how soon cud i discard my chrones medicines.?

im 21 years of age and pursuing my graduation. recently it has been discovered that i have chrones disease. i had a discussion with my doctoc, in which he said that i might have to continue my medicines for whole of the life. since then im a little tensed and worried about it. i might have to move away from my house for my further studies. how would i be able to cope up wid studies and visits to doctors simultanously? i'm even high miopic and have slight cataract in my eyes(as chrones was not detected at proper time,it ruined my eyesight), failure of growth and development, severe body pains. im on medicinations since 15 days and improving well. i want to get detailed information on how soon i would be able to recover from this, and discard medicines. plz help me out.

[lizziecee]

Welcome to the Crohn's Community, where posts are answered by other Crohn's patients.

I don't think any of us can answer your question regarding stopping prescribed medications as this must really be addressed by your gastroenterologist in light of your current symptoms.  Once your symptoms are under control, you should be able to lead a fairly normal life and perhaps only need say a 6 monthly check up with your gastro, but you need to take take his/her advice on continuing or not with prescribed medications. Crohn's is not curable, but neither is it terminal, and the goal with medications is to keep the disease in remission and free of debilitating symptoms. I have found a high protein, low fat and low fibre diet is helpful.

I am pleased to hear that you are improving well on your current medication and if we can help you further with answers based on our own experiences, please come back and we will do our best to help you.

Take care,
Liz (Crohn's Community Leader)

[RockyMountainMan]

Sue,

Only your doctor can tell you how long you should take your prescribed meds. In the meantime, you can try to control you Crohn's through other means like diet, exercise, and stress management. I have had Crohn's for 15 years and have managed to maintain an active and normal life through the use of proper diet, eliminating stress, and regular exercise. I have just started a blog recently about how I manage my disease and perhaps you could find some useful information there that would benefit you. You can check it out at www.crohnsdiet.com

[mistykh]

My doctor told me to stay on my meds for Crohns and take it every day for 3 years but I went completely off of them because the side effects were bad and I've been off for six months now and I'm doing great.  When I start to hurt I just take one pill and that seems to get me back under control for the next few months instead of taking them everyday as he said. I didn't want to take it every day cause my meds can cause cancer and tumors and the risk just isn't worth it to me.  I have discovered that the only times I get bad flare ups are when I am really stressed out - or when I eat popcorn or mexican food. You just have to experiment and find out what the cause of your flare-ups are and avoid it at all costs. But overall I think meds these days are way overused.