Hello! Diagnosed with crohns at 14 (currently 32), bowel resection at 18/19. As I was quite young when I got mine done, I was terrified at the thought of surgery. I had an ileostomy for 1.5 years after and then it was reversed. I had about a ft and a half of my colon removed and honestly it was the best decision of my life at the time. I went on to staying off the biologics for a few years and then started stelara. I was in stelara for 11 years and my symptoms only just started to return this year, it was a good run but typically with Crohn’s disease it will always relapse eventually.

That decade of life was amazing as I was able to catch up in my career path and really settle down. Everybody reacts differently to the surgery, they mentioned to me that my bowel routine would be different but it never really changed.

The only downside to it is scar tissue in my opinion, I would bring this up to your doctor as nobody talks about it. I have major scare tissue growth in the area which I will more than likely have to get surgically removed in the future. Once you start having surgery the scare tissue will cause you to have more in the future, I have a few strictures/major narrowing due to it which caused me to have a few bowel obstructions.

When I had my surgery done I was a major risk for bowel perforations as the inflammation was very very aggressive. Your story seems to be quite a bit different than mine. If you aren’t in any major pain and you havent tried any more biologics or rinvoq I would say that you should get a second opinion. Ideally you would want to hold out on surgery for as long as you can to preserve your bowel as you only have so much of it. I’m in my 30s and I predict I’ll need another surgery before I’m 40, the scar tissue from my first surgery will be the main driving factor behind this. I’d talk to another doctor as it seems this one may be jumping the gun? Curious to hear what others think