Calm before the storm?

Nothing much to report on the Crohns front right now.  Just a couple quickies:

• 2.5 more weeks of Prednisone and I'm done!  Yay, yay, yay!  I've (thankfully) stopped eating everything in sight.  There are only 2 remaining side effects: bloat and hair.  I'm retaining water like no one's business.  My fingers got so fat I stopped wearing my rings.  My face is still a little puffy.  And the 8lbs I worked so hard to lose are back.  Some of that is water, some is fat, from me stuffing my face.
• As of last week, my ALT was almost back to normal.  The range high is 36, and I was at 42.  I did another blood draw today, so hopefully it'll go down more.
• And, the best news of all, I got my Adderall back!  So now I'm not tired all the time.  Yay!

Quick update

I've been taken off most of my meds.

My ALT levels (which should max out at 36) are at 278.  Something in my liver isn't happy.

I'm down to Humira, Celexa and Prednisone.  No more Asacol, 6MP, Adderall or Pepcid.

I'm concerned that a major flare up is just down the road.  But I'm more concerned about dying from a non-functioning liver.

I just had a blood draw on Wednesday.  I have to go back and do another one tomorrow at 6.15am.  Then we go from there.

Medicino change up

After running around to get my Asacol prescription refilled Monday, on Tuesday, my GI took me off of Asacol.

Monday morning I realized I was completely out of Asacol.  I was taking 9-12 pills of Asacol daily.  So when ever I got a refill I'd get multiple, huge bottles, which seemed like a never ending supply.  Monday morning, I went to take some, and realized I had enough left for morning and noon doses, but no more.  I had no more in the cabinet either.  And (dun, dun, DUN) no refills remaining.  So I scrambled around, leaving a message, and sending an email to my GI.  (The one issue I have with Kaiser, is it can be hard to talk to someone in the GI department).

Mid-day I got an email from my GI saying that he refilled the Asacol, and I could pick it up in the pharmacy that afternoon.  Perfect.  I had to go to Kaiser anyway to get my monthly blood work done.

I go, I drop of my Rx, do the blood draw, pick up the filled Rx and head home.  It actually all went very quickly.

The next day, I was checking my blood work online.  My sed-rate is finally where it should be.  (Normal is 0-20, at one point mine was 92).  All the other tests looked fine, except the ALT.  The ALT basically tests for liver damage (as is my understanding), and since my combination of poisons is good to crohns, but bad for livers, they've been keeping an eye on it. Normal ALT levels should be under 36.  Last month, mine was 43, which seemed a little high.  This time it was 75 (double the max of where it should be).  Eep!  So after talking to my GI, he said to stop taking the Asacol (which I'd spent the previous day stressing about), and we'd continue the blood tests. I guess it's not high enough to cause alarm.

It's kind of nice not taking Asacol.  I went from 20 pills a day to 8. But, I've definitely felt worse in the gut area.  So I guess it was helping out.