Increasing my medicine by 4x was a last ditch hail mary by my doctors to kickstart Entyvio. I’d been released from the hospital being kept stable by a mix of prednisone and cyclosporine. I’d been on prednisone for 5 months already and if you’ve read my page About Crohn’s Disease or my comics about prednisone, you know how fun that is. The cyclosporine was new for me though. Cyclosporine is a drug that they give to transplant recipients to keep them from rejecting their new organs. The side effects are shaking, headaches, dizziness, hair growth, nausea/vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and high blood pressure. It was this drug that was quadrupled.
So, what happened when this medicine was increased so drastically? Well, on the good side, my beard really filled in. That was cool. On the bad side however, I ended up with near constant full body shakes, dizziness, an increase in vomiting and diarrhea, and a general drop in overall health. I just have to laugh at the irony that the medicines that help one symptom often cause so many others. I wanted to quit the increased levels after a week, but the Entyvio just wasn’t working and I desperately wanted to avoid an ostomy. So, I endured.