Three suppositories, a catheter, and an enema… and that was all before lunch

** WARNING, THIS POST CONTAINS TOO MUCH INFORMATION ABOUT OUR CHILD’S BOWELS **

It’s been a long day. 

Vada woke up at 2 am and we could hear her on the monitor grunting and straining. It escalated to screaming and crying and by 3 am we were on the phone with the on-call nurse trying to figure out how to solve constipation. I made a middle of the night run to Rite Aid and picked up some suppositories and got to experience that bit of parenthood for the first time. And then a second time. And then a third. This was all before the sun came up. Lovely. 

None of us got much (any) sleep. Unfortunately things got worse by morning and Vada was in a lot of pain and running a fever. We talked to the Dr. and started identifying other symptoms that started back on Friday afternoon that we hadn’t pieced together as being part of a larger issue. They sent us to the Emergency Room.

We got the same room that Vada and I had last time we went in for her dehydration. 

The ER doctor wanted to run a bunch of tests to determine if it was just really bad constipation or something worse. She had enough different things going on that they thought it could be appendicitis or something else that involved “projectile vomiting of feces” which pretty much sounds like the single worst thing in the world. They took blood, we did some x-rays, took a urine sample, got some meds in her and waited. 

The blood and urine work came back great. The x-ray showed some really bad gas build up and a lot of, well, poop. Apparently it was all impacted too high for the suppository to do much. So, Vada got an enema. She got violated in so many ways in such a short period of time today that it was pretty heartbreaking. 

The meds got her fever down and everything else was starting to work as well. She started to improve and we finally got discharged around 3:30 pm. The conclusion is that she had an extreme case of constipation coupled with an unrelated virus and they were both making each other worse. We go back in tomorrow for another Dr. visit to make sure she is recovering as expected, but at least for now everyone is sound asleep and we seem to have avoided the whole projectile vomiting scenario – whew! 

Hopefully that is the last time we see the inside of the ER for a while. 

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