today can suck my balls.
there, i said it.
it started at about 1 am when i awoke next to the christmas tree we'd erected and decorated over the weekend; i was pantsless and pressed up against it with my arms around it, muttering about how the wind was going to knock it over. i don't sleepwalk nearly as much now as i did when i was a kid, but anytime i talk in my sleep i tend to wake myself up and remember the last thing i said. yesterday our area was slammed with a crazy storm, shitloads of wind and torrential rain, and in my sleepwalk-y state my biggest concern was apparently....the storm knocking over our christmas tree. and then suddenly i was wide awake (and terribly embarassed, which is weird because there was nobody around to witness it-- there never is, but i always feel super embarrassed when this happens) and realized i'd been babbling like a weirdo about how dangerous the wind was. i stood there for a moment watching the wind and rain through our third floor window and then...a sound.
water dripping. i flipped on the lights and instantly saw it streaming out from where the wall meets the ceiling in the living room. my first thought was "fuck, i can't even put a bucket there because it's running down the wall!" i took the poster off the wall where the water was running down (a 1995 Bjork show advert that was strangely undamaged by the water once it dried out) and threw a towel down on the ground on top of the puddle that had formed there and dialed my landlord.
he was really nice, said the roof was only 3 years old but that unfortunately all i could do was put towels out and replace them during the night as needed, and he would send someone out first thing in the a.m when there was daylight. as i spoke with him the wind and rain died down a bit and sure enough, within a couple minutes the dripping stopped. we speculated that maybe the storm had been so bad that it had torn some of the shingles off the roof and compromised the waterproofing, but who knows if that's really the case or not. i'm no fucking roofing expert, that's for damn sure.
when we woke up this morning i would've sworn the whole thing was a dream except that the computer was unplugged (the outlet was inches from where the water was coming down so i'd unplugged it to be safe) and there were wet towels on the floor. i did hear someone banging around on the roof really early this morning, so hopefully whatever it was has been taken care of, or will be soon. *just in case* it hasn't, i've mailed a copy of my "complaint" to my landlord.
but lest i bore you with details about roofing, let's talk about my kid's bowel habits and butt, mmmkay? so she swallowed a rock on thanksgiving, there was a whole big to-do over the next week because even though i searched through all of her poop it didn't come out, yada yada, they finally did an x-ray that showed no foreign object but tons of air and poop. not shocking, as lil phoenix has terrrrrible bowel habits. she poops like two, mayyyybe three times a week, and when she does go it's like a baseball coming out. i have to, uh... forgive me, this is gross, but i have to cut it up in the toilet with a disposable fork and knife so it doesn't clog the drain. gross, right? sorry for that visual.
so constipation had just sort of become a part of our life, one that i wasn't fond of but was making a valiant effort to curb-- lots of fluids! fiber! fruit! regularly scheduled "sitting on the toilet" time to encourage her to feel comfortable going!
i thought it was a problem, but not a major one.
turns out she has a fecal impaction, which we discovered when she pooped last week and had tons of semi-new congealed blood in it. what alarmed me was that there wasn't bright red blood on the paper when we wiped, or in the toilet water. it was blood from somewhere...inside. so i called her pedi and asked what to do, and was told that from what that x-ray had shown she wasn't surprised at all, and to go to the ER.
and we went. we waited FIVE HOURS for two doctors to tell us that they didn't want to subject the lil lady to a rectal exam or more x-rays (and i didn't argue), and that they were pretty sure it was some kind of fissure in her bowels from the constipation/impaction. they took her vitals, listened to her "bowel sounds" and proclaimed them "normal! healthy!" and sent us on our way, with a stern lecture about how i should've sought help for this a long time ago, and to followup asap with her pedi and possibly a gastroenterologist.
i had to work at noon today and asked if it could wait until this morning, which felt shitty but had to be fucking done; i mean, i don't feel great that the first thing i think when something like this happens is "hmm, now how can i work my kid's health into our schedule?" but if there's no real need to take time off from work then i can't afford to. so doc #2 told me it was fine to wait until this morning, which was a "yay!" on my part.
the first thing the pedi had open today was at 11:15 and even though i had to work at noon i snapped it up, told work i'd be a little late, which was stupid because of course the appointment ran an HOUR late and the doc didn't even see us until 12:15.
but first let's backtrack to when we were on the highway on the way there. little kiddle starts to cry and says "mommy, i'm going to throw up!" and i happen to be driving by a truck stop so i pull over, we get out in the rain on the side of the highway, and she kneels on the wet grass and waits to barf. ten minutes goes by and she says "i feel a little better" so we get back in the car and...yep, 30 seconds later she had to throw up. there was a vase on the floor so i handed that to her and she put her whole face in the damn thing and all her breakfast came up. she handed me the vase full of steaming vomit and nervously said "mommy, please don't spill it!" and i managed a weak smile in the rear-view. "i PROMISE i won't spill, kiddo." she was grey but her color came back within a few minutes, and i pulled into a coffee shop off the highway to dump and rinse the vase because i didn't want to bring it into the pedi. bizarre, right? i felt more comfortable carrying a giant jar full of puke into a coffee shop than a doctor's office, a CHILDREN'S doctors office no less?!
so we made it to the doc and sat in the room for an hour until she came in. it was a fill-in doc while the regular doc is on vacay, and she was nice but a tad condescending about the "why did you let this go for so long?!" well geez, lady. because i'm just a terrible mom, i guess. i mean, what's the fucking answer to that?! if i'd thought it was a big deal i'd obviously have talked to them sooner; i dropped the ball, and i feel bad enough.
i'm informed that little phoenix's bowels are so distended it will take "months to get back to their normal position and size, assuming we can correct the damage." i'm also informed that with bowel problems this severe in someone her age there's a risk of permanent pooping problems. she tells me i need to go straight home and administer an enema, and start her on two doses a day of miralax, which is an adult laxative i would've thought was way too strong for a 4yo, but apparently my kid's bowel issues are like....whoa. i have a moment of panic and explain that i have to work but she's spending the day with my mom and can my mom do this stuff? and the doctor tells me that she wouldn't recommend it because there could be some leaking and diarrhea and lil phoenix would probably want me there, but if i HAVE to work then it's fine for my mom to do it.
we leave, and my mom meets us in the parking lot at my work, and i hand over the papers about what we need to buy, do, and look for over the course of the day. i give the kiddle a giant squeeze and want to burst into tears but i hold it in and let them drive off, lil phoenix waving optimistically out the back window.
i go into work and find that, thankfully, it's dead quiet in the office and our first few appointments of the day were no-shows. a co-worker says "so how'd it go? everything okay?" and i burst into tears as i tell her the deal. i feel like a major wussy as i'm doing this, mind you, because it's not like my kid is going to die. she has POOP problems, which according to her doctor "have become an emergency" but sheesh...i didn't expect to be standing there bawling about it to the lady at work who was nice enough to ask about my kid's colon. she tells me to go, pick up my kid from my mom's, and go home for the day, do the enema and laxatives in her own house with me there so it's not so bad. i cry harder, because now i feel bad about leaving them short-handed for the day. she hugs me and tells me, sincerely, "go take care of your little girl. your first job is to be her mom, we'll be fine without you for the day."
so i left, sobbing my way through the parking lot like a basket case. i meet my mom at the pharmacy where she's stocking up on the supplies we'll need for the next couple days, and then we head home. i feel immense relief at being the one who actually squirted copious amounts of liquid up my daughter's butt, and the one who sat and held her hands and rubber her back while she shat uncontrollably a few minutes later.
the amount of poop that came out of that kid is record-breaking. that poop could star in it's own movie, and play itself. apparently the giant poops she's been making for the last few months have only been the tip of the iceburg, and there's still enough left in her to...well, throw the grownups around her into a panic about how to fix it. she's been charmingly good-natured and amiable for the last few weeks through x-rays and 5 doctors appointments, and even today's enema. i gave her another does of miralax a little while ago and we'll continue two doses a day for the next two weeks, and administer another enema tomorrow and wednesday when we get home from work/school. as long as she doesn't go more than 2 days without pooping and there's no more blood, we can followup in two weeks and then start talking bulk and fiber and all that yazz. she might have some leakage and diarrhea from the lax, and if she does i might have to miss work, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.
for now: i'm *trying* to breathe deep and not let this stress show to her, because i'm assuming the last thing a kid who retains her poop needs is more reason to feel anxious and retain her poop. i'm having a beer right now and i'll use whatever energy i have left after i write this to knit for a while. i've always thought it's funny that when i knit something whatever stress or drama or "issues" i have going on kind of end up uncontrollably woven into the project i'm making. if i'm making a scarf and having boy problems, for example, every time i see that scarf i'll think of the boy problems that went into the scarf. not in a bad way, mind you, just in a "that's the energy that went into that project" kind of way. and with this project-- a blanket for lil phoenix-- there'll be a whole lotta shit woven into it.
