Advice on Intro foods, food sensitivities/elimination, immunosuppressant meds?

July 28, 2008

I apologize if I'm covering well-trodden ground, but I've been on the

SCD since March with varying degrees of success. In that time, I've

been trying to taper off of prednisone. Things were going smoothly

until I got below about 10-20 mg of prednisone in May. I think I may

have introduced too many " advanced " foods (nuts, beans, etc.) and

tapered too quickly (down 5 mg/wk). So I went back to the Intro diet

for a few days and have pretty much been at Stage 1 for the past two

months (with occasional more advanced – mostly Stage 2 – foods,

particularly when I've been eating away from home). I'm still

tapering off of prednisone, though much more gradually this time (1-2

mg/week, not 5 mg as before), and am now at 14 mg. I'm still having

some D, mucus, and occasional bleeding, as well as some knee/hip

joint soreness.

I decided to return to the Intro and to eliminate eggs and dairy

(legal yogurt and cheese), in case sensitivity to eggs or dairy is

triggering my continued mucus and other symptoms. I don't eat

poultry or meat, so that basically leaves fish, diluted apple cider,

and carrot cooked for 4 hrs. But then I read that fructose

malabsorption can cause some people to have D from apples. And other

people have reported problems with carrots (and I certainly see them

in my, um, output, so maybe I'm not digesting them very well). So,

I'm figuring I should do a strict Intro plus elimination diet for the

next 5 days to see if I can get to a good enough level where I could

test the results of adding foods back in one at a time. But is there

anything totally safe that I can eat besides fish/meat? What if I

was sensitive to that?

I have to see my gastroenterologist tomorrow before I can get any

more prednisone to continue the taper. I expect she's going to push

one of the " bigger " drugs – Imuran, methotrexate, or Remecade. If I

do have to go that route, is any one of them more compatible with

SCD? fewer side effects? more suitable for shorter-term doses

(rather than years and years)? Sorry for combining too many topics

in one message, but I'm trying to figure all of this out in a hurry.

Thank you!

Christy

Crohn's (in my colon) since 1999

Asacol, prednisone (tapering)

SCD since 3/08

Seattle, WA

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