Thursday, November 13, 2008

Everyone poops

Here's the thing. For the last seven or eight weeks or so, Jake has been going through some serious episodes of diarrhea. I won't go into details, but just think green, runny, foulest smelling thing you can ever imagine. And then picture it in a diaper. Mike took him to the doctor last week and they said it could be a parasite (ick!) or some sort of bacteria living in his tummy. So, they gave us a stool sample kit. The kit had three sample vials in it each with its own nifty little collection spoon. The object was to get three samples of poo from one diaper.

Mike immediately told me I would be responsible for the collection. I said okay, because I've had collections before. I collected roly poly's and ladybugs when I was a kid. As an adult, I collect little glass dolphins and obsessive compulsive tendencies. Collecting things is not a problem for me. I knew it would be gross but I've done gross before. In college I volunteered for a marine mammal rescue program which mainly consisted of "rescuing" dead dolphins washed up on the beach. Trust me when I say there is nothing grosser in life than the smell of a decomposing dolphin. Words cannot describe. Words can also not describe my horror one day when we were doing necropsies on one unfortunate bottlenose dolphin and another volunteer accidentally dropped its head on the beach and the rotting brains fell out and then he (the volunteer) sort of stepped in them. There was an audible squish. It was gross. I also spent five years in California performing dissections of mackeral which are perhaps the foulest smelling fish on the planet. What I'm saying is I've smelled gross before.

However, I was not pregnant for any of the aforementioned happenings. So anyway, a week ago I got Jake up and took off his dirty diaper and took it to the kitchen table to perform my collection. It has taken me a week to write about this because the memory is still so painful. I filled one vial up and started convulsing and gagging and carrying on. To which Mike said "uh, honey, you okay?" My knight. I said "uh, I think I'm going to throw up so you will have to finish this thing." I felt like a failure calling in the backup quarterback or something. (Good thing my backup did a lot better job than Brad Johnson has done for Tony Romo). So my husband had to get out his gas mask and put it on to finish our little collection.

All that to say that the test came back negative. Which is good. Except that they want us to do it two more times just to make sure. I will seriously pay someone to come over and do this thing for us. Any takers?

3 comments:

  1. wow, it's even better the second time! Although i do have to admit when i read the title I wasn't thinking about Jake (even though you just told me this story). As I presently have a nasty cough, I have vomiting in thought, in that it would be nice not to cough so hard I vomit. Then I thought about those dreaded days in the bathroom when you just lose control of everything and poop comes out when you are trying to vomit. I know you feel my pain KP, I just hope everyone else understands!

    Oh, and I hope they figure out Jake's issue too! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I totally agree that mackerel dissections were horrible smelling. That really brings back memories! Smells during pregnancy are bad although I was over my neighbors yesterday and her kid puked and I almost did too and I am most deffinately not pregnant. Hope the next 2 collections go ok.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, I'm sorry.
    Haven't been pregnant...but I have gagged this week with our own poop battle with Maya, though I think ours is related to antibiotics (which I am now stopping on her...doctor's everywhere, mad, I'm sure)
    Luckily you have the BEST husband and given the gift of gloves, face mask and snorkel...I'm sure he can complete the task. If not..invite a neighbor over :)

    ReplyDelete