Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Mineral Oil

I called the gastro today with the intention of halting the lactulose. The pattern over the past three weeks has been inconsistent at best, but a weak pattern showing is 3-4 days with only a poop smear in the before-bath diaper, and only pee diapers during the day. Over the weekend Nikko got on an hourly poop smear change-fest again, perhaps expelling everything that was backed up in INCREMENTS, and then today he went back to longer hours with just pee diapers. Even if the pattern improved, the deal breaker is the gassiness. I can imagine Nikko becoming the brunt of jokes and being stigmatized socially. It's not the direction I want for him, so when the gastro called me back I told her that we need another option. She said, "Well, we can either go back to miralax at maybe a 3/4 capful or try mineral oil." I really felt deflated because I don't think Nikko will take the mineral oil. She said it can be mixed with yogurt or ice cream, or even chocolate syrup because they are oil-based foods. Gotta mix oil with oil. I still don't think Nikko will ingest it because he doesn't love yogurt, I can't give him ice cream every day without him getting fat or the other two kids wanting it every day, too, and MAYBE the chocolate syrup will fly but I don't know about the consistency. She told me about the effects of mineral oil, and even warned me that if not given to him properly then he could get sick from it. It slides down the intestines and helps the poop retain its water because the poop is coated in mineral oil, thus coming out easier. And there's the possibility of some leakage since it's an oil...

The gastro told me to make an appointment to see her next week. I plan to, and to try one more time to discuss what the bigger picture in helping Nikko is supposed to be.

1 comment:

  1. Wow. I'm confused - she hasn't actually diagnosed him with anything... so she's giving you options based on a hypothesis? Isn't there a way to figure out what's going on (maybe colonoscopy, as awful as it is, would at least show you what's going on and give an accurate direction to go towards).
    If you could swing a small amount of ice cream with chocolate syrup it shouldn't get him fat. If that's the only thing that'll work, just go with small amounts :P
    The whole situation just sucks...

    ReplyDelete