I’m making the switch from Remicade to Humira for my crohn’s disease.
The muscle aches, which we attributed to an allergic reaction to Remicade, went away mostly. However, after my 3rd Remicade treatment, the achey joints returned (maybe some slight muscle pain, but mostly just joints). It was my elbows, fingers and wrists, ankles and knees. For the most part, after about 5 weeks, all that remains of the aches are one elbow and both knees – consistently anyway.
Doctor today seemed like he was thinking about suggesting another round of Remicade… but then just said, lets just do Humira, I think that’s what we should do… Are you ok with it? Oh, yes. Definitely ok with it. I certainly don’t want to feel these aches and pains… not feeling confident to carry laundry up from the basement for fear my knees will give out.. or carrying a couple bags of groceries makes my arms feel like they’ll fall off.. while I am happy to not have the abdominal pain, I didn’t plan to trade it for other pain.
The tail bone pain I was feeling before the holidays is completely gone. I actually wouldn’t have given it any thought, except he asked about it today. So, I’m assuming the abscess was small and insignificant enough it just went away.
So, humira. I will go to the doctors office and a nurse will show me how to do it.. from then, I will adminster the shots myself at home. They assured me it’s easy to do – but I also don’t want to mess it up, as it’s so expensive. No pressure. But really, I think giving myself a shot will be a cake walk compared to going and sitting for hours at the hospital while they give me an iv of remicade.. yeah, I really don’t mind the switch.
Now, keeping fingers crossed Doc can push the change through my insurance.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
It has been awhile since you’ve posted and I’ve just been told by my doc that i should go on Humira. Read about it and I am not ready. Prednisone works for me when I have flare ups, really bad flare ups.
Sadly my doctor has no interest in prescribing me pain meds like yours has. What is he thinking? Right now I am having a serious flare up and am miserable… I asked my husband yesterday why he doesn’t prescribe me pain meds….he will only prescribe the steroids.
I tell him my typical day when I have flare ups: I get a cramp, need to ball up so I stop what I do, squat on the floor, crumple to a ball and my family kind of goes about their business and walks over me after asking if they can help me. I get 40 -100 a day when it’s bad.
Pain. I experience it.
@joanna: I usually just feel crampy constantly. It will wake me from sleep.. makes it hard to concentrate on much of anything.
Sorry about your doctor. My family doctor prescribes the pain medication, my GI doc does the other crohn’s stuff.. but both are in contact with what I am doing, what I take, etc. It was weird realizing I would now have a “team” of doctors I would work with forever.. But anyway.. maybe a family doctor? Or document the pain? No one should have to live with pain.
i so agree. No one should have to live with pain. I was on Humira for about a year and it did it’s job. But I am so worried about long term side effects… So, two years after taking nothing for this wonderful disease ( sarcasm here) I am in the midsts of a flare up. I called my doc after two years, and will go see her thursday to 1) get yelled at for being an awful patient and 2) start a course of pred. But Pred is all. I am done forever with Imuran, Entocort, Pentasa, Remicade and Humira. For 11 years I have been saddled with this disease and for the rest of my life, I will know the capabilities of it’s wrath, but I am done poisoning my body for years on end with immunesuppressers and steroids. One 3 month course of prednisone every two years isn’t too bad of a price to pay to stay away from all those other drugs
I hope you are feeling better!
For me, personally, I’d rather take humira regularly, than to do even one month of prednisone – I hated that stuff. And yeah, I have the same concerns as you about the poisons in the other drugs… but I also want to live life, enjoy my kids. I was soooo sick for 3 years, I just don’t want to go back to that at all. I hope that in the future, I’ll feel confident enough to get off the humira too, but until then, I turn a blind eye to the “what ifs” and take the meds, the pain meds, the antidepressants… I’m not missing more of my kids (or new grandbaby!) due to this disease.