Friday afternoon hospital update

The GI doc was just here (2 p.m.). He’s keeping Bruce in the hospital until “Sunday or Monday.” Then he’ll switch him to oral antibiotics and steroids.

Doc mentioned trying the newest Crohn’s drug, which would be a maintenance medication. The disadvantage of the new drug vs. Humira, which we injected at home every two weeks, is that the new drug is administered at the hospital. Bruce had inconclusive results with Humira. Because he had just had surgery, which we believe was what finally did the trick on the last fistula, we never could tell whether the Humira was doing any good. Also, he had an injection-site reaction every time he had a dose of Humira. The area would swell and itch. We would be willing to live with that if we thought the Humira was really helping, but the doc is ready to try the new drug in a few weeks. More on that later.