okay, I'm gonna say it: I told 'em so

Tuesday must be rant day.

All day yesterday when we were on various phone calls with various Children's docs, & at an urgent care visit @ our local doc's office, I continually asked the question as to whether it wouldn't be a good idea to get Lars x-rayed again to see what's going on in his bowels. This, said I, would be the perfect time to find out exactly what is happening and how fast; it's 8 days after he was completely cleaned out, he appears to be having regular bowel movements like he did before, & if this is the same problem happening over again, which is sure what it seems like to me, then we should see it on the x-ray.

"No, no, we don't need to do that because he was just all cleaned out," quoth the doctors. It's not like that was a simple process: 3 trips to the ER + 5 nights in the hospital + an NG tube + an IV + 1600 mls of 'go lightly' + enemas every 2 hours + a whole bunch of meds. How about we check now before we have to repeat that cycle?

"Just take video tapes of him when he's in pain so we can take a look at them on the 25th." Right, or maybe we could just post them on youtube & we wouldn't have to go in at all.

Finally mid-afternoon today we talked with Lars' pediatrician on the phone--& he could hear Lars screaming (note to self: make sure screaming child is very near phone when speaking with physicians)--and because he's a nice guy who would like to do something to help Lars, he agreed to my wacko request to x-ray his belly again. Lars cooperated by having a BM right before he went for his x-ray.

Bingo.

Post-BM x-ray shows lower colon very dilated and totally packed with stool. So we now know we have a serious motility issue & we know it took 8 days to get this bad & we can take the x-ray to the GI appointment on the 25th. Pedi wants us to give him milk & molasses enemas (equal proportions) & go way up on his senna dose. Sweet Denise brought Joa home & then went to the store for us. A friend recommended looking into carnitine, which we will.

We go to the allergy clinic this Friday for food allergy testing, so perhaps that will shed some light, too.

Lars has eaten almost nothing all day, and has consumed very few liquids. He's all stuffed up from crying- or is it a cold, too? Hard to tell. His voice is all hoarse from all that screaming. Poor little guy, he's so miserable. Hopefully we can start interrupting this nasty cycle.

I was thinking it's ironic, but we may have caused some of this decrease in bowel motility by being more diligent about asking him to stand more and bounce less. Those of you who have hung out with Lars know this intimately: since he was 3 months old one of his favorite activities has been to stand (with support) and bounce/jump up and down vigorously. It's a lot of fun, but it won't get us to independent standing or walking. It may be that cracking down on bouncing meant interrupting his main exercise that helped keep him regular. Certainly moving around helps the rest of us. Since he doesn't stand or walk or crawl independently, perhaps bouncing was what was helping him. Help in one area, hold back in another.

Thanks for reading- g'nite.