Remicade (infliximab) and Humira (adalimumab) are specific immunosuppressants: they only inhibit TNF-alpha (tumor necrosis factor alpha). For this reason, they're better than the traditional immunosuppressants in the treatment of Crohn's, and tend to have fewer side effects. The problem is that they do have some possible side effects that are quite terrifying (highly increased risk of some types of cancer, for example), and given that Remicade is made from mouse proteins, it can cause severe allergic reactions in some people.

Still, for Crohn's, I highly recommend trying Remicade. It's a miracle drug for many people, and not only puts Crohn's into remission, but begins to heal the damage that was caused by Crohn's itself. The only other problem is cost: a typical treatment schedule runs about $50,000 - $100,000 / year. It's administered in the hospital every eight weeks via IV over a period of three hours or so.

With all of my heart, thank you.

I've absolutely considered helminthic therapy, but after investigating, realized that there was no way that I could afford it: the little buggers are freakishly expensive! Given that you have to administer them repeatedly, too, it just wasn't possible for now.

Being a graduate student has certainly been a mixed blessing in terms of my disease: I get the luxury of working from home and setting my hours depending on my health, but the low income certainly affects what treatment options are feasible for me to try.

Should anyone be curious, here's a link to a LiveJournal post where I ask my fellow members of one of LJ's more prominent IBD (inflammatory bowel disease, a collective term for Crohn's, colitis, and a couple other conditions) communities how they describe their Crohn's Disease to other people. I found the answers quite interesting:

http://community.livejournal.com/we_got_guts/569491.html

Thank you for the kind words. They're very much appreciated. I feel confident that the surgery will help - I just have my fingers crossed that the difference will be enough!

I'm also on Remicade (infliximab), at a much higher than standard dosage (700 mg / 6 weeks). It has made a huge difference in my life: prior to starting it, I spent six months in bed with a near constant fever of 102-104F, weight loss of 60 lbs, night sweats, severe malnutrition, 20-30 bowel movements per day, vomiting, etc. About ten minutes after my first administration, for the first time in six months, I didn't have a fever.

Unfortunately, though, my Crohn's is very aggressive, and Remicade just isn't enough: colonoscopies demonstrate significant areas of active disease throughout my intestines. I'm still substantially ill and my quality of life, while much better, is still extremely low compared to a normal person. Part of the issue is that I have extreme thickening of 60 cm of small intestine just above the terminal ileum, and 30 cm of large intestine in the descending / sigmoid colon, so I get a lot of intestinal blockages (usually one partial blockage per day, sometimes more). Because of this, food is quite terrifying for me, and there are few foods I can eat that don't seem to affect me (right now my diet is limited to four foods that seem to be completely safe). This sucks, because I'm actually a huge foodie and absolutely adore food: it's my main passion in life and has been for many years. Indeed, at one point, I nearly left my PhD CS program to pursue culinary school. Thank goodness I didn't, as someone with a bowel disease like Crohn's would have many challenges in such a career.

Right now I'm receiving monthly blood transfusions to try to increase my hemoglobin levels and general nutrition, and waiting for surgery. Unfortunately, the wait time for my surgeon is 6-9 months (*sigh*... Canadian health care system is just too slow). My blockages have been getting progressively worse, so I'm not sure that I will be able to make it that long.

Thank goodness I was able to find a family doctor willing to prescribe pain medication. I would most certainly have killed myself by now had it not been for that. This seems to be a huge problem, though, for Crohn's sufferers: many people simply can't find doctors willing to help them manage their pain. When I moved a year ago, one of the GPs I visited in my attempts to find a new doctor, upon hearing my list of medications (which is extensive: I also take Cipro, Pentasa, Oxycontin, and Percocet for my Crohn's in addition to other medications for other health problems), basically spent 15 minutes telling me off and accusing me of being a junky who was trying to use him to feed my addiction. I was too sick at the time to argue or fight back, but I left in tears (and I'm not known to have a propensity for crying), and it was a terrible experience and made me feel absolutely horrible.

The demonization of opioids and the stigmas attached to them make it extremely difficult for one to seek adequate pain management. This is even more troubling because when one is in pain, it is already difficult to muster up the strength to perform basic daily tasks, let alone go through the process of interviewing doctors and advocating for yourself to find someone who will treat you properly. It seems that O'Bannon was well acquainted with this, based on the fact that, according to the article, he was working on a screenplay called "The Pain Clinic".

I'm so glad to hear that Remicade is working well for you, and I hope that that continues! Best of luck!

As a 32 year old fellow sufferer of an extremely serious case of Crohn's Disease, I can tell you that it is a terrible battle: every day I face large amounts of pain and feelings of illness (e.g. my hemoglobin is 70 due to internal bleeding and should be around 170, making it difficult for me to do anything without feeling exhausted - walking up a flight of stairs nearly makes me faint). Crohn's has stripped me of my quality of life: the limitations it places on me make every day a challenge and it has stripped me of many of my dreams. Indeed, it got so bad that, seeing it as my last option, I tried to kill myself last May to escape from the ravages of this disease (I would have been successful, but I was discovered before I died). Right now I wait for surgery to remove 1 m of my intestines, which should help the situation, but euthanasia is still an option I consider to continue and will pursue if the surgery does not improve my quality of life.

Crohn's research is seriously underfunded, and the cause of this disease or its sister disease, Ulcerative Colitis, is not known. Also, the incidence of Crohn's appears to be on the rise to the point where some countries (e.g. Scotland) have deemed it a near epidemic. I urge you, if you like O'Bannon's work, to make a donation to the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation in your country:

USA: http://www.ccfa.org/
Canada: http://www.ccfc.ca/

Honestly, in this case, I think ditching her was the best option. One time she tried to punch me and I grabbed her wrist to stop her. She's got very delicate skin and sustained a bruise from my grip on her, and she went around loudly telling everyone to look at her bruise and announcing that I had given it to her by GRABBING her. (Emphasis hers.) No mention of the circumstances behind the grab, of course. I'm not sure that anyone who knew her thought of me as a bad person for inflicting a bruise on her, but the tone in which she told the story made me sound like some kind of horrible monster.

Honestly, looking back, I have no idea what the hell I was thinking with that friendship. Thank god that it's over and done with. I feel like a complete idiot for having tolerated things as long as I did. It's unfortunate, though, because prior to those events and the downward spiral that ensued, we got along brilliantly.

Agreed. As a gay man, my ex-best female friend went through an emotional period towards me (her actions suggested that she had feelings for me and was frustrated that my sexuality was in the way of that, as we got along brilliantly in every other regard). This resulted in her entering into a violent stage out of the blue where she felt compelled to hit me, often quite hard, and she had no shame about doing it in public. It hurt a lot, and I was extremely unhappy about it and did not feel that it was deserved in the slightest. Our female friends thought that it was funny and laughed about it despite the fact that it was clearly upsetting me, and they told me that I was being too uptight about things when I made it clear that I was really displeased with the situation. My male friends were actually quite sympathetic and told me that what she was doing was wrong and that it made them uncomfortable to watch.

Of course, hitting her back was not an option, because to do so even once would make me look like a complete asshole and possibly get me in serious trouble, while she held carte blanche to smack me around on her whims. In the end, because neither she nor our female friends would take what she was doing seriously or acknowledge it as a problem, it was just easier to end all of those friendships. Good riddance. I will think twice before striking up friendships with women again. Many of my gay male friends also feel the same way, especially after living second-hand through this situation, and prefer the company of men for more than the obvious reasons.

There are so many double standards for men that I find it funny we haven't responded against these more strongly.

If she can function at a bar, she can function at a desk.

Clearly, you have never suffered from depression. Even though she's at the bar appearing functional, keep in mind that that may have been the first time she was able to leave the house in weeks.

I was standing there having a conversation, smiling and laughing, while thinking about different ways I could kill myself to get out of that situation.

Exactly. I have some depressive issues due to severe health problems, and despite the fact that I was going out and laughing with friends and appearing to have a wonderful time, last May I checked myself into a hotel room and tried to overdose on a massive amount of opiates, benzodiazepines, nonbenzodiazepines, and alcohol. I had second thoughts at the last minute, which caused me to slow down and fail in my attempt, but it shocked the hell out of my friends who found out about it. While they knew I had severe and debilitating Crohn's Disease, none of them had an inkling of the fact that I had been thinking of suicide, probably hundreds of times a day, for about a decade leading up to that point.

My husband suffers from extreme depression to the point where he is practically unable to function. You'd never know it, though, when he's out and about in public: he hides it very well, because that's the last thing he wants to present to people.

Possibly in many cases, but in my case, I kept my old cigarettes around for four years after I quit. At first, the fact that I had the choice to begin smoking again eliminated the severe anxiety I felt at giving up cigarettes and emotionally made it much easier to stay quit; later, I simply forgot about them and they sat in the back of my freezer without any thought given to them.

Agreed with the many other social smokers. I used to be a light-to-moderate smoker (8-12 cigs / day) unless I was drinking (2-3 times per week usually, but for about one year, very heavily, around 5 times a week and 12 drinks each time), during which I became a heavy smoker (30+ cigarettes). I quit both for several years, addressed the problems that had led me down that dark path (severe anxiety disorder), and then decided to give both another try. Now I am able to get drunk infrequently and enjoy a couple of cigarettes without any problems or cravings. Indeed, the last time I drank and smoked was about a year ago, I think. I certainly will do it again at some point in the future, and I don't foresee myself becoming addicted to either again.

Note: quitting alcohol was quite easy despite my heavy drinking. I was simply quite bored in the evenings until I developed replacement activities. Smoking, on the other hand, was fairly difficult and the withdrawal was intensely unpleasant, but mostly gone after three days. Still, a terrible three days.

I sincerely doubt that this is the case with Remicade on any level. Perhaps it cost a lot in R&D (I don't know), but given that it filled several niches very quickly that were desperate to be filled due to a lack of suitable medications or medications without tremendously terrible side effects (autoimmune disorders like Crohn's Disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis, all of which are terrible nightmares of diseases), there was near instantaneous demand for Remicade once it passed clinical trials and was established as a suitable treatment for these conditions.

Given that my Remicade treatments cost in the ballpark of $80,000 / year (and that's in Canada), and Remicade is one of the highest grossing drugs of all time, I'd say they're making fistfuls of cash. I can't wait until Remicade goes generic to see how this will influence price.