General Support / someone to listen.

Hi Sis, and welcome to HW,

I know said that you came to "vent", but, I'm sure you'll get a lot of good advice here that can certainly help you improve your current situation.

You've given a pretty good overview of what you've been dealing with. Starting with Crohn's though. you haven't mentioned what diagnostics you've had, and how recent. Also, what your treatment plan entails? Considering that you have RA as well, I would be surprised if you haven't at least considered an anti-TNF at this point. I would think your GI would be recommending it, and most here would also highly recommend that route for you at this point.

When you say you feel awful after eating, and that you aren't eating now, the first thing that comes to mind as some kind of blockage. Are you still having regular BM's and able to pass gas? If not, then you really need to get this looked at immediately.

As for your other medical issues, (hypoglycemia, fibromyalgia), I really can't comment on these, but someone on this board just might. You'd be surprised at the experience here on a lot more than Crohn's. Hope you get to feeling better soon. Keep us posted.

I thank the universe for ENSURE!!

OH! You are so lucky to be Canadian...for so many reasons besides healthcare Yes, I agree with everything you are saying. I do hope that others will chime in. I was hoping to kind of commiserate with people having similar symptoms and how they were dealing - maybe in a non-medication fashion. Surely I'm not the only person in the US going through this without insurance.
The next thing I want to say (and I was thinking about this last night) I hope I am not coming across as a complainer. I didn't jump on this forum to complain and be a big old B***! :/ I was thinking though that that was exactly how I sounded.
Without going into a lot of details - my family supposedly makes too much money to qualify for public assistance/medicaid. At the same time to buy into a health care plan is too expensive. My husband and I are both retired. HE is on medicare because he is old enough but I am not there yet (I am younger) I have looked and shopped for health insurance but it would cost pretty much MY entire monthly income! We need that income for, ya know, living, bills, silly things like food. Our country has a serious problem where health care is concerned. There is some hope that with a new administration there might be changes. I don't really hold out a lot of hope for any real change in that department anytime soon.
There I go complaining again!

Hi Sis, I think probably most of us has been there on the well meaning family or friends giving the "have you tried this diet"., lol. It use to really tick me off & I finally just learned to go tone deaf when food was mentioned. It isn't worth getting upset over I decided. If a diet was the magical way to remission this forum & the UC forum would be full of threads about it. I know some has claimed the SCD diet was their magic bullet. I've also seen those on the SCD diet have zero symptoms & the scope reveal the complete opposite & need a biological based on the scope & biopsies. Just my opinion, the only one benefitting from the so called diets are the ones selling it. I've been there & done that.

I have my own diet, it's called what I can eat that does not cause me adverse problems, mainly gut pain & sitting on the toilet around the clock. I buy a good quality ground beef & grill patties on the grill, same with chicken. Once in awhile I buy a small pork tenderloin with garlic butter on it & grill it. All of my meat is cooked on the gas grill. I eat a lot of rice, fresh baked sweet potatoes, regular baked potatoes, a few green beans. In the summer I like fresh cucumber sticks (I slice the seeds out of the center) with a dressing for dipping. I avoid seeds & any veggie with hulls, the roughage tears me up. One of my mainstays is peanut butter! I eat it on toast, regular sandwiches & I eat it crackers. I have been eating it this way for years & it agrees with me. I also like tuna packed in water. The husband gets any meat he wants as long as it can be cooked on the grill, lol. Cantelope, watermelon & honey dew melon is great right now.

I understand the small meal bit. I eat snacks in between meals & maybe you can look at a couple of things I've listed above to help you out. I've done the Ensure which I do not like, I like Boost better. I put it in the freezer about 45 minutes before drinking it. I only drink it when I am in trouble. My biggest problem with these two is the sugar content is too high. I am surprised you tolerate the Ensure because they say to avoid sugar with reactive hypoglycemia.

Since you are a cash pay patient I hope your dr is giving you a discount, ask the office mgr about this. A lot of drs would rather have cash pay rather than dealing with insurance. Any prescriptions ask the pharmacy to run it through their discount program, they will have one. I use the GoodRx app all the time. It's free & you can download the app on your phone. I went to Walgreens yesterday to pick up an steroid inhaler for my son. His insurance said it had to be preapproved. Unfortunately he has the virus with breathing issues & did not need to wait several days for his insurance to decide. The inhaler was $259, Walgreens ran it through a discount program & I paid $159. A lot of people don't know about this stuff, you have to ask.

Welcome to the forum.

Another idea for being without health insurance is to see if you can get into a medical trial of some kind. You may be given the placebo instead of the med, but usually all expenses are covered in that case.

I think your PCP sounds like a moron. This is almost definitely untreated Crohn's issues.