A Dirty Weekend

We decided to start Justin's "clean out" on Saturday morning since we had nowhere to go and nothing else to do.  Actually, anything would have been better than this, but since we knew it had to be done this was as good of a time as any.  Randy mixed up the solution to begin chilling the night before.  It is a gallon of basically salt water that we needed to get Justin to drink until he was "clean".  There were four flavor packets from which to chose to flavor the mixture.  We were told that the flavor packets might need "enhancing" so we had already cleared it with the doctor to add some of the Mio drops to improve the taste without adding to the volume than needed to be drunk.  So after adding the flavor packet (we chose cherry) Randy added some Mio.  He added almost half a bottle before he deemed it "Justin-palatable"!  And into the refrigerator it went to get an cold as possible (apparently that helps the flavor too.)


Bright and early Saturday morning we poured Justin his first glass of "juice". The first one went down okay. He drank it with breakfast. (Since he wasn't doing this to prepare for a colonoscopy, which is the usual reason, he could still eat food.) He needed to drink 4 ounces every hour. By lunch time he had drunk 4 glasses with no results. We decided to forgo nap to keep the process moving along so we watched some TV and drank more juice. We were hoping he would get involved in a movie and we could encourage him to drink without much resistance. Well, not so much. One thing we had failed to notice was that the Mio we had added was Mio Energy, with caffeine. I didn't realize Randy would add quite so much so after 6 glasses he was bouncing off the walls!! Randy and I were laughing so hard at his antics!   He dressed up in crazy outfits and was falling down just to fall down. 

It wasn't until close to 4 pm before Justin produced anything from all his drinking.  After his first round of dirty diapers he fell asleep in my lap.  He woke up an hour later coughing and then he threw up.  Red.  Cherry red.  All over me.  Fortunately he missed the white couch.  After a bath and a clean diaper we were good. He threw up a couple more times and after each time he wanted more to eat.  I called a doctor friend for advice because by this time we didn't know if we should keep encouraging him to drink or if the throwing up was okay or if we should do something else.  She said we were okay, but we agreed to stop drinking for the night and let what was there keep working and then restart again in the morning.

Sunday morning we skipped church and switched Justin to apple juice to keep things moving.  He kept making diapers all day long, and he needed several baths during the day when his diaper didn't contain everything his body was producing.  Justin's stomach was getting much softer and smaller with all that was coming out and we all agreed that we had never seen his stomach so small and flat in a long time.  You could actually see him suck in his tummy when we laid him down to change his diapers.

This wasn't enough drama, so our a/c decided to conk out in the middle of this saga.  We had to pack up a large bag of diapers, plus extra pajamas and mattress pads to protect Me-Me and Pop's beds.  After we finally got everyone in bed for the night, Justin came out four times with more dirty diapers.  The first one required a bath and a change of pajamas and sheets.  After the fourth round Justin was done for the night and we were able to get some sleep.

The next morning we started Justin on some of the maintenance medicine to continue keeping things moving.  We had to determine how much to give him to start, since we don't really know how much he needs.  I am always tempted to be cautious since it takes more time for medicine to get through his system. I hate to overload him too soon without taking the time for things to build up.  We spoke with the nurse at the doctor's office to make sure we were still on the right track.  Justin did great the first couple of days and then on Wednesday he stopped making dirty diapers.  For the next few days he did just small diapers and so we increased his dosage slightly.  Already he is taking an adult dosage which seems like so much but it's still not having the desired affect.

It has been another week and we are not making the kind of progress I had hoped.  The medicine just does not seem to work for Justin the way it is supposed to work.  We seem to have more questions than we have answers and we struggle with how to proceed.  Justin continues to fill back up and we do not want to have to do another complete clean out.  We will see how this weekend goes and then we will reevaluate and talk with the nurses again.  I feel so badly for Justin.  I want to help him feel better but I don't know how.  We wondered if maybe part of his tiredness is because he's carrying around all that excess yuck in him all the time.  It certainly can't help.  And I cannot potty train without fixing this problem first.  Please pray for our little guy!