Constipation

We spent most of our morning looking around for the Childrens' Hospital Urgent Care for Emily, and then most of our afternoon at the Childrens' Hospital Urgent Care for Emily.  Last Sunday Emily woke up complaining that her belly hurt and so Mike and I shrugged it off as her being hungry.  After she had some breakfast she said that her belly still hurt but seemed to act fine so we went to Church.  Monday rolled around and she woke up again and said that her belly hurt so I asked her when her last bowel movement was.  She couldn't remember so I figured that she was just constipated and I gave her some Mira-lax.  She had a bowel movement that afternoon so I figured it wasn't constipation, especially since she is regular.  The rest of the week, mostly in the evenings though, she would complain of the belly pain off and on and it even woke her up once or twice this past week.  I would always ask where it hurt and she would always say or point to around the belly button.  I decided to call my mom one morning after Emily complained again and asked to go to the doctors.  I didn't think what Emily was saying about the pain warranted seeing a doctor because the rest of the day she would seem fine and act her normal crazy self.  My mom suggested that maybe she had some strain of the stomach bug that she had already had, and that is was causing cramping but no vomiting or diarrhea.  I thought that sounded like a good idea until Friday night when she woke up at 9:30 complaining of her belly pain again.  This time she was awake for about 2 hours rolling around in obvious pain and crying.  Mike and I could tell she wasn't faking the pain, plus she isn't the kind of kid to do that, so I again called my Mom.  Mom had me do some tests on Emily like pushing on her stomach in certain areas and ways, and asking Emily to perform certain tasks.  After my call to my Mom and thinking it could be an appendicitis, even though there wasn't a fever, Mike and I decided to call an after hours doctor to see if we needed to come in tonight or if it could wait until the morning.  The nurse we spoke to was really helpful and said that since Emily was finally asleep again we could probably wait until the morning unless the pain came back or got worse.  All night long I worried about the most extreme possibilities it could be, especially when she came in again around 3:00 in the morning complaining again of pain and saying she felt like she needed to throw up.

Finally the morning came and we called our pediatricians office and spoke to another nurse and then the on call doctor.  The conclusion came that we needed to take her in within 4 hours and to not let her have any food or drink just in case they needed to do some scans and tests.  We all got dressed rather quickly and piled into the car.  We spent an hour driving around looking for the urgent care because the GPS had us going the wrong direction until we finally decided to stop at a local hospital.  The hospital staff was really nice and gave Mike a print out of directions from Mapquest and we headed off again.  Still we had no luck finding the place, and Mike decided we were going to go home and call them since I forgot my cell at home.  On the way home we were passing by our Stake Center and I had the idea to stop there and call the place instead of going all the way home, plus Mordecai needed to go potty.  We finally made it to the urgent care, after finding out that Mapquest was wrong and Emily calling us, "The worst parents ever!" because we couldn't find the place.  We got to the triage room and felt like total losers for being there since Emily was acting totally normal.  Finally, after telling the story for the 8 millionth time to the Doctor she decided we needed to do some X-Rays to make sure everything was okay.  Once the X-rays were over we were expecting a little bit of time waiting but the Doctor came in right away.  She said that usually the radiologist doesn't call them and let them know the results but they did this time and said that Emily was severely constipated.  The Doctor pulled up the scans for us to see, and let me just say they were amazed at how much stuff was in there and so were Mike and I.  They gave her an enema which was supposed to help...it didn't.  They said that they normally didn't let patients leave until they had success but since it was lunch time and we have done enemas at home with the same brand (Mordecai) that we could go.  Good thing since Emily had to have another enema last night and didn't produce anything until 9:00, we would have been there for FOREVER.  She still has a lot of stool that they said will still cause some cramping and so we have to give her 1/2 a cap or Mira-lax twice a day for about a week.  They also said that her labs came back as dehydrated which is probably the cause of the constipation so to push fluids.  Looking back at these last couple of weeks she hasn't been drinking a lot.  Moral of this long story...who knows but lesson learned!