Crohn's with no diarrhea or constipation?

Hi All. This is my first time posting. I'm currently in the middle of a 5+ week sickness, what I believe to be my first Crohn's flare up. I feel just horrible. The amount of anxiety I feel coupled with the physical symptoms are like no other. I know you all can relate. I've never experienced anxiety before, I'm 30, and now I know what it is for sure. I've been to 2 different GI docs. I'm suffering from abdominal and intestinal gurgling and noises every few minutes all day long. I go thru severe bouts of nausea for days. I've lost 20 lbs in a few months between a few different illnesses and limited appetite. I get stomach pain that sometimes radiates into my chest. I had a negative upper endoscopy. Negative CT scan. Blood work and stool tests which showed the high inflammation levels in my intestines synonymous with Crohn's. I've been told I need to get a colonoscopy to verify. So I'm not on any meds yet. I just need help/support from anyone going thru this. I'm scared to even get a colonoscopy. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated. I took prednisone for 30 days for a herniated disc in my back and I'm convinced it strongly lowered my immune system as I got several infections thereafter. So I'm scared of taking some of the meds they'd prescribe for Crohn's. I just find it so weird that I don't have diarrhea. If anything my stools are currently harder than normal. And I'm not constipated either. I've gone once a day for the last week. In the past I've had days where I go 4+ times but it's usually not diarrhea in those cases either. Thanks for any and all help on here!

Yeah, it's very hard to get a Crohn's diagnosis without a colonoscopy. Blood/stool tests can test positive for inflammation, but they can't tell you what the source of the inflammation is. What stool test did you have? Was it faecal calprotectin? A high calprotectin result is usually automatic grounds for a colonoscopy.

As far as the pred is concerned, a 30-day course is quite short for pred. It's not a benign med but it's unlikely to have done much damage in 4 weeks, unless you already had a latent infection which pred made worse. I suspect between the herniated disc, active inflammation, and stress you were already pretty run down, which in turn made you more susceptible to catching infections.

If you were on meds after the surgery and got several infections, then I'm assuming you had a bunch of antibiotics. I'm guessing it's more post-infectious IBS as opposed to actually Crohn's. But you need to get the colonoscopy ASAP. Honestly, people freak out about the idea because they rarely have surgery, go under anesthesia, etc. but a colonoscopy has got to be one of the easiest procedures there is.

Do you know exactly which blood tests were done that show inflammation? Was it CRP? ESR? Something else?

And what dose of prednisone were you on for 30 days? That's not really that long of a time. It's true it can affect people differently, and if you were on a high dose then 30 days is enough for steroids to have negative consequences. But in the grand scheme of things, 30 days is considered a short-to-moderate length of time on steroids.

This *might* be Crohn's, but it could be lots of things really. Sorry that's not much help. The colonoscopy hopefully will give some answers.

I get the sane gurgling noises. All day. U could have IBS. Try avoid things like diary and wheat.