Remicade & serum sickness

I'm a 42year old male Crohn's disease survivor. I had a resection in 1998 and have been fairly symptom free for eleven years now. In September I had a couple very painful fistulas protrude on the upper part of my anus. A surgeon opened them up and drained them. A lot of pain, but as the disease goes, it's just part of the routine. My GI doctor suggested we start infusions of Remicade to dry up the fistulas.

Nine days after my first Remicade infussion I noticed my groins and shoulders were getting very sore very quickly. 15 minutes later I could barely walk. I got extremely scared, as did my wife, and got myself into our truck and off to the ER. During the 15 minute drive to the ER my jaw and mouth muscles became so sore I had a hard time even talking. We got to the ER into a room and I was literally crying from the pain of even the slightest movements of my body. The ER doctor ran a ton of tests and the only thing he could find wrong was a increase in white blood cells. He gave me Dilludide for the pain.

After six hours in ER they( the ER Doctor) didn't know what to do with me. He wanted to send me home. I begged him to let me stay the night n the hospital because I knew something was wrong. Finally I got my way and stayed the first of three nights in the hospital. The pain was only midly controlled with the IV narcotics. Getting up to use the rest room was like getting hit with a sledge hammer. Everyone in the hospital was very nice,but in the back of mind I thought these people don't really believe something is wrong with me.

After my first night an on call GI docotor came in visit me. He almost immediately said I had serum sickness from the remicade. I was relieved to have an answer to my horrible conditions. He put me on a huge dose of steriods and 36 hours later I was almost back to normal.

I went from normal (what ever that means) to not being able to feed myself in less than four or five hours. Very scary! I hope this might help anyone else out there that might have had a similar incident.

Tomorrow, my first injections of Humeria are coming. I hope there isn't a repete.

Everyday I say I am fornute because as I read others posts, I don't have symptoms as bad as a lot of people. Please everyone keep the fight!

I am sorry to hear that you had to go though that. I too was on remicade and had a very similar problem. After treating it with prednisone and a month later i recovered fully. I am now on Humeria and have been for a little over a year with no problems yet. Before going on Humeria i did a lot of research on the medication and found it to be slightly different than it sister drug remicade (they took out a strand that people tend to have an allergic reaction to) Crohns now is still present but I feel Humeria at least for me is a better medication. I wish you the best.