Let's Talk Poop

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Mehita

Mehita

Joined
Nov 12, 2011
Messages
2,402
What does your child's poop look like on a good day?

What about on a bad day?

I'm confused... or maybe my expectations are too high. We've got mushy, frayed edge, bitty things here. Sometimes colors the toilet water. Sometimes not. I do think DS is still constipated from the iron supplement. It takes him forever to get it all out, every other day or so. He just agreed to give Miralax a go again.

We just haven't seen a nicely formed poo here on awhile, so I was just wondering...
 
Ahhh the poop talk, most often C's is either a 4 or 5 on the Bristol Chart. When he was having symptoms it would stay at a 6 and color the toilet water yellow(even though bm was brown) he says that is the mucus but I really don't know.
 
we have big formed poos at the minute and im thinking a fissure as fresh smears of blood on loo paper so we starting movicol again tonight. :(
 
Normal poo at the moment. That's going be my daughter.

She'll be 16 soon and there's no way she'll let me have a look. Even when she has problems l tell her not to flush the toilet but she accidentally does.
 
At the moment A is passing round stools, slightly larger than golf balls and they are dark brown. I don't imagine they feel too good. She's going twice a day or so. Apparently her pain medication constipated her.

When she is well her stools are completely normal and she goes 1-3 times a day.
 
Before son's diagnosis, he said you could see food in it, but I never saw it. Now that he is in remission, it's a 4 and it only takes him 5 or 10 minutes to go.
 
I'm so confused too.

Before last week, M's stools were once a day. This week she has had them 3x day and when I looked up what the Bristol scale is, I see that she is a 4.

The things that have changed include an increase in her mesalamine dosing and we added elemental iron. I was told the iron should slow the poop down, but it's not...
 
Iron hurt my son's stomach, so everyday he instead has a green smoothie, pureed lentil soup, WITH something containing vitamin c to make it more absorbable. Last night he had SCD cheese toast, lentil soup, a "SuperGreens" smoothie and a banana-mango smoothie. (Mango has a lot of c).
 
My son's "normal" is about a 2 on the Bristol Scale, and going every other day with difficulty. Now that he's on MTX, there is an added benefit of softer stools. He's now a 4 or 5 and going once to twice a day with ease.
 
With my two in remission but having had resections and using psyllium:

Sarah 7 years post op - No 4 and going once or twice a day.

Matt 2 years post op - Varies between No 5 and No 6 and goes two or three times a day.

Dusty. :poop:
 
I mentioned above that it seems to take DS forever to poop. Like 30-45 minutes each time. He says he always feels like there is more coming and I think he simply doesn't know or can't feel that he is done. I talked to the GI nurse today and she had a term for it, but I didn't catch it. Peristalisis, maybe? No, thats not right. She described it as sort of a twitching feeling. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Today, after he got out of the shower, he thought he needed to pass gas so he let loose and, instead, squirted some poop on the bath mat. It's almost as if he has sensory issues, or lack thereof, in his bottom. When kids are dx so young, do they just not learn how to poop? Or if they have diarrhea so frequently, can the muscles become lazy?
 
A is doing the same thing lately! Sitting on the toilet crying that she has more poop in there but can't get it out! And what is coming out is solid but very thin, like the width of my pinky finger thin. Could that be due to inflammation?
 
Sorry Mehita no advice but my oldest non crohnie was encopretic through middle school. Not fun.

Dancemom - I would call GI on that. We were told to call on pencil thin stools and well my pinky is pencil thin so call!
 
I told him about it while she was in the hospital and he didn't seem concerned. Once home she had diarrhea and large round stools for a day or two, now back to the thin stools.
 
Email in 2 wks, follow up in clinic in a month. I will try to follow up sooner though because I want her seen before school starts and the thin stools do concern me a tad.
 
This is where it gets difficult for parent's, :( ...when we are left to decide what is okay and what isn't. :hug:

Okay. pencil thin stools can well be a sign of inflammation/narrowing so look at the whole picture and what I mean by that is...

If pencil thin stools are not a new symptom and there are no other concerning symptoms then you can observe and document.

If the pencil thin stools are a new symptom or they are increasing in frequency and/or other symptoms are coming into play then touch base with the GI. Those other symptoms don't have to be related to her toileting they can be other Crohn's symptoms.

Dusty. xxx
 
I haven't had to deal with Mehita so I am not the best one to give advice, sorry. :(

I think you will find that most treatments treat the symptoms. I know that sounds an obvious thing to say but what I mean by that is, you will find that faecal incontinence in children is normally spoken about in the context of constipation. Now if that is indeed the reason why it is happening with your lad then you need alleviate the situation by using stool softeners, suppositories/enema's, increasing oral fluid intake.

For those that have children that normally suffer with constipation and they then find that their child is leaking loose faecal matter you need to rule constipation with overflow. That is where faeces behind the impacted stool leaks around it.

Then there is the issue of inflammation and complications that may be present in around the anus/rectum. If you have other factors under control e.g. constipation, then unfortunately there isn't a lot you can do to prevent episodes from occurring aside from treating the underlying cause and the goals instead turn to minimising embarrassment, maintaining hygiene and so on until the flare is under control.

That is just my two cents worth hun and I am sure someone will be along that actually has first hand experience rather than my hypothesising! :eek2:

Dusty. xxx
 
mehita-
temesus ( spelling?) is the terms for when it constantly feels like you still have to go-DS has that
The accidents also happen for ds when his rectum /sigmoid is inflamed.
Rectal inflammation does not show in blood work since they never make it into the blood stream ( at the end so to speak)

WE had to do an xray since in his case it leads to constipation.
WE also did a clean out then large doses of miralax.
We did have to change some of DS's meds to get rid of it.
IT came back when we switched to humira from remicade :(
Still working on it.
Canasa made him worse but that was his experience.
warm baths sometimes helped the area to soak.

wish I could be of more help.

IT really stinks
 
Well, it was my non Crohnie who was encopretic so not sure this helps but....

She was so constipated that the soft stuff leaked out around the hard. She would try so hard to go to the bathroom. Sometimes for 20-30 minutes or so and would push so hard that she eventualy got rectal rolapse.

Now this was the treatment 15 years ago so take it for what it is worth. We used stool softeners and such...Mineral Oil, Senekot but when Miralax came out we were switched to Miralax. Once she was sufficiently cleaned out we had to keep her on Miralax for a very long time to keep everything super soft and moving and for her muscles etc to begin rebuilding.

Other things: high fiber diet, lots and lots of water, swimming.

She eventually got better at about 12 years old. It was horrible! Wish we knew our current GI back then.
 
I really wish I would have clarified what the nurse called it. Ugh. Im thinking it might be more of what MLP described. The temesus, but I don't think that's the correct spelling. I can't find anything on it on the Internet. Does anyone know how it's spelled? I'm making wilds guesses and nothing is coming up.

We started Miralax last night, but it sort of backfired and he made a few trips to the bathroom instead of sleeping. Today he asked if we could wait until the morning so he wouldn't be up all night. Nothing productive came of the first dose... just lots of urges to go.

The nurse also said to titrate the Miralax. Did she mean build up to a full dose? Or just adjust as needed?

He's having labs run on Monday and I'm hoping his iron is back in the normal range so we can stop the iron supplement. I think that's the source of the trouble. He was pooping fine until we started that darn iron sulphate.
 
We found out to give miralax in the morning was best for my son.
It usually takes three days to work .
Since most of the time your colon holds three days worth.
You can use the cap or gram scale .
Kitchen scale works
We start high three days and slowly go down until we find a workable dose.
So giving it once really does not work that fast .
 
One dose of Miralax with lunch yesterday and we've had several rounds of diarrhea since. Can't seem to get it right.....
 
That's it, Clash! Thanks!

It didn't work fast for him, he just had the little squirt accidents. Still waiting for the BIG one.

I'm starting to have a bad feeling about this...
 
Last edited:
Things aren't really getting any better :(

Still soft, mushy blobs with frayed edges. With Miralax the bathroom visits are down from 30 min to 15 minutes, but he's still going three to five times a day. Yesterday it was seven times w/o Miralax.

Frustrating.
 
Are you giving miralax daily ?
It needs to be a daily thing otherwise you are just running around in circles since it only helps the stuff from three days ago at the top if the colon .
 
Thanks, MLP. For the most part daily, but we have been missing doses. We've been struggling to find the best time for it because it does cause several urgent trips within the next three hours and bathrooms aren't always conveniently available... so we'd skip the dose if we're having a busy day or going someplace with few facilities.

We'll be more consistent this week and see how it goes.
 
If there are urgent trips maybe ask the doc about a smaller dose
I know for ds this has changed over the years
sometimes a 1/2 capful and sometimes 1 and 1/2 capfuls . It varies on how his system is doing.
 
Need help with mechanics here. The colon is where stool is shaped and formed, right? So, if the colon is inflamed and maybe even narrowed due to inflammation, can that cause stool to sort of get stuck prior to the inflamed area and only allow fluids and loose stool through?

We've been treating for constipation, but I'm starting to think inflammation is the real issue.
 
Mehita said:
Need help with mechanics here. The colon is where stool is shaped and formed, right?
Click to expand...

Yes.

Mehita said:
So, if the colon is inflamed and maybe even narrowed due to inflammation, can that cause stool to sort of get stuck prior to the inflamed area and only allow fluids and loose stool through?
Click to expand...

Definitely.

Mehita said:
We've been treating for constipation, but I'm starting to think inflammation is the real issue.
Click to expand...

You could be right. :(
 
Whoa! We've been doing 1/2 cap of Miralax daily for about two weeks now and BM's have been 1-3 a day. DS didn't poop yesterday at all but has now been in the bathroom for an hour and I swear he has completely emptied everything in him through his esophagus! It was a HUGE pile... two flusher. He says he has a stomach ache too. How can that much come from such a little guy?

What does this mean? Too much Miralax? Too little?

I'm so confused.
 
I don't know, but A did the same thing yesterday (minus the stomach ache). I sometimes wonder how such a small girl can produce so much poo! lol
 
Remember with Miralax if you change the dose to do it slowly and only by a tablespoon.
That's what the GI told me awhile ago.
 
Sorry about all the Miralax questions, but...

He's going every other day. On the days he goes its a LOT and takes an hour +, sometimes a second trip. I was thinking of going from 1 Tbsp to 1 1/2 Tbsp a day to try and even things out a little and get an every day thing going instead of every other. Think it might work?
 
That's what I do for Grace.
Grace takes 3 tbsp. (half a capful) a day.:eek2:
That's during remission.
During flares she can go up to 3 capfuls.
 
That's what we would do too. My daughter takes about one capful a day. We reduce or increase the amount (but just by a little) depending on how many times she's going.
 
My sister was not nearly as excited as you guys. THANKS!!!

You know what I think did the trick? He's been taking Culturelle for several weeks now. The "digestive" one with inulin. He's still in the bathroom for an hour each day, but overall seems better.
 

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