Have you ever wanted to just get through something, so you can start to feel better? That’s how I’ve felt about this pending infusion. I’m not one to rush through something, to just reach the end and say it’s over and done with, I appreciate my struggle and woes as much as I appreciate and celebrate my highs and all those good feelings that come with them. But these past couple of weeks, boy oh boy have I just wanted to fast forward. My final loading dose of Vedolizumab was due on October 16th, a few days shy of the…
Today has been bittersweet. I feel like I’ve said that a lot, but the excitement of actually getting back into this whole ‘back on biological medication’ routine has taken over the fact that this was my last outpatient appointment at my hospital. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I relocated at the start of the summer for a new job – read more here and here – and with that came moving my IBD care to a new hospital. It was a big challenge as I was, at the time, not receiving any treatment and…
You always want to believe your consultant when they say “maybe we’ll be able to go a couple of years without any medications or big issues“. You believe because that is the sort of IBD dream isn’t it; managing without medical intervention? It was for me, back in June at my last appointment; full of confused optimism. Fast forward not even six weeks and I was bed bound, in constant abdominal pain; unsure of what was happening to me. I would suffer for weeks, spending days on end in and out of the hospital, not really getting any answers or…
Four weeks have passed. My blood work was done the day of stoma clinic last week so I was on schedule to receive my final loading dose of Vedolizumab then on to a regular schedule of having it. As I said in my last post about Vedo, we still didn’t know if this was working yet or if it was going to work. We just had to complete the loading doses – week 0, week 2 and week 6 – before moving onto the usual eight weekly infusion schedule. I haven’t thought or planned past receiving that fourth dose in…
Following my subtotal colectomy in August; my IBD team recommended returning to Vedolizumab. I had already tried Vedolizumab; receiving the three loading infusions last winter. This is where I was and how I was feeling as 2015 turned into 2016: “… So, it hasn’t gotten any worse, but the past year’s drug choices haven’t made it any better. I’m on a plato; and its going down, albeit slowly, over time. For me, the past 10 months haven’t been brilliant. They haven’t been the worse either, but I’ve noticed a definitely decrease in how well I feel in general, an increase…
