Rectal Prolapse

This is the diagnosis we got the other night. It sounds horrible. It is. I can hardly talk about it without turning into a shriveled mess and I'm trying to stay calm about it, especially in front of Tristan.

Pierce had gone to bed and T was going to the bathroom before bed. He went #1 and #2 and everything came out normally. Then he started straining pretty badly and saying he had some hard poop. I thought he had some stuck. That's what it looked like from my view on the floor. We sat there for a while, reading books and telling stories, waiting for the hard poop to work it's way out. He finally starting crying pretty hard and said "What am I going to do Mommy?" My heart was breaking. I took a plastic baggy and thought I would try to help out with what I could. That's when I realized it wasn't poop. I laid him down on a towel and saw the most horrible sight I've ever seen. It was about two inches across and about an inch tall, and it looked like a tomato garnish, all layered. It was his rectum; it had been pushed out. With everything in me, I tried to remain as calm as I could. Mark is out of town so I called my neighbor so she could come stay with Pierce while I took T to the ER. By the time she got here, everything had gone back up and it was back to normal. We talked about drinking a lot of juice the next day so he wouldn't have any more hard poop. He seemed to accept this as a normal, no big deal solution.

I called the doctor on call and explained what had happened. He said it sounded like a rectal prolapse. Apparently it's not uncommon for this to happen in kids when they push too hard or are constipated. T has developed a bedtime stalling tactic of saying he needs to poop and then trying to push something out even when he doesn't have to go. (Until now we actually thought it was pretty funny. Obviously we don't anymore!) We are hoping this is what happened.

The doctor on call said T needed to be examined by our regular pediatrician. We went yesterday and T was so brave. Sucker in hand, he laid very still (although very clamped!) while he got his exam. He said we shouldn't see this again. If we do, it's indicative of a larger problem (minor cystic fibrosis that is just now showing up, IBS, Celiac, or some other type of intestinal problem). He recommended Miralax and setting up a pediatric GI appointment just in case.

T pooped just fine last night. It was totally uneventful except for my holding my breath with every strain. It is so hard trying to stay calm while you're collapsing inside. Today he is complaining of a sore tummy and he says his bottom hurts. I am praying there is nothing internally wrong in addition to the prolapse. Some sort of pinch in the intestine? Cutting off blood supply, causing sepsis? As a parent, it is our nature to drift to the worst possible solution... But how do you protect your child from this?

As I laid in bed last night, worried that something horrible would happen during our sleep, worried that I wouldn't even know it until the morning, trying to stay awake just in case, I realized that these are the moments where there is nothing else you can do except trust in God. Sometimes bad things happen and there is nothing anyone can do about it, but God has a reason for everything. We may not understand it or agree with it, but there's a reason and one day we'll know why.

Please say a little prayer for T and his little butt. (And maybe include his intestines too!) I'll keep y'all posted.