I am so sorry you and your family are going through this. I too, have had chrohn's disease for 15 years being diagnosed when I was 22. I am now starting to have some worsening symptoms in the later secions of the bowels and rectum and I am suspecting someting like ulcerative colitis, ulcerative proctitis, or ulceratice proctosigmoiditis. For 11-12 years I was on and off of the steiroids with no sucess. Then tried remicaid with little but some sucess until I had a severe allergic reaction to it. We then tried the humira shots and have had great sucess with the symptoms in the upper bowels. But, recerntly have had worsening syptoms in the lower bowels and rectum. I am going to my GI next week to look into this worsening problem. I luckily have not had to go to the extreme of surgery yet(knock on wood). Even though sometimes the pain was so intense I would have welcomed it if it would relieve the constant pain I had been suffering for years. I am hoping not to find there is a new problem I have to worry about, but at the same time it woould be nice to know if there is something else causing the newer symtoms so I could maybe try something about it. My sympathy goes out to all of you suffering with these awful diseases. And my support goes out to all of those Dr's researchers and scientists who work so hard to try to help us all.