Another clean out

Kelsie is still having issues with constipation! Some kids with CF just have a lot of problems with this and I guess she is one of them. We just did a home clean out a few weeks ago and things were seemingly better. However, she lost all of her appetite and started refusing mostly everything we offered her. So after a week of this, I contacted her doctor to let her know. She said she thought she was likely just acting like a toddler and thought we could just give it some more time. She was having consistently large loose stools at this point so I even thought maybe her stomach was upset and that the Miralax was making the diarrhea worse so I skipped one day of giving her Miralax and the next day, her stool was hard again. This wouldn't be such a big deal, except that she wasn't eating clueing us in on a bigger problem. After seeing this big change in her stools, I contacted the doctor again and told her that we are ready to see a GI specialist about how to get this under better control. She agreed that seeing GI was a good idea and also said she wanted to bring her in for an abdominal xray.

So we went on Friday morning, had the xray and also had a visit with her doctor. The xray showed that she was full of poop so she gave us the option of doing a more agressive cleanout at home or be admitted for an official cleanout. I was actually tempted to just do it in the hospital this time because this has just been a recurrent problem for too long. It seems that we have never actually been able to clean her system out despite doing these aggressive home clean outs before. But this time she suggested giving her 6-8 caps of Miralax (her daily dose is 1/2-1 cap) and in the past we have done 4 caps of Miralax for the home cleanouts. We are also going to a follow up xray tomorrow to see how much progress has been made.

So far, we haven't had much success. My poor baby has had to drink so much fluid with that Miralax in it, she is not eating much of anything, and she is definitely having some discomfort. Getting her to drink has even been a struggle. Her belly is really big and is now getting tight as well but for as much that has gone in, there sure hasn't been much to come out, so I'm not too surprised. We have been taking her to the potty frequently and she has been using it more than her diaper which has been nice.

For a child that has to go through so much, she sure doesn't let it phase her. She is the most playful little thing. She has been acting super happy, hasn't been irritable whatsoever, but she does tell me that it "hurts" and when I ask where she points to her belly and her bottom.

I'm really hoping and praying she doesn't have to stay in the hospital but I'm kind of expecting it. Her doctor said we would eventually have to do this in the hospital if a home cleanout did not work. And I don't think there is any way we are going to see any big change on the xray tomorrow. But we will wait and see.