Brands > Sandimmune

When I was first diagnosed with severe pan-ulcerative colitis, I was hospitalized for 3 months in 5 different hospitals. After running out of options & not responding to steroid treatments, my doctors all inevitably resorted to using Cyclosporine.

While in the hospital, I received Cyclsporine intravenously. However, the effectiveness of IV cyclosporine depends on how it is administered & you need a doctor that is very proficient with the drug to truly get the most out of it.

Cyclosporine is a VERY POTENT & blunt drug. Unlike many modern drugs that are precise & more like "surgical attacks", this drug is more like blunt force and often compared to a sledge hammer. Patients should ask their doctors about ALL potential risks before allowing doctors to administer it. One of the more serious side effects is that because it's an extreme immunosuppressant (it's even used to prevent organ rejections in transplant patients), you can become vulnerable to extremely dangerous opportunistic viruses, fungi, & bacteria.
As a result, it is usually used as a last resort to avoid surgery.

Moreover, many doctors debate whether you can use both Cyclosporine and Remicade (one after the other), so you might want to decide which drug you're going with ahead of time. Conventional thought says that using both drugs exponentially increases the potential for MAJOR complications.

While taking Cyclosporine patients should avoid having any unprotected sexual contact because the drug takes a long time to break down & can have unintended effects on your partner.

With that said, due to my desire to avoid surgery at all costs, I did ultimately use both drugs (several months apart) without suffering any significant complications. In the end, while Cyclosporine did help me get out of the hospital & buy me some time, it did not improve my condition enough to allow me to live any semblance of a normal life.