4 month long flare, now afraid to eat
Hi everyone! This is the second forum I've posted this to, but I wanted to see if others have experienced this.
I've had Crohn's disease for 4 years, and I've had a couple of pretty bad flares. This summer marked the worst flare I've ever had in the past 4 years. I've had moderate to severe pain everyday since late May of this year. In the past 3 weeks I've had extremely severe pain and vomiting. When I was still confident enough to eat, it felt like the food was stuck in my GI tract, and then I would vomit hours later. I haven't eaten a meal aside from a few saltine crackers for almost a week, but even though I haven't eaten anything I still have severe pain,nausea, and completely liquid stool. I take mesalamine and imuran, but at this point it doesn't even feel like any of those medications are working. The worst part of all of this is that my insurance coverage doesn't begin until November. I have a little over a month before I can even get seen, and I don't know if I can last that long. I'm even contemplating quitting my job because the pain is too severe. Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you find the will to keep going? How did you deal with the pain in the absence of effective treatment? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Sorry to hear you are struggling so much at the moment
. I have spent many years in flare, but I am in the UK so I didn't have insurance to worry about - I was just constantly going from one treatment to the next, having to wait 3 months to see if they would help and then moving on each time!
Not eating would always make my pain worse, as air would build up instead and that caused even more pain whilst going through my GI tract...
Again, with the pain, we don't have the same issues accessing pain medication over here, so I was always heavily reliant on pain meds to even get out of bed and to make it to work in the morning during a lot of it. I would often have to go on a low residue diet, but I always spoke to my team about this first so that they could monitor my bloods for any deficiencies etc whilst I was on it. Ultimately, I have had to have multiple surgeries to sort my issues. I wish I had an easy fix for you to feel better, but we're all so different and what works for one could even harm another, so I can't really advise.
Sending healing hugs!
- Sahara (team member)
Thank you so much for your reply! Despite the difference in access to medication, it's still really helpful to hear from someone who has also gone through similar pain and the emotions that come with it!
It's a really interesting point you made about not eating making the pain worse because of the air building up in the GI tract. That's a perspective I haven't really thought of, but it's definitely encouraging because I have a very negative relationship with food right now.
Thank you again for your reply, and I'm receiving your virtual healing hug!
