Mayo Clinic Trip 3/23 - 3/25

Now I know what a lab rat feels like. We left Minneapolis around 5am Wednesday morning for my 7am appointment at Mayo driving through yet another Minnesota winter storm. We didn't arrive until 7:30am, so we had to wait around for the next available time slot. Once we did get to see the Doctor, who was dressed in a suit instead of one of those big white cloaks, we finally got things underway with getting a plan together for the testing and diagnosis.

They set me up for 3 days of testing, which included making me fast for most of the time. That's right, chubby guy didn't get to eat any solid foods from 7pm Tuesday night until about noon on Thursday. Then I had to fast again in the morning for another 8 hours. I guess the good news is that I'm under 200lbs now. Yay?

So here's the lineup of tests they did:
Wednesday - Tuberculin Skin Test
Wednesday - Blood Tests to test everything from vitamin levels to hemoglobin to iron
Wednesday - Chest X-ray
Wednesday - Stool Test
Thursday - Colonoscopy (my favorite)
Friday - MRI to view cross sections of the GI tract to look for abnormal swelling

Friday at 4pm, we went back to the Doctor to review the testing and they were able to finally confirm that I indeed have Ulcerative Colitis with a side helping of C-diff, aka Clostridium Difficile, and a major Vitamin D deficiency. Where does Vitamin D come from? The sun, so we're moving to San Diego to fix that problem.

So what does all this boil down to in terms of treatment for me? Glad you asked, so we'll start with the easy one.

Vitamin D deficiency - take Vitamin D2 50,000 unit capsule once per week for 8 weeks

C-diff - take Metrinidazole 500mg capsule 3x per day for 14 days (75% chance of eliminating the infection)

Ulcerative Colitis

• Taper off the Prednisone starting at 25mg per day for 7 days then reducing by 5mg every 7 days until 0mg per day.
• Begin taking Sulfasalazine 2 capsules 2 times daily for 2 days, then 2 capsules 3 times daily for 2 days, then 4 capsules 2 times daily for EVER.
• Take 1 capsule of Folic Acid 1 time daily while on Sulfasalazine.

So in a month, the idea is for me to be on only the Sulfasalazine as a maintenance drug to keep the inflammation of the colon in check. The doc said that about 30-50% of people respond well enough on this medication to keep flare ups in check. If I continue to have 2 or more flare ups per year on this regimen they will move me up to the next most powerful drug in line, which I believe is called Imuran. I am still a few years away from that, unless things get worse.

Next colonoscopy will be in 6 years. For those who haven't done it, you should get it done for fun. The good news that came from all of this is that they did confirm that I have no signs of Cancer and that Ulcerative Colitis doesn't alter life expectancy if treated properly (like I'm doing).

If you made it all the way through this post, you must be really bored or be a concerned friend. Thanks for listening, its been a bitch of a week :)