2 of 20mg).

First ER gave me dialaudid and once the results came in, discharged me. When I asked for where a GI was, he said that they don't have those unless I needed emergency surgury (good to know) but bad for me. Went to PCP on Thursday morning and she referred me to GI for monday at 7:45am and gave me 60 oxycodones and ondasetrons. Later that afternoon I decided to reinstate my cobra and went to the ER i had been going to since I was diagnosed. They would not redo the CT, would not redo the lab work, would not have another radiologist reread the CT. They gave me 2 ivs (which I asked for since I spent $900 to reinstate my insurance for 1 month), no pain meds, and wanted to discharge me. Lucky for me, I emailed and called my gi's nurse and told them I was down in the ER and to please help me. So he came and gave me a new round of pred. If he hadn't seen me, I would have struck out again. It was very humbling. To make it worse, I used to work at that ER and one of my excoworkers who was my nurse would ask how much pain I was in and then would disappear for an hour and then ask the same question. I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to see my GI that I just sucked it up and curled into a ball but the more I think about it today, the angrier I get. I did have those 60 pills that the other doctor gave me but I hadn't opened it AND I showed them to the ER dr in good faith thinking that he would understand my plight that I didn't want to be doped up all weekend. I wanted action. I don't know. I haven't gone to the bathroom since Monday so I can't do a stool sample but I'm passing gas so I'm not blocked. i just ate chicken rice gruel and now feel like someone socked me in the middle of my chest. I'm the kind of crohn's person who gets more C than D so that doesn't help my case either. Im just a freak. =( Thanks for letting me vent.

Background info. I am under my domestic partner's health ins plan which was under an HMO called Group Health. He got a new job so our new insurance kicked in on Nov 1st (Aetna we chose the HMO plan again cause Group Health was fine) but I hadn't made the relationships with the primary care doc and gi yet.

ER's can be notorious for that, and I am sorry to hear what you went thru. My last hospitalization they were telling me the same thing. It took awhile, but my GI said he thinks that it must be somewhere in the small bowel where the scopes can't reach. We will be doing a pill cam when my heart issues settle down. Maybe thats a test to talk to your doc about. Big hugs!

They have test pillcam's they can try first before the actual one is used. This way if the test one gets stuck it will just dissolve instead of needing emergency surgery to remove it. Hugs!

malakia, my CT was normal in the hospital. For the most part my blood work was in normal ranges. Still it's obvious I was flaring. Thankfully I was ill enough (vomitting, the Erthyma Nodsum, in addition to the pain and D) for them to admit me. But last week they just stuffed me with anti-vomiting and pain meds and sent me home. Which is what they do though, because they just want to get you stabilized. But at some point we get bad enough to where that just isn't enough!

I'm looking for a new GI too. Unfortunately I don't think there is a single decent one where I live. Makes things very hard! I hope you get to feeling better. Seems like we're dealing with a lot of the same things!

@jen and @novice... thank you also for sharing your stories on here with me. It makes things more bearable to know there are other people with "strange" cases even though we have to go through it. I am so thankful for this website and its community.