HD is not fun.

After four days of no bowel movements and still on a full dose of laxative, I had to do something I've never done before: give a 2 year old an enema. Twice. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't hard either. Having read many times about poor mothers having to give their HD kids enemas, I was prepared for the worst. I had myself draped in a towel ready for some massive explosion of brown smelly goo. But I have to say it went much better than I expected.

First, he thought the enema bottle "tickled". Good grief.
Second, he wasn't bothered at all by the filling of his colon with cold liquid.
Third, there was no explosion as I removed the bottle.
Fourth, the look on his little face when he realized he was gonna go after he stood up was hilarious. (I was a little preoccupied so I didn't get a photo).

Once I realized he wasn't going to explode on me, we just put on a diaper and followed him around. After about 2 minutes we changed his diaper. Then maybe 5 minutes later we changed another one. Neither was overloaded or totally disgusting. And that was all he had. The next morning we did it again, with only one diaper resulting. Luckily after that he started going on his own, still on the laxative, of course.

This time we dodged the bullet of having to return to Children's Hospital for an "official" enema and x-rays and all kinds of other horrible things. (knock on wood)

Slow Motility

We've been giving Doodie the Little Tummies Laxative now for just over two weeks. He was having 2 - 3 bowel movements every day and I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Did he really have that much in there to get rid of? Or was his food just passing through at a faster rate because of the laxative. I am admittedly NOT a laxative expert as some HD parents are. I know all about fiber, healthy high fat diets and diaper rash creams and remedies for weeping rash. I suppose now is the time I should learn about the wide world of senna.

I decided last Thursday to half the dose we had been giving him, hoping we could slowly wean him off of it and see if his constipation had been relieved. The nurse at Children's called last week to check on him and said that was a good plan. Just play with the dosage, but warned us that a lot of HD kids are on laxatives long term. I'm unsure about how that relates to us. I mean, he's been 100% constipation free for 2 1/2 years. It seems weird that just all of a sudden he would turn into a laxative dependant kid. The doc said physically he's fine as far as pull thru/scar tissue stuff goes. His diet hasn't changed. I don't know.

Anyway. We've been giving him half the dosage for about 4 days now. Today he didn't have any bowel movements at all. And last Friday on the second day of his reduced dose his dad told me he had a 4 pound diaper, all BM. Seriously? The kid only weighs 28 pounds!! I'm thinking in addition to our lifetime supply of Desitin that we keep on hand, we'll be adding the Little Tummies for at least the foreseeable future. I just hope this isn't a downward trend in his health. Keep your fingers and toes crossed!!