HUMIRA

My doctor wanted me to start it but spot my insurance wants me to try Imuran first. They denied coverage until the end of April when we will have a sense of how I handle Imuran. There are many folks here who use it and I’m sure they will chime in.

I am on remicade, a sister-medication to humira, and have been since 2012. I have not experienced any side effects from it. Remicade did give me my first remission since having UC, and I have been pretty stable since with only a few minor blips here-and-there that I bounce back from pretty quickly.

I too was scared-spittless after reading all of the possible side effects, some of which are pretty serious. What helped me in my decision was reading the actual risks versus benefits, to know what are the odds of success and what are the odds of the side effects mentioned? What you findout is that there is a 65% chance that the med will improve your UC symptoms. Like any UC treatment, there is never a 100% chance of success, unfortunately. What you findout that the serious side effects are all in the rare category, which means they effect less than 1% of patients who take the med (and in a lot of cases, a lot less than 1% as some are 0.04% odds). The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America has a good read on the risks versus benefits, which I encourage you to read (good to know what can happen and the odds of it):

http://www.ccfa.org/assets/pdfs/risk-and-benefits-transcript.pdf