My brave girl

***Warning - this post talks in great length and detail about my daughter's poop and its color, consistency, and frequency.  You've been warned.***

This past Wednesday, Ainsley had to have a colonsocopy and endoscopy.  She has been having bloody stools (sorry to be graphic) on and off for about two months.  Initially, we went to our pediatrician who checked for hemorrhoids and fishers and upon finding none, ordered stool samples to be done.  This is quite an extensive and disgusting process where I had to sift through and collect portions of her poop for several days.  Ugh.  And of course she always had to go in the middle of nap time when I had just gotten the younger two to sleep and had laid down myself.  Oh the things we do for our children.  :)  Anyway, thankfully those test came back clean for an internal infection/bacteria or parasite, so we were referred to a GI specialist.  

Based on the fact that Ainsley is not constipated and has regular normal stools without pain and does not complain of stomach aches, the GI Dr wanted to do a colonsocopy and endoscopy.  The colonsocopy would look at the bottom section of her intestines/colon to try to determine the cause of the bright red blood we were seeing and endoscopy to look at the top section of her large intestine to try to determine the cause of the darker red blood we were seeing.  The Dr thought there was likely an adolescent polyp causing the bleeding and that if found it would be removed during the procedure.  George and I agreed that it was the right thing to do although we were NOT looking forward to having another child go under general anesthesia in the same month.  Plus, these procedures required difficult prep work be done in order to clean out the colon.  

The Monday before the procedure, Ainsley had to drink a miralax/gatoraid mixture three times but got to eat a fairly normal diet.  On Tuesday, she again had to drink the laxative mixture three times but was only allowed to eat/drink clear liquids including popsicles, jello, and juice.  I was pretty worried about how she would handle this because she normally says that she is hungry several times a day when she gets to eat whatever she wants!  But she was awesome!  Leading up to Tuesday, she was so excited to get to have a special day with me where she got to eat popsicles all day.  I almost felt deceitful because she was so so excited.  But I tried to make it fun by planning special movies to watch, putting her hair in curlers so she would have "princess hair", doing extra school work and giving her a new doll from the movie Frozen.  With all the distractions, she had such fun and I feel like she honestly felt like she was having a treat.  She was so tickled that she could have as much jello and popsicles as she wanted and kept clarifying that fact throughout the day.  It was the sweetest.

This is how I set up her plate for dinner - three types of jello and a popsicle.  She was so excited!

Her procedure was set for Wednesday at 1pm and she wasn't allowed to have anything but juice that morning and then nothing at all after 10am.  This is when it started to get hard for her.  She was tired and hungry and just ready to be done with this all.  George and I were right there with her.  Once they took her back, the procedure itself went fine and Ainsley handled the anesthesia well and much more like an adult handles it and thankfully nothing like the reaction Bailey had.  It was a "good prep" as they say and the Dr was able to see all she needed to see.  The Dr did not find a polyp as she had originally thought and actually didn't find anything that could be causing Ainsley's bleeding accept a small mostly healed internal hemorrhoid high up in her colon which is kind of an unlikely source.  Of course we were relieved that nothing major was going on but news like this was kind of a mixed blessing because we aren't really left with any answers.  Her biopsy and blood test results all came back normal as well which is encouraging because I was a little concerned that she was becoming anemic.  But still no real answers.  :(

She recovered from the procedure itself pretty well and by the end of the next day was back to normal.  The Dr recommended putting her on a laxative for about a month to allow that small hemorrhoid to heal and to see if the bleeding stops.  We will do that but are also planning on talking to our pediatrician about maybe getting a second opinion.  These are the times when being a parent is hard because your not sure how to best take care of things - keeping pushing until we find out what's wrong or just wait and see if it goes away on its own.  Anyway, here she is afterwards being so cute and telling Bailey all about what happened.