Good news and bad news!

– had my yearly routine control for Crohn’s Disease in the hospital last week

– my calpro (faecal calprotectin) is somewhat elevated, so looks like I have inflammation in the bowel. But my symptoms have been stable for a couple of years now (better than ever before). No change in medication is deemed warranted right now, but it’s coming up on 3 years since my last coloscopy. So a new coloscopy is scheduled for September/October. Not yay, but needs must.

– iron levels are bad again. They’re giving me another iron infusion, a bigger dose this time, on next Monday. I got the first one last March, in May the ferritin was 80 and now it was low again, only 23. I can’t take iron tablets anymore; I’ve been taking them practically 20 years for about 10 months every year, and my ferritin kept lowering. The iron tablets as well as the liquid version also started to cause worse diarrhea. It took a few years of me pushing and talking about the low ferritin and my symptoms but finally last year and now, I didn’t even have to ask for a iron infusion – it was offered to me! This is good!

– learned that much more research has been done in the recent years in much more IBD patients because IBD is becoming so common, and that the danger of colon cancer in Crohn’s Disease patients isn’t as high as previously thought. Only two times more likely than in a healthy individual of same age. And actually the chances of doctors catching it quickly are much better because of the regular colonoscopies people with Crohn’s Disease have to go through. He said that the chances of me dying from colon cancer is practically zero because everything suspicious seen in a colonoscopy is biopsied and removed so cancer won’t have a chance to develop and spread. The doctor said that if I die from colon cancer, it’ll be because they the doctors and the hospital have royally fucked up. So that was new information!

– in bad news, my right inner thigh started to hurt on Sunday :/ It’s been “feeling” for about a year, but not actually hurting until now. The bad thing is that the pain is exactly like my Mom described her pain before she underwent the hip replacement surgery a few years ago. Good thing is, there’s a chance that it’s Crohn’s Disease related – apparently, often the big joints in the lower extremities can start to hurt when there’s active inflammation which I have right now. I had a bad bout of Crohn’s symptoms on Monday, the day after the thigh started to hurt. Anyway, if it is related to Crohn’s, it’s my understanding that there’s no physical damage on the joint? And that proper medication for the Crohn’s Disease can make it go away. Or that it might just go away on its own – I think I saw somewhere that it might go away in six weeks if it’s Crohn’s related?

But. I’m obese. And being obese is a risk factor for actual hip arthritis. Age is as well, but I’m only turning 49 this year and it’s my understanding that’s quite young? I also have Diabetes and autoimmune disease which are both risk factors so who knows why. I haven’t yet contacted health care about this – I want to get the iron infusion done first, which is on Monday. I also want to see if it hurts all the time, and what activities make it worse and if any make it better. Because they are going to ask about that anyway. But my inner front right thigh has been hurting all the time since Sunday, most of the time I can walk normally but more or less in pain. Sometimes after sleeping, I limp a little for a bit because the pain is so bad. Ibuprofen helps, but doesn’t remove the pain completely. Only time it doesn’t hurt is when I’m sitting on my couch, and in some positions on the bed after a while. I’ve started to do the exercises I found online for hip arthritis.

This is again just what has been happening the last 14 years – whenever things settle down, or even have gotten better, some fucking new health problem crops up. My body is really just rotting away, isn’t it? If this thigh thing turns out to be not related to Crohn’s Disease and is permanent – I just might throw a tantrum like a two year old….

Also, got my 5th COVID-19 vaccine last week – the bivalent one! 😀