Wednesday 3 May 2017

It's all a load of Poo!

We visited Lucy's psychologist for a check up and found out that she's leaving. Lucy has been seeing her for 6 years now so it's sad to see her go. She did ask for Lucy to see the Incontinence nurse before she left and we had an appointment just before Easter.

I wasn't sure what to expect. The gastroenterology doctor hasn't helped much in the three years we've been going. I wasn't surprised that the first thing the nurse told she had fecal impaction (constipation.)
So our first job was to get rid of the impaction. We have tried this before many times and it's horribe, it really is.

So, we started with the Movical which is a powder that you dissolve in water and drink. It expands in the colon and pushes everything out. We worked our way up to 10 sachets of Movicol a day as we were instructed. We had to wait until the result was just water like.

Lucy is incontinent, she doesn't feel the need to go to the toilet. The nurse explained that this can , happen because of constant constipation. The bowels can become expanded and the feeling of needing to go can't happen.

So, just for one moment, no longer, imagine an incontinent 11 year old with not feeling of needing to go but taking enough laxative to get a horse 'moving.' I won't go into too much detail but it involved lots of washing, smell and tears.

Lucy was very sore and in pain with tummy contractions by the time we reached dis-impaction. Then I started lowering the dose and now she's on three Movicol a day. It's still pretty bad. I'm still wishing I had a sluice room in my home. But, the soreness has cleared up a little and the tummy pains eased off.

Today we go back to see the nurse to see what the next steps are.

Too Much and not Enough

 As you may recall I told you that Lucy has a syringomyelia and I've been getting advice from a neurologist who is not Lucy's doctor...