Day 9 and finally feeling fine! (WARNING: TMI)

Holy crap (pun intended)! Never have I been more obsessed with poop than I have in the last week!

On Saturday, July 7th, poor Ryan started crying and feeling uncomfortable. He had a few very mushy poops...the next day he had 4-5 mushy and watery poops. By Monday, he didn't poop at all and was screaming. Tuesday more yucky poops and crying, Wednesday no poops and didn't want to eat lunch...loads more screaming! :o( Given all that Ryan has to deal with I don’t mess around with anything that seems off with him. Here we come again ER (both his ped and family doctor don't work on Wednesdays)!

My Mom came with me while my Mother-in-law stayed at home with Quin. Each time I leave the house with Ryan and not Quin (which is frequent due to all his therapy and doctor appointments) I drown in guilt. She so young and so sweet and doesn't completely understand it all but she is quickly catching on to the whole situation. Trying to explain everything to a 3 year old though isn't exactly easy. Anyway, got a little side tracked. Thank goodness my Mom came with me...Ryan was in a bad bad state shortly after we got there and I was so happy to have the extra help (especially from my Mommy..haha). It was so sweet seeing him cuddle into his Grandma's arms.

On the way to the hospital Ryan (the little bugger) was actually making happy cooey noises...even when we got to the ER and were checking in they asked the reason we were there. I told them excessive inconsolable crying and screaming. I swear she looked at content little Ryan, then me and sighed. Off we went to the first waiting room to have the triage nurse look him over. When we were called he was still fairly ok but very quickly fell apart and it just got worse from there. Off to ER waiting room #2 we went. It was a bit of a wait but we were eventually taken to a bed and waited for the doctor.

I again went through his medical history and medications and the reason we were there. By this time Ryan was incredibly upset and while my heart was breaking for him seeing him in such pain, I was glad that it was happening in front of the doctor so she could see just how awful he was feeling. They ran some standard “tests”, pulse, oxygen levels, temperature etc… They wanted to test him for a UTI which meant a catheter. This isn’t a fun process to have done once for an adult…never mind TWICE when you’re only 20 months old. They couldn’t get any pee out of him on the first try so they put a bag on him but after an hour and a half of not peeing they had to catheter him AGAIN! :o( It was god awful for him (as you can imagine). The UTI test came back negative. He was also sent for tummy x-rays which according to the ER doctor showed significant ‘fecal loading’ as she called it. But the pediatrician who saw him a couple of days after the ER visit said that upon looking at the xray he didn’t see any significant back up. Ugh, this is all so confusing and frustrating…why can’t we just be given a nice simple straight answer!!! We were in the ER for 5.5 hours 1:00pm - 6:30pm (ish). Ryan generally naps between 1pm and 4pm but he absolutely refused to sleep (can't blame him with all the poking and proding he was enduring). Here he is totally exhausted:

What we did know is that Ryan was a little backed up but that he was also having “overflow” issues (diarrhea). Really? Both at the same time…the poor poor babe he just can’t catch a break. The ER visit was on a Wednesday, for the next few days he continued to cry, scream and literally writhe in pain. Everything was done to make him comfortable, Tylenol, Advil ,warm packs on his tummy, upping his Polyethelene Glycol (poop softening meds). Nothing was working. On the weekend we decided to try switching him to lactose free milk (what sucks is that for some reason 3.25% doesn’t come lactose free so he’s only getting 2%)…that didn’t seem to do much. At the advice of a few wonderful people I switched him to just plain old rice cereal (maybe he has an issue with gluten). Within a day he was doing much better!!! Yesterday (Sunday) he was smiling and being his silly, goofy little self…he even had a little giggle! The atmosphere around the house was much improved knowing Ryan was once again comfortable and content.

So as it stands right now we’re sticking with lactose free milk and hope to find some gluten free baby cereal (he still doesn’t really know how to chew so he’s still on puree’s and cereals). What isn’t fair though is that I read that in order to find out if you really do have an issue with gluten you need to be eating the things that make you feel crappy in order to get a diagnosis. So I may have to switch him back to his regular cereals if we get him tested. For now though I’m going to go with what seems to be working for him because holy lord this child needs a break! I’ve put in a call to the pediatric allergist that he’s been referred to in hopes of getting his August 17th appointment bumped up and a request has been put in to have him put on the cancelation list for his GI appointment which isn’t happening until October 4th.

In the middle of all this craziness I also took him to the family doctor on Friday to get a requisition for his hips. When you have low muscle tone it's common to have issues with your joints. Ryan's hips seem to be clicking and popping more than normal lately so he's being send for xrays and ultrasounds on both hips.

Today is Monday...fingers crossed for a drama free week!