Living With Crohn's Disease

It has been a minute since I have posted anything on this blog (almost 10 years), but I am still alive and, by God's grace, managing this awful disease. Since the last post, I took Humira for several years until I acquired Histoplasmosis in early 2023. If you aren't familiar with Histo, it's a fungal infection that I had in my lungs. You can get it from working in the soil, bat droppings, bird droppings, etc. To a healthy person, Histo would feel like a bad chest cold, but to someone with a suppressed immune system it can be fatal. I almost died between February and March of 2023 due to Histoplasmosis. It was extremely scary because we didn't know what was wrong. I kept having low-grade fevers every day and night along with severe night sweats. A real unusual symptom was that I had a headache in the back of my head, but it only hurt up the left side.

My wife took me to the emergency room 3 times in two weeks. A pulmonologist performed a biopsy on one of the lymph nodes in one of my lungs and discovered the Histoplasmosis infection. Before the biopsy, the doctor was leaning towards lymphoma, and he told me to prepare myself that I would have to take chemo and radiation. Thank God for biopsies, right? I write that to emphasize the importance of questioning any diagnosis and to get as many opinions as you feel comfortable obtaining. My main gastro doctor is now at Vanderbilt Hospital, and she kept telling the doctors here to check me for Histo, and I'm so glad they did. I lost close to 50 pounds in two months. And, oddly enough, I developed a distaste for several types of sweets. If you know me personally, then you know how catastrophic that was for me since I have a massive sweet-tooth.

I have not been on any Crohn's medication since being diagnosed with Histoplasmosis. My last colonoscopy from last summer shows inflammation around the surgical site from the bowel resection I had back in 2011. So, my gastro doctor has now put me on Skyrizi due to the disease coming out of remission. However, the infectious disease doctor has emphasized that if I go back on a Crohn's medication, then I have to keep taking an anti-fungal medication to make sure the Histo doesn't return. Isn't being diseased fun? (No, it isn't.) But a side effect of the anti-fungal medication is an increase in blood pressure. So, the infectious disease doctor reversed course and told me to STOP taking the anti-fungal medication and a blood pressure medication has been temporarily added.

That's all the medical science jargon with what's going on. Now, I look and feel healthy, but 2023 into 2024 was a very scary year. I will tell you the main thing that saved my life was God's grace and prayer. I was so weak that I could not go to work let alone church, so the bible study group we were in at the time brought the church into my living room one Sunday! That was a true demonstration of what God's people being the hands and feet of Jesue truly look like. Our class brought food and prayed over me, and there were so many others praying for me. I give the highest praise to God for hearing our prayers and healing me from Histoplasmosis! I love how God moves and speaks through His people. A person my mother had spoken with stated she helped heal her husband's Histo infection primarily with garlic. So, guess what I ate a lot of during the 2nd half of that year. After I had gotten a lot better, we were at church one Sunday morning, and my wife told me I smelled very strongly of garlic. I was like, "Hey, then we'll have this whole pew to ourselves, right?" But garlic did help...a lot! The research I have found online states that a mixture of cinnamon and garlic is a powerful treatment for several types of ailments. Including high blood sugar, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer developing properties, brain health, along with anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.

It's very important due to do your own research, but I have also taken tumeric (anti-inflammatory) and mixed it with raw honey and black pepper. One thing a lot of websites will not tell you is that your body will not absorb tumeric without black pepper. I would shake black pepper into a tablespoon full of raw honey and swallow it with my tumeric supplements.

I also might as well report that I have Celiac disease, or at least a touch of it. Autoimmune diseases apparently don't like to live alone and prefer to develop in clusters. My blood work showed 2 out of the 3 markers for Celiac were positive. I say I'm about 85% gluten free in my diet. That means I make a conscious effort to avoid gluten, but if there are no other options, or if I just want to eat some bread I will. I have noticed a lot less stomach irritation by cutting back on the gluten. For years my stomach would not endure corn or peas, but within this past year I have gone back to eating corn without any problems. In dealing with this disease, you have to experiment a little to find out which foods your body will tolerate and process and which ones it will not. And then there are food allergies, which will have to be another discussion for another day. There is no magical diet to combat Crohn's Disease. Again, everyone's body is different, and you have to find the foods that work for you and the ones you need to avoid. However, the closest diet that I have found that my diseased body will accept is either a Mediterranean based diet, Paleo diet, or something similar. Adjusting to a Clean Living lifestyle will really help everyone, even if it's done slowly.

I'm also a strong proponent of exercise. I love working out with weights and kind of like cardio. My favorite form of exercise is hiking. I love being in the mountains and walking the trails. Cardio training is also a big help in dealing with blood pressure issues, according to my primary care physician. Since I'm knocking on the door of 50, I've adjusted my weight training to mostly lifting light weight with high repetitions. I went through the phases of getting big and strong in my younger years, and it really doesn't do that much for you. And believe it or not, but sleep is just as important is exercise. This is a double-edged sword for me seeing how I have always been a night-owl. I love to sleep, but I don't like going to sleep. Weird, I know. But several universities have done sleep studies on disease-free volunteers, and the results showed that those who continued with prolonged sleep deprivation showed an increased in inflammation in the linings of their stomachs. So, it's something to consider. Especially, if you don't like to sleep very much. I need to work on getting more sleep.

Hopefully, this information will help at least one person. Remember: Jesus said that with God all things are possible. If you need some text to chew on in order to consider this, then please read the 14th chapter in the Gospel of John. Jesus will change your life, if you let Him. He has certainly saved my life several times. Feel free to message me with any comments or questions.

Thank you for reading!