stay away

If you know what's good for you, stay away from us until the spring...maybe even the summer. If you see us coming, run for your lives. The kids are sick, again. It's going to be a long fall and winter.

I've been meaning to post about this for about a week and it was originally going to be called, "Going through the big D and don't mean Dallas", which is a country song reference. In the song, "the big D" means divorce. In my house, "the big D" means diarrhea...and lots of it. Connor got things going on October 1st. After seven days of it, I took him to the pediatrician. Since there were no other symptoms, they had me collect stool samples for the lab with these instructions:

• Get a foil baking pan and mold it to the toilet when he has to go. Picture that for a second.
• Collect the sample.
• Divide the sample up among five containers and three slides.
• Label everything.
• Put one container in the freezer, one container in the fridge and leave three containers at room temperature.
• Seal the slides in the envelope.
• Take everything to Quest as soon as possible.

Piece of cake! Of course, he had to go in the middle of dinner and I didn't want to pass on an opportunity to collect crap in a baking pan, so off Connor and I went while the girls ate. After the collection, I gathered the containers and slides together in the kitchen, which was completely appropriate given we were in the middle of dinner, and I divided it all up into the proper places. It took about 10 minutes. A few minutes into it the kids wanted to know what the smell was. Seriously? My kids are smart, and knew what I was doing, so I was completely baffled by the question. I was like, "Uh...what do you think the smell is?" They really are brilliant kids but somehow that one got past them.

By the time all of Connor's results were in a few days later, the girls now had diarrhea. The results were fine...no salmonella, rotavirus, parasites, etc. The nurse practitioner told me to make an apppointment with a GI doctor, even after I told her that the girls now had the diarrhea and that it wasn't a problem exclusive to Connor. I didn't get that one. So, I used common sense and decided to wait it out instead of taking him to a GI doctor.

Today it's been one week since then and we seem to be in the clear. The girls were actually over it faster then Connor. He had 19 days of diarrhea. That's insane. We're over it though and already on to the next thing. Camryn is on day 3 of a fever. No other symptoms. Tomorrow is the magical day 4 that the pediatrician always says to wait until to call. So I'll call, and probably end up there tomorrow. I know there will be an exam, ear check, likely a strep throat swab because they always seem to do that no matter what. Maybe I'll even get to collect poop again.