In 2010 we got a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis for our son Isaac who was then 27 months old. For a year and a half we had been concerned about his persistent soft stools. Now that we're going down the road of living with IBD in our house, we want to be able to share our story, connect with similar families or individuals, and increase our awareness of the experience of others.

Some of our related interests are diet, kids and families with IBD, and discussing and sharing experiences.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

uncontrollable diarrhea

Of course, we'll continue to study our eating patterns, but today Isaac had another poop episode that makes us question everything we are and aren't doing.

Most of the day was great. Church was great. We played at home. We went to a park and flew some kites, which was awesome. In the evening before dinner, Isaac had a poop, but actually it looked great (a Bristol 3 to 4 in range), although it was pretty gassy and smelly (in retrospect let me call it gassy in the UC way) and came with some straining at the end that sort of drew out the episode. And then, a few minutes later, after cleaning up and venturing back out to play, he came running back to the bathroom, but not in time to make it into the potty. Then we cleaned that up, and a few minutes later he ran back again, this time making it to the toilet, but with the sort of stool parents don't like to see. No blood as far as we could tell, but very loose, and then stringy, and again with the straining that draws out the bowel movement.

So, should we put it down to the dietary looseness in our regimen? Shall we put it down to symptoms that simply need to be controlled with more medicines? Shall we put it down to this, or that? In our limited experience, we understand we shall do the best we can and accumulate our experiences and observations to make the best choices...

Since I have been speaking so highly of probiotics, let me include also in our report that he has been taking sacchromyces boulardii for the past week. He didn't have it today yet, but I feel like this is a counter example of his bowels faring best while he's taking probiotics.

On the positive side, and I was thinking of this while he was bounding out of the bathroom to go play his dinosaur game, he really doesn't know anything different. And he takes this sort of discomfort really well. If it were me, bowel issues like that can really sour a day. But let us take that as one more lesson of how to live our lives.

2 comments:

  1. Yikes! That sounds like quite the oredeal. I see lots of positives in figuring out Isaacs disease while he is so young (like the one you mentioned). Of course, I would prefer if my nephew didn't have this problem at all, but knowing so early can help him set up his life to make it as healthy as possible by establishing good eating habits, probiotic taking and not being too put off by a bad trip to the bathroom.

    It seems to me (and this is without much studying on UC) that even with the right diet and medicine, and taking probiotics he can still have a bad bowel movement or two. Is this the case? Or does a bad bowel always mean that a diet rule has been broken or medicines skipped?
    -nic

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  2. That's the question. We don't know yet exactly, but we'll see over time and try to learn all we can by studying what happens.

    I think you're right though. With or without IBD, explaining an unfavorable BM might or might not be so obvious.

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