Tuesday, August 21, 2007

TMI- Too Much Information


we have had an issue in the house for about 8 months, but it is something that no one wants to talk about. It is getting much worse, so now I feel that we need to talk about it.

Magnus, the sweetheart of the family, has to go in for a lower bowel xray today. yesterday he met with his pediatrician yet again for the same issue.

he has extremely large bowel movements and when he does it creates fissures at the opening of the anus. the blood loss is alarming and very upsetting. this has been going on for months. we have tried change of diet, eliminating dairy, increasing fiber, increasing fluids. all to no avail. we have tried medicine to loosing the stools but nothing helps.

Sunday night, he was dancing the two step that signals to me that he has held it as long as he can and now he HAS to go, so I rounded up his stuffed puppy that helps him go, and we proceeded to the toilet. he was resistant, but he knew that it was something that has to be done.

he pushed, he strained, he pushed so hard that he burped with each push. he cried, the tears streamed down his face onto his puppy and he got it out, bit by bit. we talked about how much it hurt, but that he had to go. we talked about how he would like to reduce how much he eats (he already has done that too) even further so that he has to go less often, and how unhealthy that would be. we talked about how confusing it was to have this happen when he was already drinking more and eating the right stuff to help his bottom. he is extremely smart and understand the correlation between input and output. and he is only 6!

after he was done, we got out the baby wipes to clean him up and there was so much blood in the toilet bowel that you could not see the waste (BM). there was so much blood the wipe that I nearly got sick. but the worst part was that there were dark black mucusy blood clots on the wipe and still hanging out the anus. Everything points to colon polyps. His dad saw tarry, dark stools earlier in the week, which may be a sign of bleeding higher in the gastrointestinal tract, such as from an ulcer.

THAT terrified me.

I got him cleaned up, and washed up and sent to bed. I got back on the internet to google and double check my worst fears. he has fussed and fretted for months now that he really does not want to go back to school, and I am sure the stress is not helping his digestive system. We do not know if it is hemorrhoids, ulcers, polyps, tumors or what, but I am determined to find out NOW.

yesterday his Pediatrician ran a rapid strep test on his bottom to see if he has GROUP STREP A. now my husband had a deep gasp of air, because she also used the word that puts terror in our home. Strep / Staph.

Jasmine and Krystal have had ANTIBACTERIAL RESISTANT STAPHYLOCOCCUS S aureus and it is not a pretty sight when they have an active lesion. We work diligently to keep it under control, and reduce the trauma when they have one that abscesses. It is just not something that ANYONE wants to go through. so far we have limited it to just the twins, and no one else has gotten it, YET. we keep the environment clean during an outbreak with sialic acid (active ingredient in Noxema) to keep surfaces clean.

today it is a off to CyFair Hospital for a lower GI series: an x ray that requires insertion of barium into the large intestine to make it show up better. Also called a barium enema x ray. to look for abnormalities.