Full of it

Oh boy am I crabby.  I think because I'm mad that Lily is suffering right now.  Monday evening around dinnertime she started saying that her butt hurt, that it had "splinters."  This continued for a couple hours off and on.  We looked for splinters but there weren't any.  I think that's just the latest way of expressing how something hurts for her, because that afternoon I had pulled a splinter out of her foot after she was running around barefoot in the backyard.

Well, I got worried it was a yeast infection, and I have a lot of emotional baggage about those.  I hate all doctors about it, because none of them has ever believed me when I've tried to express the amount of pain yeast infections give me.  Except that one doctor in the overnight urgent care who gave me Vicodin after I was screaming in pain... Anyway, my point is that I didn't want Lily to be having pain like that.  So we decided to take her in to the ER just to be safe and get her checked out.  Well, oh joy, it was busy that evening, and we waited 2 1/2 hours to get in, along with many screaming children, and a bad mother paying more attention to her iPhone than her sick kid (I was not feeling sympathetic at all).

Lily was happy the whole time, finding things to entertain herself, and playing with us.  She said it didn't hurt anymore, but I didn't want to go home.  Well, good thing we stayed.  A nurse practitioner saw us (often more helpful than the doctor) and said Lily's genitals looked normal, but that she wanted to do an x-ray to check for poop.  She said it was possible what was hurting Lily was constipation.

So we went to the x-ray room and Lily lied down on the big table and John and I got to stand next to her in lead aprons.  She wasn't scared at all, as usual, just curious.  Then we went back to the room and waited some more (we didn't get home until 1am).  The results were that Lily was FULL of poop, like 5 or 6 bowel movements in there, all over her GI tract (track? I don't know).  So they had to do an enema.  An enema for a 4-yr old??  Yes.  Did Lily cry?  No.  The nurses who did it were very nice, and I was holding on to her the whole time.  Then we had to wait while it worked, and after the nurses left Lily said that it didn't feel good when they put the medicine in her bottom.  Oh, I could have cried!  So then she had to go make a big poop, and they sent us home with some laxative and instructions on changing her diet.

Evidently constipation is common for little kids, and we found out we're giving her way too much milk, which is a big factor.  So we're changing that.  But she also has to take 10 days of this laxative.

So, the first laxative poop at home was green diarrhea.  They could have told me what to expect!!  Because I was rather alarmed and called Lily's clinic and talked to a nurse there to find out if this was normal, which it turns out it is.  So, Lily is making lots of little runny poops now.  And she's very self-conscious about it.  She doesn't want me to see them.

I had to tell her teachers today at preschool what was going on, so they knew what to expect, and I felt bad, telling them all her business, you know?  The teachers are both really sweet, kind women, so it wasn't that.  It's just hard, I want to give her some privacy, but sometimes I can't.

My poor baby.  And then someone said that the constipation might also be caused by emotional stuff, as in she's affected by ME being sick and in pain with my headaches.  Yes, I suppose that might be true.  Which makes me feel like a shit.  A runny one.

So, yeah, I'm having a good day.  It's hard when your kid is suffering and there's only so much you can do.  Which is like, always.