10 Year Anniversary of Humira for Crohn's and Still in Remission!

Time really does fly by! This month marks 10 years since I first started taking Humira (my first shot was June 6, 2012). I posted about the experience here, a 3 month post here, a 6 months post here, a 1 year anniversary post here, a 2 year anniversary here, a 5 year anniversary here, a review of Humira literature here . 

In the summer of 2012 (around May 2012) I can remember crashing pretty bad with a major flare up with Crohn's. I can still remember waking up in the middle of night (at 2 A.M.) with blunt sharp pain in my stomach, throwing up, and couldn't get out of bed. These days I live a very normal life without any gut pain and rarely have a loose bowel movement. 

At first I can remember being anxious and nervous about having to inject something into my body for the rest of my life/the possible pain of injecting medication. If I recall correctly the drug started working within days of me taking it. I recall going on YouTube and looking up videos of other people who had taken Humira and remember this one guy saying that he really wasn't in pain and could finally eat potato chips again without having to worry about pain (I didn't think this would happen to me). The only time my dosage changed for Humira was after I had a flare up of Crohn's (post c difficile and fecal transplant). Other than that though I have stayed at 40 mg injection every other week.  

One improvement I have seen within the past few year is the Humira citrus-free version. This new version seems to have resulted in less pain when injecting. Typically I leave my Humira out for 15-20 minutes. In this post I mentioned why I don't rotate my Humira shot (per instructions). 

In conclusion Humira has been a miracle drug for me and has worked quite well! Hindsight is always 20/20 and I was initially diagnosed with Crohn's in December 2011 (but I probably had Crohn's beginning in October 2020) I wished I had started Humira earlier! At the time I was in graduate school and my family and doctor agreed to stay on Prednisone and Asacol to get me through. Humira has forever changed my life for the better.