iGCSE’s and Crohns Disease

Hi guys. Two months ago I was diagnosed with Crohns and Ive been in and out of the hospital a lot during this time. Ive even had to have been admitted for a few days. Long story short my doctor decided to put me on a high dose of prednisolone (a steroid), which he thought would make things better. While it did make my inflammation and diarrhoea go down, other really horrible symptoms started to appear. The doctor lowered the dose drastically but not much has changed. The whole day I feel so fatigued I barely have the energy to get out of bed, much less concentrate on studying! My appetite has spiralled down and I’m still underweight despite prednisolone making people gain weight. My head also just feels heavy most of the time and I just feel down in general.

The problem with all of this is that my iGCSE exams are literally in a week and a half and my parents and I have no idea what to do. I am completely unable to study and mainly just stick to my mom all day or sleep. We have emailed the school about the condition (and we are aware that this is late) but have had no response as it is the Easter holidays.

Up till recently I was also very stressed but for the past week have been asked by my dad to just rest and see if it gets better because he says that these sorts of things take time, which I understand. The problem is just my exams and what will happen to them. It doesn’t help that I am a very high achieving student and have been predicted all A*’s.

Does anyone have any tips/recommendations about the actions I should take or what I should do? Everything is hanging on the line right now and both me and my parents can’t do anything but try and hope both these “side effects” of the prednisolone/Crohns disease itself settles down.