Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The Neverending GI Story

This is another post about poo.  I want to give fair, advanced warning for those that may not care to continue onward.











Still reading?  Cool.

As you may remember, we're still working on potty training Miss Sassypants.  She was doing really well with pooping, and we knew the miralax was working and keeping her cleaned out.  Recently, though, she started exhibiting some behavioral issues in regards to elimination, and started holding it in instead of letting it go.  We all knew she had to go, including Judith, but she would try and hold it in until the next day and was miserable as a result.

Now we're having the additional problem of increased mucus production because she appears to be brewing yet another respiratory infection.  All of that mucus her vest shakes out of her lungs has to go somewhere, and there are basically 2 options: spit it out, which is something we're going to start working on so she can then start learning how to huff cough; or swallow it, which is typically what young kids do until they learn to spit it out.  From there, it has to get out somehow.  Sometimes if it's really bad and upsetting her stomach, she'll vomit it out.  Most of the time, though, the only exit point is through her intestines, and that leads to some really mucusy poo.  The other problem with this?  If it doesn't exit, it hangs out in her intestines and blocks things up/slows things down.

Over the weekend, we knew she had to go, but it just wouldn't work it's way out.  I started to panic Monday morning because we were starting day 2 with no results, and I was concerned she was backed up.  1 phone call to clinic later, and we got the green light to start an at home clean out with multiple doses of miralax.

We loaded her up, and she kept trying to go, but was saying it was stuck, and eventually started saying that it hurt.  By 7:30, she started screaming and straining.  This has happened a few times in the past, most notably when she's had the 2 significant blockages that required inpatient clean outs, so I figured we could be in for a rough hour or 2 while she tried to pass whatever was sitting there.  But once she did go, the screaming didn't stop.  This wasn't the typical backed up poo, but we couldn't find evidence of anything else happening, like a rectal prolapse.

I knew I needed to call clinic and ask them about other possibilities, and the first thing they thought of based off my descriptions was rectal prolapse.  So my line of thought wasn't too far off base, even though we didn't see anything.  It's very possible that it could have happened, but retracted quickly once she relaxed.  We're certainly going to have to keep an eye on it, but it sucks that this is even remotely in the realm of possibility for her.  It's something that I've been concerned about for a long time since she's always had to strain to go, but if it is starting to happen and as long as it's retracting on it's own, it shouldn't be as problematic as it would be if it weren't able to retract.

Today has been a much better day for her, and I'm hoping that the higher doses of miralax will keep things moving and help push back at the mucus that could be building up in there.