So after the poop revelation from late last week, Jacob spent the rest of the weekend working on clearing out. Well, sort of. He was hesitant to do a near-colonoscopy-level clean-out, so he was a bit more conservative with his use of aids. He did seem to be going more, and most of his symptoms seemed to subside, but by later Sunday he said he was having a bit more discomfort again. Seriously? I thought maybe he just wasn't cleaned out enough--that maybe some had moved along to give him temporary relief, but that it wasn't enough to take care of the backlog plus whatever new he was making. But with school it was harder to up his dosing since we didn't want him having any "emergencies" there, so we just had to keep a steady course and see what we could do. I figured if nothing else we could tackle it again this coming weekend and go a little harder this time. Before I get into our plot twist, I will mention he said he had quite a bit of discomfort during the day on Tuesday and had to "go" at school, which seemed to help. So, presumably we still have some work to do on that front.
But on Monday I got a call from the pediatrician's office. The nurse was checking in to see how he was doing, and casually said, "Did they tell you when they called with the X-ray results that he might have a kidney stone?" Say what, now? Seriously? "No, no they did not tell us that." I suspect that the nurse practitioner was so engrossed in the amount of poop in his system that when she saw that on the X-ray and it confirmed her suspicions, she just sort of stopped looking right then and there and called us immediately. And I also suspect that someone else looked at the results later, whether it was his doctor or another practitioner, and realized it looked like there was a kidney stone there as well. That would also explain a lot of the things he's had going on.
Now, I sort of liked it better when the assumption was that a cleanout would help his symptoms, because while this would also be a reason for those things and that's good to know and be able to manage, kidney stones SUCK. I've watched my dad deal with them for years, and our sister-in-law has had a lot of complications with them as well. I'm well aware of the pain they can cause and the havoc they can wreak at really inconvenient times. I don't want to think he'll be sentenced to a life of having to manage them, because he has enough other things to deal with. To be fair, we're not sure what might have caused it. He did take some calcium supplements a couple years ago after his broken leg bone (around our midwest travels) and when it seemed like he might be on the verge of stress fractures in his shin, but he also eats a lot of yogurt right now, has a milk-based smoothie every morning (and sometimes one at night), and eats a reasonable amount of cheese, so there's a lot of calcium there. I'd hate for him to have to adjust his diet for this, so I'm hoping it just came from the calcium supplements and not doing those will be enough to minimize the risk moving forward. But I guess we won't know for a while.
And, truthfully, we don't know for sure that's what's actually happening. They couldn't really give us any assurance or confidence level that what they saw on the X-ray was definitely a stone. I really only asked for reassurance because I didn't want to spend the next week before his ultrasound dealing with random anxiety about whether it could be something else, but they just said that if they thought it was something more urgent they would have requested more urgent actions, and this is essentially the protocol for whatever was seen. So I'm hoping that it was pretty straightforward, but I guess we don't really know. Luckily we haven't really had any anxiety spikes all week, so hopefully that holds through Tuesday and we get results quickly.
I still think the backup is the bigger culprit since don't think he's noticed any blood in his urine (I'm pretty sure he'd tell us right away at this point, since he shares all of his other random ailments immediately now), and he hasn't had any severe pain. If all comes back as expected and it is just a stone, I guess we just wait and monitor as needed. Sometimes stones don't move on their own, but obviously you also don't want them getting too big. Then you have to consider getting them blasted or God forbid do stents or surgical intervention, so hopefully there's a reasonable monitoring plan moving forward if we're just left to wait.
So, again, while all of this is still pretty low-level stuff and hopefully remains in the "nothing serious" camp, I couldn't help but shake my head a little and have a little teary pity party moment on Monday night, just sort of letting myself feel all the feels for this seemingly endless run of random ailments. Despite having a kid with a lifelong autoimmune disease, I mostly haven't considered myself a chronic illness parent. We've dealt with a lot, but nothing has felt more than, say, inconvenient. And I know that what we're dealing with pales in comparison to so many other families who deal with severe illnesses--cancer, birth defects, autism, disabilities, genetic issues, and so many other challenging, life-altering issues--but just getting this sampling of seven months of ongoing, random, mystery symptoms has been a game-changer nonetheless. The anxiety, the instant PTSD when something else crops up, the feeling like it's never going to go away, the fear (and even belief) that there's no "easy" answer and it has to be something bad--I've always had bits and pieces of those feelings scattered throughout my life because I think I've always teetered on the edge of anxious, but the way it is just so instant, so ingrained now is definitely different. For some reason I keep chickening out on getting in for some therapy through work, but I know I need to. I've passed the point of "it will go away on its own like it always does."
But for now, the weekend awaits...
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