MY internist took me out of work on Oct 21,2011. I had lost weight, was having 6 BM a day with D and basically felt bad. on top of that heart and blood presure was going crazy. I just saw her tuesday night, fully expecting to get my release to work. However, she shocked me by saying unless i was going to get fired, she would not release me until April! My blood pressure has been crazy moving from way to low and needing bags of fluid to way to high and having to add moe meds. (BTW I take 6 different blood pressure medications a day now-they told me i was now in the 1% of how bad it can get with out of control HBP) she said i needed to show that I could remain stable/ healthy for a 30 day window. WOW.. I was not expecting that. However, as i listened to her she made a lot of sense as I have a high stress job and she did not want to see me in the ER in a couple of weeks and start over all the progress we have made. Unfortunately, my income on STD pay goes to 65% so the family and i need to find ways to cut back even more.
While she is not my GI, she is in complete control of my overall health and coordinated with all my other doctors. She told something interesting while I was there about crohn's. She said that while I am pretty much symptom free right now, my colonoscopy show active inflamation, although it was no worse that last spring. She also said that once anyone has surgery to remove small intestines, the body reacts in very different ways, but mainly, lower appetite, some weight loss and then assortion issues which cause blood problems. She said as along as they see any ulcerations, you are not in remmission..period-that is the new standard. which this makes sense as many of us have problems even when the colonoscopy does not show much. Her take was this is a cronic inflamatory disease and it manifests itself in many different ways and that no one with crohn's should be viewed as "text book".
I am so glad I have her as my internist She definately has my best interests in mind. Funny notew, I asked her what about the STD still agreeing with her...she said she know how to play their game and what buzz words they need to see in her notes. Plus she said id anyone really reads the notes of what a crohnie goes through, they will not question STD. BTW,I am waiting on the remicade load factor test results to see if I switch from remicade (2nd attempt at remicade in last 2 years)