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?
