Poop

Everyday turns up another poop story.

We’re getting good at cleaning up bathtub poop. There is a small window of time where we can leave Ryder in the bathtub to play before he decides to drop friends off in the pool. No more than 10 minutes, I’d say.

It gets harder when you have to give your ten year old an enema without gloves. I couldn’t find any gloves yesterday. The last I remembered, he had a cute bum. Of course that was nine years ago.

He may have to be cleaned out up at the hospital again. We are trying to avoid that though. He was x-rayed yesterday and his gut is full of poop. He has a rock hard mass about the size of a softball blocking everything from coming out. Then the liquid stuff seeps around the hard mass, causing stooling accidents, unbenownst to the sufferer. The colon is so stretched that the nerve endings cannot “tell” when it is time to go. This is called Encopresis and is common among kids on the spectrum.

This guy is very self conscious and this is a great embarrassment to him. The eleven year old too, but his tactics are different. Eleven year old doesn’t mind sitting in it all day at school because he’s too embarrassed to tell the teacher.

Consider yourselves lucky if you escaped the poop years unscathed. We’re still going through it. I wonder if it will ever end. No pun intended.

Stephanie McBride