Dealing with Crohn's

I was reading some stories about other Crohn's patients over at the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation site.  Now here's what is so frustrating about Crohn's. I like many of the stories on the site have been through almost all of the treatments available under the category called maintenance therapy. If you're new to Crohn's then you should know that, so far, Crohn's is not curable. So maintenance therapy's target is to enable patients to maintain their health in a disease-free, or limited-disease, state. Pretty cool huh? I'm in a limited disease state.

So I read these stories and I am reminded that there are many people you have suffered more than me. Right now I'm on a classic cocktail of maintenance drugs while receiving Infliximab (Remicade®) infusions every 8 weeks. Now as with any treatment results vary from patient to patient due to our unique chemical composition. One treatment I haven't tried is Adalimumab (Humira®), but it sounds like all of the other options. It comes with a long nightmare list of possible side effects.

This morning I went to bathroom 4 times, each with a urgency of what I would call immediate. Over the past month and a half I've been suffering more than usual, with an occasional bloody stool. With factors including diet, mental health, and regular drug dosage, it's hard to know how well I am. As one of my doctors explained to me,  Crohn's is very tricky. A patient can feel very good, but clinically have very active disease, as well as feeling like shit (pun intended), with no clinical indications of active disease.

At the end of the day, I wonder. Am I better off taking all the drugs that I am prescribed? I mean would my symptoms be worse without the drugs? When my wife sees me suffering she really tries to understand, but it's certainly one of those things, you really wouldn't understand unless you had Crohn's. I just keep going, making the best of my life, suffering through my symptoms. This is how I try to explain it, what other choice do I have?