This problem kind of snuck up on us. Back around the beginning of June, LM started having hard stools. He would go to the bathroom and would come out crying in pain. Eventually he became afraid to go to the bathroom and it became an issue. My four year old son all of a sudden needed me to not only accompany him to the toilet, but also to know that he had to go there in the first place. He wouldn't tell me that he had to go, but instead would come to me sobbing.
To be honest, it was quite frustrating.
By the end of June, there was blood in the toilet, every time. Now I had a sobbing mess of a child and a toilet filled with blood. Upon some investigation, I found that his poop was splitting him open, no matter how soft or hard it was. I tried to coach him through it, telling him that as much as it hurt, he could NOT hold it in for days on end. I loosely began to research fibre. We started adding more into our diets, but nothing serious.
We went on our summer vacation and came home, no change. I made sure LM was drinking enough. He was always a good water drinker; that couldn't be the problem. I searched the internet for answers. I tried lactulose, colace, mineral oil, benefibre...no improvement, no improvement, no improvement, no improvement. I started to worry about long term effects of me just giving LM "stuff to help" on the recommendations of friends and family. I read about anal fissures and felt HORRIBLE for not taking LM's cries of pain more seriously. I stopped it all and took him to the walk in clinic at the beginning of September.
Well, walk-in doctor would not even look at LM's bum. He ordered a referral to the children's hospital surgery clinic and sent us away with a prescription for ratio-Hemcort-HC, a topical ointment that I could put on the fissure. He told me to give him more of the Colace.
I left the office thinking that the doctor could have at least looked at it and saved me time. It turns out he made the right decision.
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