rmanthe915

I do have insurance now! I have a $2k co-payment for the surgery but I’ve saved enough up the last 9 months so I didn’t have to dip into my savings or put it on a credit card and pay interest on it as well. I was under my dad’s insurance previously but when he turned 65 and had to go on Medicare I got the boot off. I’m going to have to ask my GI doctor about new meds because the tabs of mesalamine are too big to take after surgery. I was previously on Asacol and those were smaller so we might go that route.

I did some research when he said I cannot do either and I think that is what prompted presenting my case at a conference. I’m going with the sleeve. I would never want my crohns to return and be more severe. I’m only 27 and my mom had the same experience with Crohns, she has been asymptomatic for 30 years. I hope the sleeve improves your crohns!

For a little background info, I was diagnosed with Crohns in 2011, have been asymptomatic since 2012 and stopped my crohns medication in 2013 due to loss of insurance. I started my WLS journey 9 months ago in July. At my first appointment my surgeon thought I may have been misdiagnosed and recommended I have a colonoscopy as WLS is contraindicated for people with Crohns. He seemed pretty sure I did not have Crohn’s since I had very mild symptoms before being diagnosed. I wasn’t able to get a colonoscopy until the end of October, and it came back still indicating I do indeed have Crohn’s. My GI doctor wasn’t sure why I wasn’t having symptoms, but did see inflammation which was contained to my colon. She put me on mesalamine and wanted to do calprotectin labs to check inflammation in February. I returned to my surgeon and was informed that he did not feel comfortable performing WLS with this condition. I was pretty devastated but wasn’t going to let it get me down. I had lost 20 pounds (10 pounds more than the goal he had set for me) and accepted the fact that I will have to do this on my own. A month later I was called back into the bariatric clinic and my surgeon had went to a bariatric surgery conference in DC and proposed my case and spoke with other surgeons and all of a sudden he was able to offer me the sleeve. He advised against RNY due to if I ever became symptomatic I might require addition surgery as it could spread. I was looking to do full RNY due to the possibility of having dumping but I would take the sleeve over nothing. The catch was we have to wait until the inflammation in my colon goes down. 3 months was basically wasted on the mesalamine. Nothing changed. My GI doctor started me on a 2 month prednisone taper. Prednisone is the freaking devil. I gained 23 pounds but had the labs re-done and my inflammation went down from 374 to 81 and normal was Now my VSG is scheduled for 5/31! Does anyone else have Crohn’s? Have you had problems?

It will go faster than you think! I started my journey 9 months ago and was just approved for surgery yesterday and have it scheduled for May 31st. I never thought the day would come.

I’m having vsg on May 31st