Poop Inspection

One of the main motivations for having a separate IBD blog is to report such matters as poop inspection. I always think it's strange and a little neurotic when I hear the fecally concerned reporting such things as frequency and details of bowel movements concerning onseself, each other, or of pets. But here I was this morning, rinsing off a diaper this morning investigating the vegetable contents and wondering, "now, what is that?" and so on. Normally, who would share this? And normally, who would want to read this? But when it comes to chronic bowel disease, or regarding colon health for anybody curious about making changes in their health, "poop talk" is no stranger.

So nevermind football. Let's talk stool. With Isaac on an elimination diet, it is easier to tell if we've got an added irritation. In theory. What it really means is that our investigation is something short of a crap shoot. We have noticed an improvement this last week, and we are mostly on the basics, though we are including wheat, and lately have also included a little chicken meat and eggs the last couple days. The animal proteins are a lot to add, and if this morning is an indication of what may come, we may re-restrict those. Actually, I don't know why we are feeding him anything animal based at all. From some literature, you see a high incidence of bowel disease where meat is a big part of diet. I don't think that meat is responsible for Isaac's condition, but it seems to me easily feasible that a mostly meat diet helped activate it. He's always been a little meat eater (since age 1), and honestly, part of the reason we are feeding him chicken is because he will readily eat it.

Bonnie reminded me just now, the other reason is that we are feeding him chicken is because he is not only on an elimination diet, but also low fiber, and meat offers him some nutrition in addition to the flour tortillas and rice he's eating.

It's hard to get him to eat things, like soft cooked vegetables and canned soft fruit. Or yogurt or quinoa. Any ideas? We can't seem to plea with him, trick him with smoothies, or hide it. Maybe we'll try pizza with mashed vegetables in the tomato sauce.

So this week we learned to really hold off on the fiber during a flare-up. We were feeding him a lot of rice and beans because he loves it, it's a good complete protein source, and it's plant based. But pushing out the fiber puts unwanted stress on his inflamed bowel walls.

Colonics. Let me report more about this. Over the past months Isaac's defecation was tending towards hour long episodes of multiple bowels that would clean out everything in there, and then the blood and mucus caused by the scouring. During that hour, Isaac was, especially lately, evidently experiencing more pain or cramping and at the end it seemed like what I want to call dry heaves on the other end of the GI tract. Not at all excited to try out enemas ever, much less with my son, I crossed the line and did it, mostly because if I were experiencing what he seemed to be experiencing, I would have wanted to try it--even if it offered only a temporary relief. Get something in there to give the bowels something to squeeze out, as well as helping rinse out the bowels with something pH balanced.

In two such episodes, upon administering these enemas, the episode ceased. What I mean is that after the post-enema void, Isaac's "hour of misery" ended, and no more poops. Plus, we noticed the next poops were not bloody. In the last case, he actually went 40 hours after without passing significant blood, and since then, he hasn't had the bloody mucus, or a single 'one hour episode' as described above. Before last week and that first enema, he was having those hour episodes twice daily. Once in the morning, voiding dinner from the night before, and once in the evening, voiding breakfast.

Now, the enemas weren't the only factor that changed this week (But I liked the immediate observations from the enemas, I must say). The other major factors were the dietary changes--going to the elimination and low fiber diet, which for most of the week were plant based, although recently we introduced some animal protein foods. The other changes were some supplements. B vitamins, probiotics in a pill (acidophilus), and an amino acid L-glutamine which we decapsulate and dissolve in Gatorade. And I guess I can't leave out football, because that was some game against the Gators last night.

Our next goal is to get probiotics in capsules that we can hopefully give Isaac more easily. The pills we have just don't go down easily, and Friday it ended up with a living room full of vomit. It's not a complication we want to add to a troubled GI tract.