I don't know what to do here.

I had a resection back in May, and ever since then my stool has been pretty loose. Not liquid or D, but its little pieces or thin pieces that fall apart pretty quick. I only go once maybe twice a day on a rare occasion

My GI said try taking fiber to bulk it up. I tried fiber and stopped after 3 days due to gas pains, so I gave up.

I'm currently on 100mg of Imuran and that's it. Before my resection I had a pediatrician GI who had me on Imuran and Pentasa.

My new GI said Pentasa is pretty much a waste and took me off it.

Well yesterday I took 2 Pentasa I had and the next day I had an amazing BM. It was all firm and normal. This is the first time I've seen that in almost a year(Was in a flare before resection).


Now I'm confused. Does this mean I have immflamtion and illness? My GI keeps telling me its so rare to get any so quick after resection and that he will scope a year after surgery. I don't want to tell him I took the Pentasa and then him yell at me for taking something he told me to stop.

I love how your GI said Pentasa is a waste. What's up with that?

There was a paper published a few months ago that surveyed all of the IBD literature in search of really conclusive data about the many different drugs we are prescribed for Crohn's. My recollection of the author's conclusion is that only the biologics are clearly showing repeatable data with regard to controlling the disease. The rest of the drugs out there have a lot of data, but very little of it is reliable because of commercial bias, or poorly designed tests, or other experimental issues. But the authors stated that many patients do well on the 5-ASAs and that is a reasonable approach to take for maintenance medication.

Take your Pentasa for a week or so and see how you feel. Then tell your DR what you want to do. If s/he can't agree, find a new DR.

Cant he "fire" me though for using medicine he told me not to and going against him?

If he's the type that would "fire" you for this, would you want to continue seeing him?

If you have "proof" that Pentasa helps you, and he doesn't extend your prescription, would you want to continue seeing him?

Over a decade ago, my doctor was dead set convinced that imuran was NOT giving me the side effects that I called her about. I had severe pain in my back and knees. I could barely walk when I woke up in the morning. She said it couldn't be the imuran. That was the only change in my life at the time, so instead of going through a slew of doctors and other medical tests, I quit taking the imuran against her advice. Normally, I wouldn't advise people to stop taking medicine, but you see the doctor once every 3-6 months...you do have to do a little self doctoring from time to time.

I quit the imuran and the symptoms cleared up. Started taking it again...they came back. Stopped, and they were gone. Did this one more time.

Next doctor's appointment, doctor looks over my med list. We had a discussion about why I wasn't on imuran. She conceded that, well if it happened 3 times, then it has to be the medicine. It was weird to her because she hadn't heard that. I got switch to 6mp, and that drug worked very well for me for a long while.

If she hadn't been flexible with this new information, then I probably would have changed doctors.

I was in then same situation and asked the same question a few weeks ago. Back on my pentasa and Imuran and feel freaking great! I go back on November 10 and plan on telling my GI that nits working for me......after all isn't that what it's all about....what works for US????

I say continue....if it is working why stop!

Expectation bias.