Did Today Really Just Happen?

So I wrote this like two months ago and forgot to post it. Deal.


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OCD Nightmare #1: Visiting My Doctor. I had an appointment to go talk to my doctor about where things stand with my mood meds. I stopped seeing my psychiatrist ages ago, because (1) he was kind of a doucher and (2) I found out miles too late that he wasn't an in-network provider (O HAI SEE YA $600), so I just thought I'd see my regular MD, since we were really only dealing with medication here, not talk-therapy. But that means I have to go sit at a regular doctor's office amongst all the sick people for a minimum of 25 minutes before I'm seen, because they're always late, and my pits get sweaty, and my blood pressure rises steeply, both from the long wait (which pisses me off immensely) and from being around ill people. So I had the pleasure of doing that today, seeing my general practitioner for a followup appointment. She was on-call today, too, so she was extra late and THEN had to take an emergent phone call halfway through our session, so I sat there, BP at a good 180/100, certain I was actively in the process of catching a cold as I sat there waiting.

OCD Nightmare #2: The Prescription. After explaining to my doctor that nothing we've tried so far has even touched my OCD (and I'm on a laundry list of meds 8 mile long), I burst into tears and confessed that I feared nothing would ever work. My doctor said, "Well, it depends on how far you're willing to go." I asked her what she meant, and she actually--this actually happened--she actually said, "There's electroshock therapy." I was like,

She said, "It sounds medieval, but for stubborn mental or psychological issues, it can really work."

Hang on. I need a glass of wine.

OK.

So I was like, "Motherfucking electroshock therapy. R u srs." She was srs. She was dead srs. I was all, "Does it...hurt?" She kind of explained how it worked and I was like, "Um...can I just have some motherfucking Buspar instead?"

She prescribed the motherfucking Buspar.

OCD Nightmare #3: We Take the Kids to Their Doctor. Both tots needed shots today: Naomi needed her second flu shot and her first pneumococcal shot (we delay and stagger vaccines, but we do vaccinate), and Maya needed Hep A #2 and Hep B #2 (we're waaaay behind on those, oops). So we had the joy of waiting around in the pediatrician's office, where I think my blood pressure was by now 200/120 from waiting so long, steam by now roiling from my ears.

And I was in panic mode, since Maya had her hands all over everything--the handles of the chairs, the table, the fish tank. And Naomi kept wanting to touch my purse, and I was like,

NOT THE PURSE!!!

We waited forever, and finally we got called in to the actual doctor's office where we could wait some more. But at least they had Purell, so we could use some of that, which lowered my BP to a fine fine 170/90, I'm sure. Finally the medical assistant came in, the kids got their shots, which they took like pros and neither one  cried, and we were done. Thank God. Then, when I was putting the baby in her carseat, I bumped her head on the roof of the car and she burst into sobs. FML.

OCD Nightmare #4: Dinner. Then, the plan was, we were going to go eat at Applebees (I know, we party like rockstars up in here), but we pulled up and (1) saw how crowded the parking lot was, (B) realized it was 5:30 on a weekend night, and (iii) my anxiety inexplicably and immediately went through the roof, so instead we went next door and got some food poisoning Subway instead. Much better.

We go home and eat our food poisoning Subway and try to get Maya to eat some soup, but she is basically doing this at the dinner table:

I can only assume it's from the vaccines. She's doing weird shit like dipping her fingers in her soup and zoning out, which isn't normal for her. So after trying to get her to eat for an hour, we give up. We're calling it bedtime, 2-1/2 hours ahead of schedule.

OCD Nightmare #5: Poop. On a Hot Tin Butt. So, if you recall, Maya suffers terribly from constipation. It's truly terrible--it's gotten so much worse, and she holds in her poop so long that when she does go, it's truly like beholding the site of an assacre. Blood, shit, bloody shit, the whole nine.

So all day long we've been trying to get her to poop, since she hasn't in days. She's been farting like King Fart of Shit Mountain. She's been bent over, knock-kneed, waddling, hand between her buttcheeks, yet claiming she doesn't have to poop. We've been sitting her on the chamberpot every 30 minutes, telling her to JUST FUCKING POOP. It's like potty training all over again. But still she insisted she didn't have to go.

So then about 20 minutes following our fine fine Subway dinner and her two-sips-of-soup supper, she's waddling around again, knees together, butt sticking out, and if I know anything I know there's a duke in there the size of Manhattan. I take her to the potty and lo and befuckinghold, her draws are full of shit. Liquishit. She has sharted at least a half-pint into her favorite green unniepannies, and it has soaked through them onto the pajamas I had put her in. FML SO HARD.

She is hysterical. I am trying not to be, but come on, SHIT IN PANTS. I peel off her jammies and throw her underwear into the garbage. I did not think she could get more hysterical than she already was. I did not think there was a pitch higher than her voice had already reached. I was wrong. When I threw away her underwear, she went ballistic.

"BUT MOM! THOSE ARE MY NEW UNNIEPANNIES!!"

"No, those are your old ones."

"NO THEY ARE MY BRAND-NEW ONES! MOM!!!"

"No, they're your old ones, and they're getting too small anyway."

"THEY'RE NEW AND I WANT THEM! DON'T THROW THEM AWAY! DON'T THROW THEM AWAY!!!"

"The new ones I just bought you are purple and aqua, remember? These are green. These are old. These are too small. And anyway, you shat them. They cannot be saved. They are sullied beyond repair. No one can help these unniepannies now."

"MOM!! MOM! MOYYY-OMMMMM! PLEASE! PLEEEEASE! DON'T THROW THEM AWAY! MOM! PLEASE! NOOOOO!!"

"Maya. I am throwing these underwears out. They have been pooped in and I will not wash them. Not today, not tomorrow, not in this lifetime. You better be glad I am not throwing out the pajamas too, but luckily I grew up broke as a joke in a single-parent family and it had a negative effect on my hoarding tendencies and can't bring myself to toss out a perfectly good jammy. But these underwears are goners."

"BUT MOY-OMMM!! I WANT THEM! PUH LEEEEASE!!! DON'T THROW AWAAY MY UNNIEEPANNNIEEEWSSASSADLKFJSSFJSKDASHJFS:A:JASA;SLKFLL;SKFLSA;!!@@#215%&!"

Ad infinitum. Here she is shrieking, positively shrieking, so loud that I am certain the neighbors knew she had sharted her draws.

The OCD in me wants to just put her outside. Just, you know, just put my child outside, forever. Just not deal with it. Just put her in the garbage with the soiled unniepannies. Just not even deal. Because my kid has shit on her buns. Shit. On her buns.

But I have to deal. So I wipe her down. And if she wasn't falling asleep at the wheel, a full shower would have been in order, but we'll just do that tofuckingmorrow. Today was full of enough shit.

At least there was no semi-automatic ass-spray this time.

I Can Laugh About It Now...Right?

.....Right??

So my older daughter Maya had been struggling with a wee bit o' the old constipatoriality. OK she'd been blocked up. Her poops were getting less and less frequent, harder and harder, and more and more compacted (hey, you're at a blog called Poop on a Hot Tin Slide, you have to expect to read about poop sometimes). So when she'd finally go, they hurt her poor bum-bum so badly she'd cry. Then she'd be afraid to poop again next time, and she'd hold it in, and behold: the vicious cycle.

So after taking her to a doctor who checked out her bum-bum and related regions, I began using the age-appropriate amount of Milk of Magnesia for her, at least just to get things started, because let me tell you, when I was blocked up after giving birth to Naomi, Milk of Magnesia was my savior. I had not pooped in almost a week and a half, so I've never been so thrilled for my ass to act a sprinkler. Bum-bum pee. The squirts. The trots. Captain Trips. Oh I was in heaven. It was beautiful. Thank you, Patron Saint of Compacted Stool.

(I should mention here: The ADULT dose of Milk of Magnesia is 2-4 TBSP (tablespoons). I started with the minimum dose, a mere 2 TBSP, and very soon after had epic, epic shits, as heretofore mentioned. I don't even want to think of what additional TBSPs would do to a person. Wait. I might have an idea. Which brings us to the climax of this tale...)

OK, so the dose for her age is 2-3 tsp (TEAspoons). tsp. Not TBSP.

For a week, I'd been giving her two tsp a day, to no avail. Still horrible, painful poops. So I finally upped her dose to three tsp. Still no real results.

I was always the one who gave her the meds. Then one fine morning, my husband took the initiative and gave Maya her daily morning dose of Milk of Magnesia. I had set the teaspoon that I use, right beside the bottle of medicine. However...well, I think you can smell where this is going.

Suddenly, at about 7 pm that night Maya started having out-of-this-world diarrhea. She has been fully potty-trained for a year and a half, but when we started giving her Milk of Magnesia, we had proactively put her in pull-ups, just in case, because I had no idea what even two teaspoons would do to her (since the MINIMUM adult dose, two TBSPs, made me crap out my soul).

So that night, suddenly she's shitting all over the place. All over. Every five minutes she's shitting her pull-up, after we've just gotten done cleaning up huge messes, and then it's another round of poo.

Finally, after the billionth epic diarrhea, my husband sheepishly asked me if the amount of medicine I usually give her is, and here I quote, "the third line on the medicine cup." (The dosage cap that comes on the bottle of Milk of Magnesia.) My jaw dropped.

The third line on the medicine cup is three TBSP. THREE TABLESPOONS. One entire tablespoon more than I took, as an adult who hadn't crapped in 10 days.

Let me put this in perspective. Thanks to Home Ec, I know that 3 tsp = 1 TBSP. So he effectively gave her NINE TEASPOONS, when the recommended dose for her age is 2-3 teaspooons. He gave her three tablespoons, when a mere two tablespoons liquefied MY innards.

I did not murder my husband that night, but legally, I'm pretty sure I had every right to.

So that was a rough patch. Not only dealing with epic diarrhea everywhere and the germs that entailed (giving her shower after shower, trying to deal with a pull-up that's about to spill its contents, just everything about it)....but finally the ass-pee seemed to end, and poor, exhausted, terrified Maya eventually went to bed.

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CUT TO THE FOLLOWING EVENING, 

20 GOT-DAMNED HOURS LATER.

The next night, the squirts had long since stopped, so I thought we were well into the clear. No more Milk of Magnesia had been given (obvi). Suddenly, as bedtime drew near, all at once I heard bloodcurdling screams coming from Maya's bedroom. I ran in and beheld the sight of a massacre. An ass massacre. An assacre.

There was diarrhea all over Maya's underpants. There was diarrhea all over Maya's legs. There was diarrhea all over Maya's feet. There was diarrhea all over the carpet underneath and around her. And somehow, SOMEHOW, there was diarrhea all over on her Drawing Weasel.*

*The Drawing Weasel is what Maya calls her four-foot-tall painting/drawing/art easel, the kind that stands up like a tripod. Quadpod. Whatever.

I had every right to go ballistic on my husband, but all I could manage was to go stone cold, break into brain sweats, swallow my vomit, say a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of Bum-Bum Germs, and extraordinarily loudly announce to that man that he himself would be cleaning up every square centimeter of this crime scene, that he would be solely responsible for its total and complete disinfection, that he would be washing the child, and that divorce papers would be served in the morning.

I was just in total shock. I mean, if the thought of bum-bum germs on the handle of a shopping cart make me seriously (seriously) panic, and if the fecal microbes on the tabletops at restaurants give me tremendous anxiety, what was I to do with diarrhea all over the carpet? With Actual Shit on the carpet?? The CARPET for sweet baby Jesus' sake! The light. light. light. beige. carpet. Diarrhea. Carpet. I considered killing it with fire, or running away and never coming back.

After my husband was done man-cleaning "cleaning," I went in there and re-cleaned. OCD-stylee. I'm p. sure I emptied an entire can of Lysol Garden Mist-Scented Spray. I sprayed it all over the Drawing Weasel. Then I sprayed it all over the Drawing Weasel again. Then, then, I SOAKED the carpet with it. I sprayed and sprayed, in small circles, over the area of doom, for tens of minutes, until the carpet was positively drenched with Lysol. Then I coughed, tried to swat away the oppressive fumes, and sat back in defeat, because what more could I do?

My worst nightmare. Bum-bum germs. Sprayed out my child like a tommy-gun, all over her bedroom. Every time she plays at her Drawing Weasel, I have to restrain the urge to say, "Let's go wash your feet, love."

On that note, I'd like to end with a soliloquy from Maya that she gave the following day. I sat there, typing furiously, transcribing her oration word for word:

"Diarrhea is not funny. It is kind of bad poopies. It's liquid last time. Three tablespoons of diarrhea and one cup of Milk of Magnesia. Daddy gave me a little too much last time. Diarrhea is the thing that makes your bum bum hurt and makes your tummy really hurt. And it's liquid and it has water and poopy is just like water and water is just like--usually I wipe my own bum bum. Diarrhea is kind of not liquid and kind of yes liquid. And sometimes--I didn't toot. And if you drink not too much juice, not too much cocoa, and no bum bum medicine water, just drink water bottles, and not much water bottle parts, but usually you watch a show and you have to go pee pee and poo poo and sometimes Cheerios helps but not very much Cheerios and not very much fiber cereal, and I don't like milk, but I like water with no medicine in it, and usually I watch a show and then I feel like I have to go poopy. We can't eat very much peanut butter, right? Neosporin doesn't usually help your bum bum but you can use it for that. So we went to the doctor every minute ago, and the doctor fixed me, and it's liquid, kinda liquid, and sometimes it's diarrhea, and diarrhea does come out your bum bum. DIARRHEA!! The doctor put the stethoscope on my tummy to make sure how much my poopy doesn't come out. And she checked on my bum bum but it doesn't hurt, so she got gloves on her hands so she doesn't get bum bum germs on her hands. If there's germs on your hands from a bum bum, you better wear gloves and wash. And then throw them in the garbage. Then you eat fiber cereal. Fiber cereal comes out of your bum bum in a line, them a lump, then a line. And that's all about diarrhea. Can't talk about it."