Meds Progression

So I wanted to share my story, and see if anyone else has had a similar progression, and what worked best for them. I am currently a 24 year old male.

So in late 2011 I was diagnosed with moderate proctitis extending about 8 inches up the rectum. My first round of drugs was Asacol Enemas that didn't really seem to work, and I discontinued treatment after about 3 weeks. I was dumb and went about 1 year untreated after that until symptoms got a bit "intolerable". I mainly did this because I was afraid of all the drugs and took the "maybe if i ignore it, it will go away approach.." I know..DUMB!

So, in early 2014 I started Lialda with canasa suppositories and saw moderate improvement, but nothing substantial. After about 3 -6 months of that, I switched GI's for a second opinion. He started me up on double the canasa and asacol oral apposed to lialda. I also did a round of cortifoam. All this helped somewhat but the symptoms couldn't be knocked out.

So, two weeks ago I got a flex sig, and they found that the inflammation has gone from 8 inches, to at least 3.5 feet (everything that you can see in a flex sig). My current stack is now a 10 week prednisone burst, with a taper, as well as Azathioprine, to hopefully keep the symptoms at bay after the prednisone does its job.

In just 4 days I have gone from 6-8 BM's/day to maybe 1 (which is really strange to me because I am eating more. I feel like food to poop ratio is in the works for something big here soon) and blood has subsided by probably 85%. Side affects so far are pretty minimal, but I am just worried that like the last treatments, this is going to be short term, and the disease will win again. I am working out every day, and sticking to a relatively healthy diet, to try and alleviate any variables that will make me more sick.

If this doesn't work I will have to start remicade. Has anyone experienced these meds in the same progression? Any useful tips for living while on them? Any success?

Thank you for reading!

That sounds very similar to me. (23 year old male, work out every day as well)

I went from 10-15 times to once a day after about a week. (40mg of prednisone, Delzicol and nightly mesalamine enemas)

Also blood is mostly gone, just mucus and a little blood on the TP.

I'm currently on 30mg of prednisone so I started the taper already and still the same. Food wise, I ate very selective the first week when symptoms were bad, now I seem to not be bothered by food too much, still trying to stay semi well as far as food goes but it's tough.

I'm in the same boat as you, I hope that after the pred is done I'm fine on just the Delzicol but so far same as you. Good luck!

Thanks,
M

I've been pretty undersized, probably due to the amount of times I use the bathroom (5'11" weighed in at 164 lbs before the colonoscopy 2-3 weeks ago now). I went down to 154lbs and finally am getting back to 156lbs yesterday. So no I haven't seen any weight gain, if anything weight loss.

As far as protein, I tried cutting out dairy for a while since people say that can be a problem food but then took some whey protein as well as ate some milk chocolate as well as cheese and did not see any bad effects (Thinking I'm not lactose intolerant). However, I eat a lot of eggs for protein and they give me 0 problems. I usually eat 1-2 scrambled eggs for breakfast and another 2 hard boiled eggs throughout the day. I also started taking soy protein instead of whey for a week or so and that did not seem to bother me. So no, protein does not seem to give me problems.

I hope that answers your question?

Thanks,
M