Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Soup Day

I was in Target this past Saturday night to buy diapers; we accidentally overlooked the fact that we only had two diapers left so before things got messy I made the run. While I was heading towards the check out line a group of young adults between the ages of 19-22 made a rude comment to me about my diapers and how whooped I must be. I started to laugh and told them that I couldn’t recall ever being in a variety store at 10pm on a Saturday night like they were, and that I was usually partying somewhere with my friends when I was their age. I topped it off with “Who’s the loser now?” By the redness in their cheeks and the complete silence, I knew that I had won.

Kids, do they really think they can out smart us. I probably shouldn’t talk, I’m not that old just a little wiser.

The interaction was kind of fun. I should do my shopping on Saturday night more often.

__________________


I’m in my mid 30’s and wondering what the hell went wrong. I never thought that I would be so excited about poop, but I am. Amanda, our daughter who is 17 months old and born with Down Syndrome has had problems for quite awhile POOPING. I’m sure that one day she will stumble across this post since it will forever be in cyber land now and have a few choice words to say to me. Anyway, she has fissures that are extremely painful to her when she goes to the bathroom and because of that pain she has been withholding, causing her colon to grow larger. Because of this it backs up into her intestine where it starts to harden, making it more difficult to pass and more painful. Also, because her colon is larger than normal (once she starts pooping regularly her colon will shrink back to its normal size) she is able to hold it in for days. We started her on medication, my wife knows the name of it, about a month ago and it’s only now that it’s starting to work, she’s pooping up a storm. Poor kid woke up this morning covered in it, we call these poop-outs, and appropriately named I think. So over the past few weeks my wife and I have had our share of discussions relating to………..POOP.

I’m happy to say that Amanda is making up for the past couple months and Victor Mills, the founder of Pampers would be very happy, Victor past away in 1997. He was a chemist with Proctor & Gamble when he invented the disposable diaper; he used his grandchildren as test subjects. I bet you those failed experiments were pretty nasty.

Pooping, it’s a natural thing, but sometimes it just needs a little encouragement.

____________________

I had trouble sleeping the other night for no apparent reason. I was bored and sleep obviously didn’t want to embrace me. I found myself staring up at the ceiling fan trying to focus on one of the fan blades to see if I could follow it going around and around. I moved my eyes rapidly in a circular motion trying to keep my eyes on one blade. I was unsuccessful, as the blades were moving quickly. I thought about it for a moment only to realize that what I was trying to do is exactly what I try to do in life, keep up, and lately it has been a challenge.

It seems as you get older life starts to speed up, but really you are just doing more things to fill up the time, time remains the same, but what if I was able to slow down time? I grabbed the remote to my ceiling fan and hit slow. It was pretty easy to follow the blade, a little too easy and it became boring so I pressed the medium button and found that I was able to still track the blade, but it was a little more difficult. It took a lot of effort to keep track of the blade on the medium setting but it kept me interested and as silly as it may sound, gave me a feeling of accomplishment. Weird ha. I think that’s what I need to do in my life, find a speed that I am comfortable with, but not to comfortable, maybe somewhere between the fast and slow setting. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

I guess that’s what it means when “they” say “take it one day at a time”. It’s easy to get caught up with things that are going to happen a week a month or even a year from now.

7 comments:

Kim Ayres said...

Astral Projection is the way to fall asleep when you're bored. The idea is to try and project yourself outside of your body. You have to try and visualise yourself hovering up by the ceiling somewhere and then being able to see your body lying down below, still in bed.

Guaranteed you will fall asleep before you are successful. But if not then you can amaze yourself with your very own out-of-body-experience. You could even try floating through to the the kid's room to see if there's been any more poop-outs you should be attending to!

BStrong said...

Astral Projection hah. I'll try it next time. I'll imagine myself floating towards the ceiling ultimately getting entangled in the fan:) I like the idea of flying through the house. I used to have dreams of flight.

So doctor, you are able to solve sleeping issues and hiccups. I have this rash.....:)

Cheers,
Brian

Pilgrim said...

We periodically deal with elimination concerns (poop stress) also. :-) Ten and a half hours in the car yesterday did not help.

Lori said...

Glad to hear that everything is "moving along". Amanda must be a much happier camper now!
The ceiling fan thing would have just made me feel like I was going to puke. When I can't go to sleep, I do a technique called "get up and do something else besides lie here." It usually works great. I only have to be up for 20-30 minutes then I'm ready to fall asleep.
Oh, and congrats on your "Target" comeback! Very clever indeed.

Anonymous said...

okey dokey...there really are other kooks out there who try and track the ceiling fan blades! LOL! Oh, and I can relate to the poop stress too. Our little 8 yr old son has Down Syndrome and has also had stressful bowel moments. He was on stool softeners for a while but all the sudden, seriously, all the sudden he's 'normal' in the poop department. Hmmmmmm, after years of working with it!??! Oh well, that's done! If only a few of the behavior things would disappear as quickly.....

BStrong said...

Julana- Sounds like a lot of fun:0 For some reason the phrase poop stress cracks me up.

Lori - "Get up and do something", genius, I'll try it next time:)

Becky - Yes, there are kooks out there. The reason I didn't respond to your comment earlier was because the mother ship was late in bringing me back. Amanda's poop problem seems to be solved for now.

Cheers all,
B

BStrong said...

Amanda,

I tried to do the Kim thing last night until our daughter Amanda started to cry. It was working though. Kim also has a remedy for hiccups.
B