The frequent readers of my blog may have noticed that lately my entries seem shorter than usual.
The reason behind these short entries that I and JY has been trying to recover from Lauren’s first crisis.
Let me explain.
We decided the week before June 17th that we’d like to bring Lauren to our friends Omar and Jackie’s apartment building so that we can use the swimming pool to get Lauren her first close contact with water. My mother-in-law was a competitive swimmer who competed at national level when she was young, and JY was also trained early on to become a competitive swimmer.
We were supposed to go over to Omar’s apartment at around 4:30pm so that we can start at around 5pm. However, when I called Omar, he told me he was still on the way back home, and asked me to get there at around 7pm instead. We agreed, that that means we have another hour to kill.
Just then though, Lauren started to pass lots of stool. She had three stools within an hour, and the first one almost made her diaper burst. The third stool though was the most worrisome, it had streaks of blood in it. All three stools smelt foul with a distinct acidic tinge.
Being a Saturday afternoon, Lauren’s regular doctor is off, I called their office’s weekend number, and got hold of a registered nurse. The nurse told me she’d get me a doctor on the phone ASAP. However, I didn’t want to wait much longer, so JY, my mother-in-law and I took Lauren to Oakland Children’s Hospital. We took all the soiled diapers with us so that a doctor can run some tests on them. A doctor from the same medical group got hold of me while I was on my way, and told me we should bring her to the Oakland Children’s Hospital, so I thought “good, we are already doing the right thing”.
We got to the hospital at around 6pm. It took us 30 minutes to go through the triage nurse and the registration. We waited another 40 minutes once we were called into the examination rooms. An intern, let’s call him Dr. T came in, asked a bunch of questions, and examined the soiled diapers we brought in. Lauren actually soiled her diaper again while in the hospital, and clear streaks blood could be seen mixed inside the mucus inside the stool.
Dr. T made the preliminary diagnosis of anal fissure, tried to show me the fissure site, but I couldn’t see it with my untrained eyes. We were a bit perplexed because it didn’t explain the sudden increase in the frequency of stools and the foul smell. We insisted that we get a second opinion.
We wait another 90 minutes for the supervising doctor, let’s call her Dr. H. Dr. H used her special tool to examine Lauren, and told us she couldn’t see a fissure clearly. She gathered the last soiled diaper, and sent it in for blood and stool culture tests. The doctor also told us to put Lauren on Pedialyte exclusively for 24 hours, no milk or formula.
We waited another 30 minutes, then a nurse came and told us the blood test confirmed that there is human blood in the stool, and that a stool culture is being performed on it, and we can leave.