Physical and Spiritual Health Update

My health has greatly improved in the last several weeks since my post about my Crohn’s flare-up. After my initial appointment, I was able to get in to see my regular doctor later that week, and he officially signed off on a prescription for Humira. There was some initial confusion with the Walgreens pharmacy - apparently they can’t order the starter package - but a very nice woman at MN Gastro helped sort everything out and a few days later a box appeared on my door step with the 6-pen starter kit.

Humira is injected similar to an epi-pen, and I had an appointment with a physician’s assistant yesterday who showed me how to operate the pens (not hard at all), as well as answered a number of my questions (like, “what time of day is best?”, etc). All in all a productive and fulfilling appointment. I took my first four shots yesterday (Monday), two in the morning at my appointment and two in the evening right before bed, just so I wasn’t jabbing myself four times all at once. In two weeks I’ll inject two more pens, and then every two weeks after that one pen, presumably for many years (ie, the rest of my life, or until the scientists come up with other medication options).

Over the last several weeks my Prednisone prescription has greatly helped control my symptoms, and also given me some extra energy for life and work. Spiritually I’ve come to terms with the temporary nature of my healing, and I’m okay with it. God gave me that gift, and nothing will take that away, even if the healing was not as long-term as I’d hoped it would be.

I have a follow-up appointment in a month with the really nice doctor I met a few weeks ago, and I’m looking forward to seeing him again. Hopefully by that time the Humira will have had a noticeable effect, since we want to be tapering me off the steroids. Unlike Remicade, whose effect was apparent within a day or two, Humira is slower-acting to start, so it may be a couple weeks before I actually notice the difference (although you’d think with a four-pen starter dose that there’d be something going on inside me :)