Jackson is full of it!

Poop!  That’s what Jackson’s full of.  Literally.  In addition to having to deal with the Lillie drama while Kevin was out of town for a week, I also had to deal with my first emergency room visit with Jackson.  Actually we had two trips to the ER that week.  One was on Wednesday and another on Friday.  I could write a whole blog post about the ER on a Friday night but I’ll skip it this time.  Anyway back to Jackson’s poop filled body.  Tuesday morning Jackson got a flu shot. That night he began screaming in pain.  I finally got him to sleep around 2 a.m.  The next day he woke up in a fairly good mood, had a pretty good day at school, then came home and began screaming.  After about 4 hours I decided I wasn’t going to be able to calm him down and I was starting to freak out.  Even though Jackson can’t talk, he can communicate in his own way.  As his Mom, I’ve learned the meaning of different screams, cries, tantrums, etc.  This screaming was his “I’m in pain” scream.  So off to the ER we went.  Luckily a friend of mine who is a doctor at the hospital met us in the ER which gave me a lot of comfort (Thanks Jaime!).  I’m not good with the medical stuff and since I was all alone it was a little scary for me.  Once they ruled out ear, nose, throat stuff they gave Jackson some pain meds and sent us for an XRay.  As soon as the technician took the picture I heard her say “No wonder this kid is crying in pain”.  My heart instantly stopped.  They showed me the XRay and pointed out a bunch of darkness and told me that it was poop.  As my Dad would have said “The kid is full of shit.”  The doctor said that sometimes a flu shot can create a concrete dam that backs up the poop.  Good to know.  At least I knew I was right that something was hurting Jackson.  It’s always a guessing game with a special needs kid.  The nurse came in to our room, handed me 6 diapers and some wipes, gave Jackson an enema and left.  This is where our ER visit suddenly becomes America’s Funniest Home Video material.  I know what an enema is, I’ve heard the jokes, but I’ve never witnessed one before.  Not 30 seconds after the nurse left I looked down at Jackson whose diaper was leaking poop down his leg, up his back and all over his belly.  I jumped out of my seat, yelled a few curse words and tried to start changing his diaper.  For those of you out there who don’t know this – don’t open the diaper all the way, you’ll be sorry.  I was.  As I ignorantly opened the diaper, poop was shooting out of Jackson at an alarming speed and I was unable to contain it at that point.  God knows I tried!  Thankfully a couple of minutes later the nurse came into the room and quickly saw that I needed help.  She tried to help clean up the bedding but even she gave up after a minute or so.  Long, yucky story short, Jackson went through those 6 diapers in a little under 20 minutes.  It was a poop fest, a poop-a-mania, a party pooper.  It was disgusting.  But Jackson sure felt good and that made Mommy happy.  We came home, Jackson instantly took a bath, and I put him to bed where he was finally able to sleep peacefully.  The doctor gave us a prescription laxative to use for two weeks, that’s how long they thought it would take for all of the poop to come out.  Two days later Jackson began screaming in pain again so I took him back to the ER.  This time they suggested we put him on a bland diet and add milk of magnesia to the list of medicines to take.  That has seemed to help.  Having easily digested food doesn’t cause him as much pain.  Meanwhile we have had about a week and a half of some very interesting and smelly diapers.  Poor Jackson.  I’m just glad he is getting it out.  Another surprise about being a mom is that I would have never guessed that a poop explosion in a diaper would be cause for celebration.  But it is.  I’m cheering my boy on every time I get a whiff of stinkiness.  Go Jackson Go!  Get that poop out!