Question: I am a 66 year old non smoking male. I was diagnosed in October 2011 with Cronkhite Canada Syndrome by physicians ay Baylor Medical Center in Dallas XXXXXXX I suffered for over 4 years with almost ceaseless diarrhea, weight loss, nausea, vomiting, etc. I am also an insulin dependant diabetic, suffer from coronary artery disease with 6 stents in the LAD. To futher complicate my life I suffer from bilateral Meniere's disease and have endolymphatic shunts in both inner ears. Did I mention that I have chronic anemia and am at stage 3 kidney disease. I probably left something out. My question is: what is the life expectancy of someone in my situation? None of my attending physicians will hazard a guess. I retired on 5/9 of this year. Some days are better than others.

Thanks you Dr. Lakhani. I certainly agree that it should be more about the quality of one's life than simply how long one survives. I have suffered a great deal over the last five years and had I not found my doctor in Dallas at Baylor MC I probably would have given up the fight by now. He promised that he would never give up the quest to find out what was causing the, by then, debilitating series of ailments. Other MDs had just dismissed me as perhaps a whiner. My symptoms did not fit in that easy little box that they needed it to so it had to be just me. MY long time doctor in Bossier Ciyt, LA knew that I was not faking anything since he had been treating me for nearly 30 years. One can not fake 15 to 20 bouts of diarrhea a day. He was not exactly happy that I was traveling so far for another GI opinion but he certainly understood my desperation. Nothing worked quickly nor consistently but he tried everything that might make sense and perhaps a few things that did not. Between the two of them they stepped up the attack. I had a portacath implanted and started TPN treatments for 14 hours a day and then was able to drop it down to only 12 per day. I am concinced that these saved my life and sanity. I lost the XXXXXXX to a staph infection in my blood stream and am being stuck for IVs of mag and iron on a regular basis. Eventually I was referred to a Hemotologist who was not at all interested in me or my chronic anemia with RBCs in the 9.5 range. I dismissed him and found another who was passionate about what she was doing and promptly started me on a regimin of Procrit which rapidly raised my hgb to the 12 range. Right now I am in a period of "remission". My doc told me quite clearly not to expect it to last but when it does return we will again fight it with all we have. All I have read says that CCs is a "relentless progressive illness with a poor prognosis". I know that I will never be well but I do plan to both fight it and also to follow my doctors' orders. I had to retire because the side effects of the CCS would not allow me to do my job of 44 years. Thanks for your encouraging words and continue to pass the words of not giving up and if the doc you are using is not interested, get one who is. Thank God I found Brandy and DeMarco.