Poop Watch: 2007

Sooo...

After some 6 hours passed, and two more voice mails left, I finally got a call back from Dr. PediatricianThatWe’veHadFOR.EV.ER, HIMSELF.

"So, uh, I understand you've had some diarrhea and..."

"And it has been recurrent for 10 days now, not following any rhyme or reason with my knowledge of GI bugs, and there is a health alert out for cryptosporidium, and Dr. OnlyWomanInThePractice completely dismissed me and wasted my time and money."

"Well, we go by national guidelines, you know. How many diarrhea stools are they having a day?"

"I dunno, maybe 2-3?"

"Well, 4 is the number we look for."

"Ok, whatever, she didn't even ask me that - so how then would ya'll have known? I mean all she did was look them over, listen to their heart/lungs and send us on our merry way."

"Well, again, sometimes we have to go with how the kids look - 2-3 loose bowels a day can cause some kids a lot of fatigue and to seem really sick - whereas others are happy go lucky, just with a lot of stools coming out, you know?"

"I DO know - my kids are in that latter group and it is really hard keeping them out of their normal routines when by all appearances things are normal. HOWEVER, that's a focus on how sick they are, which is not a lot now, and not on how healthy they are - which we will not know for certain until everything goes away or until we TEST for this crypto. And national guidelines are fine, but when the LOCAL health dept. is saying 'outbreak,' why in the hell don't you pay attention to that? I do NOT want my kids to spread something around if they in fact have it."

I won. But Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze, why does it have to be so hard? WHY???

So he called in the lab order - which meant that I had to go pick up two sets of these:

And 2 toilet seat "catchers" for the poo.

I then had to convince LMNOB to poop in it for me, so that I could scoop it into the vials.

Grody, grody, grossness. And awkward with all of her Sensory Processing Disorder / 6-y/o-girl-I-am-now-so-MODEST-about-EVERYTHING self. She was mortified.

But we did it. Last night.

Punkinhead on the other hand has still yet to have a bowel movement.

I hereby proclaim this Poop Watch: 2007 - and respectfully request that Dirty Jobs include the often nasty occupation of "Mom" to their ranks, particularly the highly specialized troups of "Mothers of small children."

Also? The DOG had diarrhea this morning.

All things GI - viral or buggy or whatever the hell it may be, PLEASE LEAVE GET THE EFF OUT OF Casa Del Meyer!