I guess its about time for an update! It has been a month since we started (I say we, and although technically I mean Brandon, it feels like a "we" thing, since we're going through all of this together) the Humira injections for Brandon's Crohn's disease.
The good news is that he didn't have any crazy side effects (so far) like growing tufts of hair in strange places, or purple freckles popping up, or incessant sneezing... not that those were really listed as side effects but I sort of wondered in the back of my mind if something wild would happen. I mean, having my spouse give himself injections every 2 weeks sounds so sci-fi, doesn't it? Well maybe not exactly sci-fi, but definitely surreal. We went from "normal" like everyone else, to alcohol swabbing his leg and prepping for medication injections after burgers and baked beans on Thursday nights. Weird, right? Seems that way to me, but I guess this is our new normal.
But seriously, Brandon has been doing great. Over the past month, he's only had a few times where he felt bad, but those times were highly frustrating, because he felt like he had started the injections, so shouldn't he feel better already?! His doctor's nurse told us that it could be around 6 weeks before he would feel good and get leveled out at his "new normal." We're still a little nervous, because his Crohn's is so aggressive and had gotten bad pretty quickly, so we don't know what kind of damage was done in his intestines over the last 9 months while he wasn't on any medication to keep the inflammation down. We have been praying that the Humira will work to keep any inflammation away and that he can be in a state of "remission" for years and years to come. We would love if you would join us in praying for that as well.
The other thing that Brandon has been doing, is taking the
Doterra Lifelong Vitality Supplements. We had heard great things about this before, but a friend gave us a month's supply for him to try and we think this has played a part in him feeling so good over the last month. We think this has helped combat the fatigue from the Humira. Brandon has said on several occasions that he can tell when he's forgotten a day of the supplements because he will be so exhausted on those days. He says his energy levels are so much higher on the days where he takes the supplements. That was one of the things we worried about with the Humira injections, because he had experienced major fatigue during Crohn's flares before and it seriously wipes him out, and we didn't want him to have to battle that fatigue forever.
We are really hopeful that he will start to feel great all of the time very soon!
