Tricky Crohn's

[Cjplus]

Hey forum peeps. So here's my question to the group. (first a little history)

So I've had stomach issues ever since I can remember. When I was a child I was told I had lactose intolerance. I would have horrible stomach cramping, and i mean horrible, followed by diarrhea. Sometime this would repeat several times throughout a day or two and then go away for a while. I would have an episode of this anywhere from 1 to 5 times a year. As I got older the cramping would get much more severe. In my twenties I went to the docotor a few times and tests were ordered that I never went through with. So 5 years ago i started to get this discomfort in my upper right abdomen that came and went without any obvious reasoning and was certainly effected by my posture. Oh and i always, since I was 19, had this retrosternal pain that was explained as chondritis. This pain can be manipulted by me and reproduced by pushing or changing position.

So over the past 5 years I've had several CT scans, and abdominial ultrasound and a colonoscopy. each CT scan showed mural wall thickening in my intestines. The area of thickening would sometimes be the same but it would also change from time to time. There was also some mesenteric stranding associated with the areas of thickening and mildly enlarged lymph nodes were noted on one of the scans. All organs were found to be normal each time any of the scans were run.

There was one month 4 years ago when i had constant diarrhea. After some ER visits I was diagnosed with crohn's by the ER physicians and my GP. The one ER doc put me on Asacol and some predisone. I didn't really take the prednisone for too long but the asacol seemed to help. My GP sent me down to Jefferson to their GI department. Now this was about a month after everything had happened and I was already feeling better. (By the way - there was never any blood found in my stool and it was checked several times) The GI doc did a colonoscopy and took biopsies. I woke up and was told that I had an absolutely beautiful large intestine. The biopsies also came back normal. So my question here is what the hell? If there is no active disease will a biopsy come back with a normal result?

I also often have an itchy spot around my anus, bright red streaks of blood on occasion due to over whiping or hemmoroids and frequent canker sores in my mouth.

Thanks for any help offered.

[reese09]

I was just reading your post.  I have been trying so hard to get someone to respond to my posts....no luck yet.  I have been diagnosed with Crohn's strictures in the small intestine.  They found mine with the capsule endoscopy.  The only problem is the 24 days later....my "cam pill" hasn't passed.  After having a CT Scan, they tell me that it is stuck in the narrowing of the stricture.  Not sure what they are going to do to get it out.  Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem...

[coughting]

Yes, with no blood present and the fact that it was on your right side leads toward Chrons disease in the small intestine.  Your dr. should have gone through the small intestine but may not been able to.   Ask him if he checked it and if not why?  Also, the tests should say if the thickening was in the large or small intestine.

[boron]

Crohn's disease may be present only in small intestine (often just on the end of it). This can be checked during colonoscopy (not sure if your doctor did). It is a capsule endoscopy that can take pictures of your entire small intestine and show if there are any mucosal changes.