The story. The journey. The experience. The prayers. The tears. The poo. The answers.
Back to the beginning...our little man struggled with constipation from early on. Baby days we added pears, prunes, plums. Toddler days we added Miralax. Back in October 2015, we had our first run in with blood in his poo. As any scared parent does, we took him to the doctor and began the tests. Sure enough, extreme constipation and we added Miralax to his diet and saw great improvements.
Fast forward to January, we have more blood and no constipation. We've been on Miralax for months and we have daily "mashed potatoes". Yes, we tracked the poo and watched it daily. Back to the doctor. Back for more tests. Still no answers. It was time to move on to the GI doctors at Children's.
After multiple visits to Children's and work directly with the GI doctors, they suggested our little man should have a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy at THREE...no way. We were seriously freaked out. He can't need this. It will go away. We shouldn't put him through this. Let's wait to see if it goes away on it's own. Well, it didn't and one evening we saw something by his bum best described as a pee-sized fleshy thing. Yep, here comes Dr. Google. After some investigation we were positive it was a polyp, but what did that mean. You guessed it, back to Children's and back to the GI center.
At this point, the blood was still present. The unknown "polyp" had us worried and we decided it was time to move forward. We went through the procedure with our doctor and heard about preparation...low fiber diet, no food day before, liquids only...seriously, how are we going to do this. Then, she tells us, we will be in the room when they put Griffin under. I LOST IT. I couldn't talk about it or think about it for weeks. We were scheduled for mid July...yes, July 18th (our 7th wedding anniversary) and had decided it was necessary to get some answers.
This little boy...so brave...so strong. He did amazing with the weekend prep, kept his spirits high and was such a trooper. The morning of the procedure, he was nauseous and sick. It was so hard to see. He threw up multiple times on the way to the hospital and just wanted to lay down in the car.
After multiple visits to Children's and work directly with the GI doctors, they suggested our little man should have a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy at THREE...no way. We were seriously freaked out. He can't need this. It will go away. We shouldn't put him through this. Let's wait to see if it goes away on it's own. Well, it didn't and one evening we saw something by his bum best described as a pee-sized fleshy thing. Yep, here comes Dr. Google. After some investigation we were positive it was a polyp, but what did that mean. You guessed it, back to Children's and back to the GI center.
At this point, the blood was still present. The unknown "polyp" had us worried and we decided it was time to move forward. We went through the procedure with our doctor and heard about preparation...low fiber diet, no food day before, liquids only...seriously, how are we going to do this. Then, she tells us, we will be in the room when they put Griffin under. I LOST IT. I couldn't talk about it or think about it for weeks. We were scheduled for mid July...yes, July 18th (our 7th wedding anniversary) and had decided it was necessary to get some answers.
This little boy...so brave...so strong. He did amazing with the weekend prep, kept his spirits high and was such a trooper. The morning of the procedure, he was nauseous and sick. It was so hard to see. He threw up multiple times on the way to the hospital and just wanted to lay down in the car.
We were all checked in and just waiting....
and waiting. I don't think any of us took a breath that morning and were just limp bodies.
We were back to meet with nurses, doctors and get the little man ready. He was all smiles and helped keep Rich and I from worrying too much.
Giving those hugs before he went in were hard...seeing him put under anesthesia was the most difficult thing I've watched...but walking out of the room and leaving my baby was unbearable. I don't know how parents have the strength to go through this and keep their heads up. Looking at the faces of the parents at Children's made me so thankful that we have healthy little ones.
The procedure went quickly...like we barely had ordered a coffee and sat down and we were getting paged. IT WAS DONE...they found a polyp and were able to remove it. Our little boy would be waking up and back in our arms in no time. As a precaution, they do biopsy the polyp, but they expect it to all be ok. We follow up in August and until then....
We live each day thankful that we have answers, each other, love, faith, strength and a HUGE support system that helps us through when we face challenges.
