The Adventure Continues

So, to add to the list of colds and flus running through our house, we've had to add...bowel issues! Yay!

It would be nice if that just meant constipation (which may be part of the issue). No, this was beyond that.

Saturday night was the real start of it (hints before that, but nothing major). Avery started waking up with severe stomach pains. Continuously throughout the night. At one point I held him for about an hour while he was crying (on and off) and trying to settle down. Not much sleep for anyone. He continued to have minor pain throughout Sunday, then major pain again during the night for a while. Monday he complained all day about his stomach hurting, and we finally took him into the doctor (at the hospital) on Monday night, about 8 PM.

What we thought would be a quick visit (we were thinking maybe bladder infection), turned into he and I staying overnight at the hospital. They put an IV in (that's about as much fun with a 3 year old as you imagine it to be, but he actually did really well). They also took an x-ray of his abdomen and some blood work. After a relatively good, but still short night, we got up and hung around the hospital. They sent us to Camrose for an ultrasound, then back to the hospital, where he was readmitted, possibly for another night. (As a side note, we actually went home after Camrose because no one told us to come back to the hospital. We would have eventually, since Avery still had the IV line in, but we thought he could stay at home for a nap, then get it taken out later. The hospital called and notified us that he hadn't been discharged. Oops.)

At any rate, the doctor finally came in last night and discharged him. Turns out that his bowels had kind of "doubled up." Imagine a tube, now in the middle, the tube walls folded in on themselves and one part of the tube started to go inside the other part (easy to demonstrate, hard to explain. I could use an illustration, citing Pete and Jeff's wrestling match in the dorms, but I won't go into details about that!). That's what was causing the pain. Since the pain seemed to have disappeared, and he had had a bowel movement, the doctor released him, and he's at home eating soft food and recuperating. We hope. Still have to be very much on the lookout for any pain from him. If it has cleared up, then everything is good. If not, it could eventually mean surgery, etc. We're hopeful that won't be the case, but prayers this next week would be appreciated.

Then Darrian woke up in the middle of the night complaining of his stomach, apparently constipated. Sigh. I think we'll be spoon-feeding them fibre for the next month.